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PAGE 6—November 15,1973
TV Movies
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- THE HOSPITAL (1971) - If
botched surgical operations and hospital
chaos are your bag, then this brilliant but
uneyen and very clinical “comedy” written by
Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Arthur
Hiller will be just fine. And even if you gasp
atthe sight of blood and wince at the thought
of gross medical incompetence, the movie will
hit hard and still provide a good many
unavoidable laughs. A madman is loose in a
big-city hospital whose chief of surgery is
George C. Scott, and all the balmy fiend has
to do is take the first step - blundering nurses
who administer wrong medication, impossible
delays caused by bureaucratic red tape, aides
who wheel the wrong patient into surgery,
etc. etc., do the rest. Scott, already suicidal, is
driven nearer the brink ''ibut at the last
moment regains a sense of direction in his life.
Some of the situations are hilarious, but the
feeling is one of giddiness, followed by the
bite of ‘error. The comedy is allegorical, the
humor is blac 1 ', and the acting, writing and
directing are top-notch. Language and
uncompromising situations make this a
HOSPITAL for adult patients only. But all of
THAT will doubtless have been surgically
trimmed by the network’s own “surgeons.”
(AIM)
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19 — 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) -- COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
(1 970) - This black-oriented
detective-comedy will probably challenge the
TV network censor more than it will the
home viewer, who will be left with the shreds
- minus the harsh visuals and dialogue - of a
high-powered action story focusing on a
big-time con game up in Harlem. Directed
with great vigor by Ossie Davis,.the film stars
Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques
as the two bumbling-but-canny detectives
who unmask the fraud being worked by
back-to-Africa preacher Calvin Lockhart. The
action is fast and raunchy, with a lot of
“inside” racial humor and much gore to
round things out. For the mature and quick.
(A-IV)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 — 8:30 p.m.
'(ABC) -- THE AFFAIR -- The title of this
made-for-television romance indicates its
“adult” nature. Starring the husband-wife
combo of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner,
the film concerns a polio-crippled woman's
first love, at age 32. A former March of Dimes
poster girl, Ms. Wood has throughout her life
been a glutton for work and never took
time out for a romantic involvement -- that is,
until the handsome, divorced Mr. Wagner
enters her life. The resolution is fittingly
bittersweet, and some of the situations are
definitely for mature soap-opera veterans.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21 — 8:00
p.m. (ABC) - DR. DOLITTLE (1967) -
Gentle, light-hearted fantasy about an
eccentric animal doctor’s adventurous search
for the Great Pink Sea Snail. Rex Harrison
stars as the loveable doctor who can talk to
animals that include everything from mice to
a double-headed dancing llama. Samantha
Eggar plays a highborn lady who must be won
over, and Anthony Newley is the doctor’s
loyal friend. A good little boy goes along for
the voyage on the “Flounder,” which does
just that. Screenplay, music and lyrics by
Leslie Bricusse are more derivative than
inspired, a disappointment to purists and the
sophisticated, but others, especially children,
will be charmed. (A-l)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22 — 8:00 p.m.
(NBC) - MY FAIR LADY (1964) - George
Cukor, who was a Broadway director before
going West, has carefully preserved for future
generations (and anyone who has not already
seen it) the magnificent verve and charming
fantasy of the witty Lerner and Loewe
Broadway smash musical. The film medium
adds a dimension of closeness to the actors
which for the most part allows them to be
more natural than on the stage. Especially to
be commended are the Cecil Beaton sets and
costumes in unusually delicate technicolor.
No one will deny that Audrey Hepburn is a
visually suitable replacement for Julie
Andrews but music purists may have doubts
whether the dubbed-in voice of Marni Nixon
is quite acceptable. Whatever minor
reservations critics may have about the film,
no one is going to complain that they did not
get an evening’s enjoyment from this
venerable Cinderella vehicle. (A-l)
9:00 p.m. (CBS) -- DUEL AT DIABLO
(1966) -- If you must watch a movie on TV
tonight, this one is definitely in keeping with
the Thanksgiving spirit -- it’s a real turkey.
