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PAGE 6—June 5,1975
§ 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
USCC DIVISION FOR FILM AND BR
FRENCH CONNECTION II (Fox) ... It ’s
Popeye the New York Cop, on a busman’s
holiday In Marseilles, France.
This year may go down as the year of the
sequel - with GODFATHER II, THE FOUR
MUSKETEERS, and now FRENCH
CONNECTION II all vying for box-office
success. In the original FRENCH
CONNECTION Gene Hackman garnered his
first Academy Award for his studied portrayal
of “Popeye” Doyle, a hard-nosed New York
flatfoot determined to crush the drug trade.
Popeye is back in FRENCH CONNECTION
II, but this timfe he is on the other side of the
Atlantic, stalking the sidestreets of Marseilles
in search of his old nemesis, Frog One, played
by Fernando Rey.
The shift in locale for this film is critical.
Popeye, who was quite at home in his tough
turf, the streets of Gotham City, is totally
disoriented in this foreign milieu. Much is
made of the fact that he can’t speak the
language, that he doesn’t understand local
customs, that he is unable to mold his Yankee
violence into more restrictive and
bureaucratic police practices of the French.
Popeye often seems as much at war with his
French counterpart, Barthelemy, played by
Bernard Fresson, as with the mob. Similarly,
all of Popeye’s treks into the Arab Quarter
and the docks of Marseilles seem excursions
into the exotic rather than real confrontations
with evil. The adventures of Popeye seem
poorly intermeshed with footage seemingly
more relevant to a sunny travelogue. Even in
the key chase sequences, which are almost
ironic diminutions of the critical chase in
THE FRENCH CONNECTION, are more
loaded with local color than real chills.
Much of the energy of FRENCH
CONNECTION II is dissipated in long
sequences seemingly designed to develop
Popeye’s character. Popeye is kidnapped and
shot full of dope; after his rescue, long
segments of the film are devoted to his
withdrawal. This sequence drags badly, and
even Hackman’s best efforts can’t make
nostalgic musings and machismo mutterings
interesting and engaging. The chronicles of
Popeye’s sufferings are torturous and tedious;
the film needs less analysis and more action.
Popeye is a character best understood in
action. His effort to burn a hotel down tells
us much more about his character than his
most “honest” and meaningful alcoholic
assertions.
In fact, it is the very serious moments in
FRENCH CONNECTION II which most
trivialize it. THE FRENCH cbNNECTION
had the vast talents of director William
Friedkin to keep it moving along at a
lightning pace. In FRENCH CONNECTION
II, John Frankenheimer replaces Friedkin;
Frankenheimer obviously wants to say
important things about the masculine psyche
in the sequel. He spends so much time telling
his audience things, however, that he forgets
that films must move. By slowing Popeye
down, and by focusing more on locales, he
loses the verve so vital to an action film.
(A-IV)
W. W. AND THE DIXIE DANCEKINGS
(Fox) Burt Reynolds does an. entertaining
turn as a Deep South con artist who joins up
with a country music band in order (a) to save
his own hide from the pursuing law, and (b)
to see if he can skin the band of their
hard-earned cash. The plot is complicated
without being complex, but director John G.
Avildsen keeps it moving along briskly and
with just the right light touch. Except for one
gratuitously rough scene, everything in this
film spells good, fast (but light) adult
entertainment. (A-lll)
THE HAPPY HOOKER (Cannon) Lynn
Redgrave struggles gamely to give some life
and glamour to a thankless role locked in an
essentially seedy situation. This cut-rate film,
based on the justly notorious biography of
Xaviera Hollander, a former New York
brothel keeper who somehow captured the
attention of the media, manages to blunder
along in an occasionally funny but constantly
coarse manner. Compared to the original
book, the film is mild stuff indeed, at least in
terms of explicitness, but it all boils down to
being a matter of (low) taste. (B)
THE STORY OF A TEENAGER
(Universal) A high school football star tries to
make a home for his kid brother, but their
alcoholic father tragically interferes. The film
is well-intended as a piece about the pressures
of adolescence, but its script is simply too
melodramatic and its treatment woefully
unoriginal (including long “lyric” sequences
made still more mawkish by slow-motion
sequences). The segment in which the father
batters the younger boy to death and
following scenes in which the vengeful
teenager stalks his father in the slums with a
hunting knife make the film unsuitable for
youngsters. (A-lll)
TV Movies
USCC DIVISION FOR FILM AND BROADCASTING
SUNDAY, JUNE 8 — 8:30 p.m. (ABC) -
WHERE IT’S AT (1969) - A Las Vegas
gambling casino (played by the real Caesar’s
Palace) is where the action is supposed to be
in this story of casino owner A. C. Smith
(David Janssen) who is bent on teaching his
son Andy (Robert Drivas) the tricks of
exploiting the tourist trade. The lad, fresh
from college, is at first disillusioned by his
father’s cynical methods of operation. Bu1
Andy soon learns - somewhat implausibly -
how to beat his father at his own game. Andy
gains a controlling interest in the casino which
he finally forfeits to his father because he
realizes that the Las Vegas scene is his father’s
whole life but will never be his. Please note
that OFB’s classification is based on specific
scenes that will be cut for TV consumption.
