Cinema
All shook up
Duncan Fallowell
Earthquake Director: Mark Robson. Stars: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy. 'A' Empire, Leicester Square (123 minutes).
Cataclysm and gimmick are back at the flicks and bringing an oldfashioned sense of thrall which goes some way towards smacking our little pink ego by confronting it with an enthusiastic simulacrum of primal energy. The production team putting all effort into a natural disaster have let the human angla go to hell. Earthquake is a lousy film for actors.
Charlton Heston wants to unbury the whole world so the script gives him nine lives in which to try it. There may be sufficient collapsing masonry to blockade Cuba but it is water off a duck's back to him. How much longer can he continue to pay Salvation in corduroys before having a real accident? It does of course mean that in his career he has to learn fewer lines, carrying most of them from film to film. Ava Gardner, the estranged lush who wants him back and repeatedly overdoses on pills to prove it, makes a welcome return to the family screen. One speculates on whether she only considers these days parts that permit her to hold Screwdrivers throughout. Basically the script by George Fox and Mario 'de Godfather' Puzo, reeks. It circumscribes every gawky parable in the Hollywood canon of catastrophe, from the hard, corny love factor (Heston in mid-quake stopping for a drool) to the tensionless cliffhanger (you bet the tunnel will collapse half a second after Heston wriggles out, and plonk it goes). It
seems that to have the world disintegrate about you in six minutes flat does stop people behaving like people do on TV only to start them behaving like people do in books. The impact of the big set-pieces would have deepened immensely if the characters had not been manufactured from cardboard too. But the special effects which masticate Los Angeles are stunning. I have never seen a papier dam mache with such conviction before, nor skyscrapers look so genuinely shocked. If you want the earth to open up in fissures and cough Biblical flame you will not see it. Apparently this phenomenon operated horizontally. Yet the visual disorientation is often brilliant. There is one brief shot of a main street rippling in waves and flipping Cadillacs like tiddlywinks which may not be quite correct seismologically but nonetheless conveys the spirit creepily well. The extras perform the mass hysteria gallantly, somehow never forgetting which chalk mark to make for to avoid being killed by props. And then there is sensurround! Developed in MCA's electronic laboratory it seems to be a combination of loud sonic and sub-sonic waves setting up extremely bizarre internal vibrations. Foolhardily at the front and sensitive to boot, the writer seized up completely the first time it hit and turning round later was slightly struck to discovel a) that the theatre was intact, ah.la b) the audience still sitting inside.it. It also has an effect on spatial values. In fact it cancels them altogether. One would understand people with weak hearts not liking it at all. The second and third doses are less unnerving so I guess one could learn to live with it pretty quickly. In itself it is not revolutionary but it is good to see the cinema at long last experimenting
with basic techniques. Sens'round as it stands is no less a
gimmick than green-red 3-D. yet it is more manageable, less avoidable, and reminds us of the occult possibilities beyond conventional light and sound waves.
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