The plot is that of the tried-and-true (or is it
TI RED-and-true?) Cavalry-versus-lndian
Western, and the folks involved are a scout
(James Garner) married to an Indian woman,
a black entrepreneur (Sidney Poitier), a
frontier wife (Bibi Andersson) who is
kidnapped by the Apaches and who upsets
her bigoted husband (Dennis Weaver) by
surviving her ordeal and returning to him,
etc., etc. We've seen it all before, so why see it
again? (B)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - TO SIR, WITH LOVE (1967) --
Sentimental drama about would-be engineer
from British Guiana by way of California who
winds up teaching and trying to turn some
difficult borderline students in a London
Cockney slum school into ladies and
gentlemen. Based on true, distinguished
diary-novel by E.R. Braithwaite. As “Sir,”
Sidney Poitier dominates classroom and film
itself with his extraordinary presence. Some
pat solutions for real problems, and student
transformations seem overswift, by fine
supporting cast (with Suzy Kendall) show life,
love and teenagers much the same in a British
“black-board jungle.” Directed by James
Clavell. (A-l I)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - SCREAM, PRETTY PEGGY - Bette
Davis makes a creepy-crawly appearance in
this bizarre would-be chiller focusing on a
young student-housemaid’s near-fatal
curiosity regarding a family’s carefully
guarded “secret” - they keep a hopelessly
insane daughter locked up above the garage.
Sian Barbara Allen is winsome and properly
terrified as pretty Peggy, the part-time duster.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - ANY WEDNESDAY
(1966) - Comedy of errors based on the
Broadway hit by Muriel Resnik, stars Jason
Robards, Jane Fonda, and Dean Jones. The
creaky plot revolves around the secret life of a
company executive (Robards), who is a model
husband and father six days out of seven (so
who’s perfect?), but who “dallies” on
Wednesday evenings with a girlfriend (Ms.
Fonda) ensconced in the company-leased
apartment. Through a series of mishaps,
junior exec Jones turns up at the pad one
fateful night, and soon after, so does Robards’
wife (Rosemary Murphy) -- and then the real
fun begins. This one could have added up to a
fluffy evening of adult fantasy, but a leaden
performance by Robards, matched by a
wooden one from Ms. Fonda, keeps the
souffle from rising. (A-lll)
oooooonoonoooooooooooooooo
Film Classifications
A. - Section I - Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A — Section II — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
fiooooonooooooooooo
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THE OPTIMISTS (Paramount) . . .Peter
Sellers in Fine Family Film.
It is difficult to decide where to start:
either with a hearty “Welcome back!” to star
Peter Sellers, or with a humble thanks to the
producers and distributors of this warm and
moving family film. Either way, it is a
pleasant task, for the occasion is one of those
few films that live up to their titles.
THE OPTIMISTS is the richlv hnm^>"
often Chaplinesque, story of Sam, an
ex-vaudeviilian now reduced to entertaining
(or "busking”) on the London streets with his
scruffy little trained dog Bella, and his
initially unwelcomed but finally cherished
relationship with two young slum children,
played delightfully by Donna Mullane and
John Chaffey. Most of the focus is on Sam,
who is given a magical aura thanks to the
viewpoint of the children, Cockney kids who
cling to Sam in order to escape their drab life
at home, where their harried parents are
preoccupied with simple survival and have
little time to dispense love and kindness. This
sort of escape pattern by neglected or
misunderstood children has been seen in films
such as MELODY or the more recent FROM
THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E.
FRANKWEILER, but rarely has it been as
charmingly explored as in this little movie.
Viewing Sam through the eyes of the
children, we discover in him a man whose
flayed exterior hardly masks a warm inner
spirit that can survive anything, even in an age
that has lost its sense of humor and worse, its
sense of magic. For it is magic that Sam offers
the children, who themselves need nothing
more to survive. There is magic in his little
dog, a charmer and expert beggar; there is
more magic in Sam's non-sequitur ditties, his
nonsense rhymes and the fragments from old
routines that make up his everyday
vocabulary. Above all, there is his magic sense
of life that reaches the children, and which
ultimately teaches them to accept the
inevitable reality of death (which takes Bella).
As the children's “adopted” parent, Sam also
teaches them some practical lessons their real
parents have no time for: responsibility to
yourself and to others, the value of money,
the meaning of having a friend, the need for
trust.
The film, directed by Anthony Simmons
and photographed in beautiful color by Larry
Pizer, says much to adults and children, both,
about the world of children and about the
importance of the magical and the
incongruous in their world. The message is
not profound, but in comparison to what is
being offered in the standard family films
floating around today, it is timely and
welcome.
A subtler virtue in the film is its use of
location photography to delineate the
relationship between environment and one’s
well-being, particularly within the family unit.