(C)
TUESDAY, JUNE 10 — 8:30 p.m. (NBC) -
THE STRANGE AND DEADLY
OCCURENCE -- Repeat of a made-for-
television film. This one stars Robert Stack
and Vera Miles as brand-new owners of an old
country house. Things perk along fine until a
few days after they’ve moved in - and then
strange things begin happening. Lights go on
and off inexplicably; the plumbing goes
haywire; a luxury sauna almost becomes a
streamy tomb. All signs point to a deadly
menace, possibly supernatural, but probably
hot. Local sheriff L. Q. Jones has a tough
time believing what’s going on, and so might
you . . .
8:30 p.m. (ABC) - HEATWAVE -- TV
rehash, of sorts, of the classic sci-fi thriller
“The Day the Earth Stood Still.” In this one,
starring Bonnie Bedelia and Ben Murphy, a
nice little towh in middle America is thrown
into chaos when an intense heat wave strikes.
Talk about your energy crisis — here’s one in
reverse!
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - IT COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A
NICER GUY -- Here’s one to test your
credulausness and level of taste in accepting
TV light entertainment. Paul Sorvino, a fine
actor who deserves (and should know) better,
plays a mild-mannered middle-aged man who
is “forced” to have relations with a beautiful
woman who gives him a lift and then puts him
out of her car without his clothes. It takes
some explaining to get anyone to believe his
story, especially, his wife (Michael Learned) -
and it should take more than this kind of TV
movie to gtet you to invest two hours of your
evening. In dubious taste, at best.
THURSDAY, JUNE 12 — 9:00 p.m. (NBC)
- PETE ‘n’ TILL IE (1972) - Walter Matthau
and Carol Burnett star in this awkward and at
times grating serio-comedy about an off-beat
middle-aged couple. Nearly smothered under
the weight of Martin Ritt’s direction and
Julius J. Epstein’s screenplay is the deft
satirical novella WITCH’S MILK by Peter De
Vries. As things turn out, De Vries could
doubtless be among the first” in line to attack
the movie with his satiric barbs. What Ritt
and Epstein have done, and what Matthau and
Burnett cannot undo with their creditable
performances, is to shake out most of the
spirited satire and pile on a wildly
inappropriate mixture of sardonic humor,
slapstick, stark tragedy, heavy melodrama and
cheap soap operatics. The result is a filmic
breakdown as Pete and Tillie meet in sunny
San Francisco, bed down, get married, raise a
son only to lose him to leukemia, separate,
and finally reunite. Lapses in taste which
might otherwise gone unnoticed, moreover,
stand out grotesquely amid the general
deterioration: Matthau’s constant swearing is
one example, and a shrill bit of blasphemy by
Miss Burnett, admittedly in a moment of
extreme distress, is another. (A-IV)
9:00 p.m. (CBS) - THEY CALL ME
TRINITY (1971) - This is a silly little
spaghetti Western intended as a spoof on that
now classic genre, which succeeds
magnificently in achieving its unpretentious
goals. Terence Hill grins his way through this
role of the grimiest, laziest, fastest outlaw gun
in the West who is drawn into a conflict
involving evil rancher Farley Granger, a band
of pudgy Mexican bandits and some bearded
pacifist Mormon farmers. Terence is attracted
to the latter out of a fascination with that
sect’s marriage practices as expounded by two
southern belles who look like they were left
over from GONE WITH THE WIND. He and
his outlaw brother (posing as the town
sheriff) radicalize the farmers and teach them
a primitive form of frontier karate that makes
for a climactic confrontation. The shooting
and the crunching mayhem of it all are more
reminiscent of SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL
SHERIFF than of A FISTFUL OF
DOLLARS. (A-lll)
FRIDAY, JUNE 13 — 8:00 p.m. (CBS) -
ONE MORE TIME (1970) - Possibly the
worst movie of the decade, ONE MORE
TIME stars comedy team Peter Lawford and
Sammy Davis, Jr., in a sequel to SALT AND
PEPPER. They chase about the English
countryside in a contrived and irrelevant
diamond smuggling episode that is horribly
forced and unfunny. The timing of all the
gags is off, and the plot and dialogue are
predictable and stupid. The film was directed,
if that is the word, by Jerry Lewis. (A-lll)
9:30 p.m. (CBS) - THE PEOPLE NEXT
DOOR (1970) -- Teenage use of drugs in
middle-class suburbia is the subject of this
film adaptation by J. P. Miller of his 1968
award-winning program on the CBS Television
Playhouse. Miller’s screen credits (BEHOLD A
PALE HORSE, DAYS OF WINE AND
ROSES) would lead a viewer to expect an
insightful film on this national problem.
