Cinema in London

Corpse de ballet

Kenneth Robinson

Thieves Like Us Director: Robert Altman: Keith Carradine, John Shuck, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall 'AA' London Pavilion (125 minutes) The Mean Machine Director: Robert Aldrich Stars: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert 'X' ABC2 (120 minutes) The Towering Inferno Directors: John Guillermin, Irwin Allen Stars: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Richard Chamberlain, Fred Astaire, Robert Vaughn, Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Jones Studio One, Warner West End, Carlton, Scene 3 'A' (165 minutes) More corpses than usual this week. In Thieves Like Us the deaths are conventional. Bank robbers shoot bank managers and are themselves shot by sheriffs. There is nothing here that could upset Grandma. If she remembers the American South in the 'thirties she might even like the film. In many of the scenes somebody has left a radio playing, so there is a continual background of the period's music, soap-operas, commercials and political hectoring. And who could mind an occasional bullet-pocked head or blood-stained boot with a nice song coming up from Frank Crummit or the Boswell Sisters?

The corpses in The Mean Machine are fewer. I can remember only one, though this is a film where you might expect a death every few minutes. It is a very funny story about American convicts playing football against their guards. Each man wants not only to win but also to maim, so it seems surprising that the field is not soon covered with dead players. The only corpse is not on the football ground but in a cell. A man is set on fire by one of his mates. As the flames seize his body an iron gate is locked in front of him by the murderer. This means he has to die without the luxury of being wrapped in blankets or curtains, like some of the flaming hotel residents in The Towering Inferno.

This film features one of the hottest girls in town, Jennifer Jones, whose body is set on fire as she falls down the side of a blazing San Francisco hotel. No, wait a moment; Miss Jones is the one who falls to death without catching fire, which is something of a novelty. I lost count of the women who jumped through windows, their clothes alight, each performing a graceful arc like a corpse de ballet.

Not every performer in this huge burns night is so elegant. There is a lift full of people who catch fire unexpectedly and with dreadfully unreserved comments. One man even lurches into the lobby like someone from the Ministry of Funny Walks. And then, for a terrible moment, it really seems that two naughty lovers are intending to burn to death in bed.

Fortunately this is a scene the British cinemagoer is not ready for. Nor can he be shown a child or a dog in flames. In the film more than one of each is rescued. I imagine we shall have to wait at least two years for lovers on fire in the cinema, five years for children and ten years for a really hot dog.

In the meantime there are so many possible variations on death by fire that the film keeps going very entertainingly for two and three-quarter hours. At first I was sickened by the sight of the residents in flames. But after a while — as I persuaded myself that the blazing San Francisco hotel was no more than a very good model — I began to feel sympathy for the film-makers. It was obviously necessary to set fire to as many people as possible. They were not, after all, a very intelligent set of characters. There was the obligatory middle-aged couple — fat, ugly and lovable — trapped with everybody else on the 135th floor. Then there was Fred Astaire, looking like a cross between Stan Laurel and Stanley Unwin and talking about destiny like Barbara Cartland. In fact there were a lot of very obvious types, and it must have seemed a jolly notion to enliven rescue operations by exploding a helicopter beside these people; emptying water tanks over them, and allowing half a dozen of them to fall from a cable car.

This film is dedicated, whatever that means, to firemen everywhere and it ends with the suggestion that architects and developers should consult the fire-fighting authorities when designing high buildings. This particular building was supposed to be the inspiration of an Architect of Integrity, working with a villainous and slipshod electrical engineer. There is a gorgeous understatement from the engineer's wife: "If you were responsible for all this, darling," she says, "then I know what you must be feeling." This sort of unintentional comic relief stops the film from being too frightening. I recommend it as unique entertainment. And although it might seem pompous to mention the purging quality of pure tragedy, there is something about all the fire and water that is vaguely Biblical.

I cannot cope with the enormous cast list. You must take my word for it that some players were convincing, others supported admirably and the remainder were satisfactory. Quite a number also did well, including the Suffolk Fire Brigade Band, which played Gems from the Classics at the premiere, reminding us that even Akenfield suffers from infernos, though less towering.

The small inferno I mentioned in The Mean Machine — the one that consumes a convict in his cell — is more realistic than any in the all-star spectacular, which may help to account for its 'X' certificate. One remarkable thing about this picture is the casting. The convicts' football team, led by Burt Reynolds, includes men who could pose for the mindless monsters in horror comics. It seems strange to be laughing so much as these moronic-looking people turn a game into a battle; and even more strange to be wanting the prisoners to win and to destroy their guards. I cannot think how the director, Robert Aldrich, gets away with it. I think it has something to do with exuberant good humour. But don't take my word for it. If you dislike the film you have on your side the Sunday Times ("nauseating sadism . • . degrading") and the Observer ("more brutishly abased than hard porn will ever be").

A final word about the film mentioned first. Thieves Like Us is directed by the California Split man, Robert Altman, and his characters — robbing, loving and shooting in the depressed South of the 'thirties — are as unintelligible as the gamblers in Split. I wish I could write about these men — played by Keith Carradine, John Shuck and Bert Remsen — in the same way as some of my fellow reviewers. should like to manage all that stuff about American evocations, figures in a timescape and three-dimensional social implications in a

human document. I feel guilty because I was glad when the hero was shot and we could all go home.

In this penultimate scene a dozen or so of the sheriffs' men surround

ed a wooden hut and peppered it with bullets until they knew the boy inside must be dead.

I'm in favour of this idea. believe a wooden hut should always be , constructed around

anyone who is being shot to death,

burned alive or loved too well. With this device we could even have flaming mattresses on creaking bedsprings and still give the scene a 'U' certificate