Here the intelligence of director Simmons,
who co-wrote the screenplay with Tudo Gates
(is that a pseudonym?), is clearly at work, for
his restraint in letting the locations speak for
themselves avoids the introduction of
sociological preaching. Simmons is also to be
thanked for bringing out the natural charm
and appeal of the children, especially the
budding beauty of Ms. Mullane, without ever
relying on cuteness. For his part, Sellers is
pure magic in a part which is basically
sympathetic but which has its great demands
nonetheless in terms of sublte character
development in a man who, after living for
many years as a recluse, gradually opens his
life to a scuffed pair of little children. The
performance and the film it enhances are a
delight. (A-l)
THE NEW LAND (Warners) This is the
sequel to last year’s Swedish epic, THE
EMIGRANTS, and takes up the story of
Karl-Oskar Nilssen and his ever increasing
family as they settle slowly and at times
painfully in the Minnesota Territory during
the middle of the last century. Where the
earlier film - with the same cast and crew —
was arrow-straight in its story, THE NEW
LAND is open-ended, with the Swedish
family growing in different directions rather
than actually migrating. The film’s narrative
power comes from the family’s development
from a rag-tag band of fearful immigrants into a
solidly established group of Americans,
striking their roots deep into the rich new
territory, but paying dearly for their ultimate
stability. Like its predecessor, THE NEW
LAND brims with the grain and texture of
rugged, simple, and always determined life.
Director Jan Troell (who also edited,
photographed and helped write) again
displays his almost unbelievable ability to
bring characters and incidents to life and to
transmit feelings and energies with a visual
sense that is nearly tactile. His principals, Max
von Sydow and Liv Ullmann as the settler and
his wife, and Eddie Axberg as von Sydow’s
restless young brother, are excellent, as is the
rest of a very large cast. The film tells us
much about how our country was settled, and
at what cost; the story is not always pleasant,
but its themes and values are exemplary -- and
even at nearly three hours in length, not a
scene or gesture is wasted. (A-11)
A TEAR IN THE OCEAN (Levitt-Pickman)
A prophetic Jewish doctor (Alexandre Stere)
tries to warn a peaceful Hassidic community
in a small Polish town that the Nazis plan to
annihilate them. After an initial attack, the
ghetto remnant joins the local resistance
group operating from the country estate of an
idealistic noblemen (Armand Abplanalp). The
ultimate result is tragedy, as the Poles
themselves turn on their Jewish “allies”
during the count’s absence. This very complex
film treats the mystery of the Holocaust from
many different angles, challenging the viewer
with its questions rather than comforting him
with facile answers. Henri Glaeser, who wrote,
directed, and produced it (and also plays a
small but important role as the community’s
Rabbi), is sensitive to the many nuances of his
subjects. The center of the film is the agnostic
doctor’s call to action, but the reality of the
religious context, both Christian and Jewish,
is completely convincing. At the film’s heart
is the question whether the Nazi fury could
be better stopped by armed action on the part
of the helpless or by prayers. Except for the
singular example of the Danes, the Jews had
no allies among the occupied peoples of
Europe, and as the very effective montage of
stills from the Warsaw ghetto convey, armed
resistance on their own was hopeless.
Unfortunately, too many viewers will be less
interested in Glaeser’s impressionistic
picturing of this moral terrain of Jewish
isolation than they will be in its war-time
adventure elements. The considerable value of
A TEAR IN THE OCEAN is that it presents
the questions of why and how all this
happened, and, as such, should be of as much
interest to the Christian viewer as to the
Jewish. (A-lI)
TV PLAY FROM NOVEL -- Cyril Cusack as Father Manus elevates the novel. Trevor Howard (left inset) portrays an abbot tormented by the lack
chalice during an pre-Vatican II Mass for pilgrims gathered on a rainy of faith shown by the people he serves. The program will be broadcast
hillside in “Catholics,” a CBS Playhouse 90 adaptation of Brian Moore’s Thursday, Nov. 29. (NC Photo)
BOOK REVIEWS
STALIN AS REVOLUTIONARY,
1879-1929, by Robert C. Tucker, W.W.
Norton Co. (New York, 1973), 519 pp.,
$12.95.
(NC NEWS SERVICE)
Prof. Tucker’s volume, subtitled a
study in history and personality, is a
major work, demanding of the reader
close attention but rewarding him with
a minutely analyzed account of the rise
of Joseph Stalin from a seminary
student to the position of supreme
power in the 1920s.
To many not living in those
years-and perhaps for many who did
live but were unaware of the shifting
political Russian scene because of lack
of information-Stalin’s position of
preeminence is given. However, the
position of supreme power which he
ultimately attained was not
foreordained, and, as one reads Prof.
Tucker’s book, was perhaps not the
wish of the great leader of the
Revolution, Lenin.
Stalin, born in the Russian province
of Georgia, reacted against the
prevailing nationalism of the Georgians
by Opting for a Bolshevism based on the
traditions of Great Russia, the dream
which has inspired the tsars and which
came to be the goal of the winning
group among the Bolshevists.
Stalin’s dislike of his own people
because they were weak and could not
combat the forces of Great Russia was
also reflected, according to Prof.
Tucker, in the anti-Semitism which he
nurtured until it finally became an
obsession. The Jews were weak and
scattered throughout the country. They
too could be combatted.
After Lenin’s death, Stalin managed
to become the revolution
institutionalized. In its
institutionalization, the revolution had
to be made workable, or apparently
workable; and its thrust had to be cut
down to lifesize (or smaller) dimensions.
Thus, Trotsky could theorize all he
wished, but if he could not maneuver
within the shifting sands of the loyalties
of the successors of Lenin, he would be
defeated.
“This,” Tucker says, “was a
situation that greatly favored Stalin’s
victory and Trotsky’s defeat in the
leadership contest. For Stalin, by virture
of both his seemingly plain and earthy
personality and his sanguine platform of
socialist construction in one country,
offered the Bolsheviks non-charismatic
leadership, although he continually
invoked the sacred authority of Lenin in
its support. Trotsky, on the other hand,
writtingly stood before the party as a
potential savior-leader . . .Trotsky was
therefore in the hapless position of
appealing to a sense of political distress
mat was felt by no more than a small
minority of the party, and of seeming to
offer a brand of leadership that the
dominant majority did not consider
necessary or desirable in the existing
circumstances. ”
Perhaps some readers may find all the
detail cumbersome, but it is necessary
to know it in order to understand the
rise to power, nor without its potential
setbacks, of Stalin and to understand
how he used not only his own abilities
but the weaknesses and indecisiveness of
others to achieve the supreme power. It
is a book which should be and will be of
use to many students and writers not
only of the October Revolution but to
those which have been modeled on it.
(Maurice Adelman, Jr., a former
Journalist and now a lawyer in New
York, is a frequent reviewer of books.)
V' LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
All I Know
I bruise you, you bruise me
we both bruise too easily, too easily
to let it show
I love you and that’s all I know
All my plans have fallen through
All my plans depend on you
depend on you
to help them grow
I love you and that’s all I know
When the singer’s gone let the song go on
But the ending always comes at last
Endings always come too fast
They come too fast but they pass to slow
I love you and that’s all I know
When the singer’s gone let the song go on
It’s a fine line between the darkness
and the dawn
They say in the darkest night there’s a light beyond -
But the ending always comes at last
They come too fast but they pass too slow
I love you and that’s all I know
That’s all I know
Sung by: Art Garfunkel
(Jim Webb, (c) CBS, Inc. 1973)
It’s almost like watching a marriage falling apart when you hear of a musical
group breaking up. There’s a sadness that eveyone seems to feel because
something is lost. And we regret the loss. Even when the individuals within the
group carry on alone we feel that much of the magic is missing. There have been
many such “breakups” in the last few years: Peter, Paul and Mary who were so
identified as a group that few people even knew their last names. Of course the
dissolving of the Beatles was a tragic blow, not to mention Blood, Sweat and
Tears, and the latest, Bread.
The reactions of the group members is often hostility towards one another
and criticism. Some have even written songs to that effect. But few have seemed
to capture the deep hurt that’s involved as has this song done by one member of
a broken group, Art Garfunkel.
It is my personal belief that, though this song was written by someone else, it
sounded like a personal reaching out on the part of Art Garfunkel to offer a
weak and hurting gesture to mend the ties.
The song describes the kind of hurt that is open to anyone who attempts to
get close to someone else. When that someone else is a sensitive artist the hurt is
even more fragile, “I bruise you, you bruise me; we both bruise too easily.”
All that life had promised through a strong friendship is stunted when hurt
and division come because “all my plans have fallen through.” And the sadness
of an ending is only heightened by the fact that “endings always pass too slow.”
The hurt lingers long.
When hurt comes in any relationship it provides a kind of choice. “There’s a
fine line between the darkness and the dawn.” One can retreat to the darkness of
self-pity and lick his wounds and blame the other. Or he can hope for the dawn
of a new beginning by recognizing his own contribution to the division and reach
out to heal the wound. Reaching out is risky, but it could prevent the “ending”
from coming “at last.” Since both hurt, both can help and either can reach out.
The place to start is to risk giving love again rather than crying that it doesn’t
come to you. It’s a real sign of hope and the first step to healing when you can
say, “I love you, and that’s all I know.”
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans; St. Joseph’s Church; 216 Patton
A ve.; P. O. Box 5188; Shreveport, La. 71105)