Instead, PEOPLE is a drearily moralizing,
one-dimensional melodrama making the
now-too-familiar distinctions between parents
who drink and hide their sexual indiscretions,
and the kids who smoke pot and flaunt theirs.
The story revolves around Maxie (Deborah
Winters) who grooves with the boys and
‘trips’ on LSD to escape the reality of her
hypocritical parents Eli Wallach and Julie
Harris. The people next door, the local high
school principal Hal Holbrook and his wife
Cloris Leachman are, if anything, even more
at fault because, as the film reveals, Maxie has
been obtaining her supply from -the principal’s
son. The one supposedly authentic person in
the morass is Maxie’s long-haired musician
brother (Stephen McHattie), who eventually
teaches his bumbling father about life and
raising children, though the boy has been
silently aware of Maxie’s aberrations from the
start. The film’s resolution seems to imply
that what psychiatrists and drug clinics
cannot cure a good walloping by mother can.
PEOPLE addresses the issues of drug abuse,
the generation gap and the complacent
middle-aged middle-class with an
irresponsibility that does a disservice to all
concerned. Rather than make the necessary
heavy cuts for TV, why didn’t CBS simply
rebroadcast their original Television
Playhouse production? (C)
SATURDAY, JUNE 14 — 9:00 p.m. (ABC)
- THE LANDLORD (1970) -- Beau Bridges, a
fine actor, cannot save this diffuse but
occasionally > gripping serio-comic, surreal
drama from slipping into the “esoteric” bag.
Making neither literal nor lyrical sense, the
movie follows the ill-directed liberal-knee-jerk
journey of an idealistic (but fortunately) rich
young man into the sleazy business of street
life as a ghetto landlord. By buying and
renovating a decayed brownstone in a
rundown section of Brooklyn, Bridges vaguely
hopes to give meaning to his otherwise
indulgent life - as if by rebuilding the house
(tenanted by justly suspicious blacks) he can
remodel his vacant life. The film has the
flicker of life in the wry, bittersweet
performance of the late Diana Sands as a
welfare mother who applies her maternal
instincts to Beau, and there is a small bonus in
the performance of Lou Gossett as her
murderously demented ex-husband. But the
film, though highly stylized and alluringly
photographed (an effect that probably won’t
show up on your home screen) is lacking in
depth and stamina and coherence. (A-lll)
9:00 p.m. (NBC) -- THE MANCHURIAN
CANDIDATE (1962) - One of the all-time
great political spine-tinglers. Laurence Harvey
is toplined as an ex-Korean War POW who has
been transformed, via Red Chinese hypnosis,
into a deadly instrument of assassination.
Returned to the U.S.A. during the time of a
Presidential campaign, Harvey is at times
unaccountably strange in behavior toward
wife and family. An Army psychiatrist (Frank
Sinatra, in a solid acting performance) is
called in, but cannot quite pinpoint what’s
wrong. As the film reaches a climax, Sinatra
suddenly realizes what is going on (certain
events have paved the way), and a major
manhunt and race with time are on. The
action is deadly, and the suspense is nearly
killing. (A-lll)
TV SPECIAL ON MOSES - Burt Lancaster (left) has the title role in right, Irene Papas plays Zipporah, Moses’ wife. The stories begin with the
“Moses - The Lawgiver,” a series of six one-hour drama specials enslavement of the Israelites and end with their exodus. (NC Photos
premiering Saturday, June 21, 10 p.m. EDT on CBS. In the center photo courtesy CBS)
Moses and his brother Aaron (Anthony Quayle) meet at a town well. At
BOOK REVIEWS
GATE OF HEAVEN, By Ralph
Mclnemy, Harper and Row, New York,
293 pp., $8.95.
REVIEWED BY JOHN MAHER
(NC News Service)
“Gate of Heaven,” the fourth novel
by University of Notre Dame
philosophy professor Ralph Mclnemy is
focused better than the “The Priest,”
that sprawling chronicle of
contemporary Catholicism published
two years ago. All the principal
characters are concerned about one
thing, the proposed demolition of an
aging building that was once the minor
seminary of a new dwindling religious
order, the Society of St. Brendan. But
like the earlier, much longer novel,
“Gate of Heaven” suffers from the
author’s penchant for exploring just
enough of so many psyches that none is
developed to the extent necessary to
engage the reader’s sympathy.
Father Hoyt, a dynamic mover and
shaker who is president of St. Brendan’s
College, has proposed that Little Sem,
the ancient former minor seminary on
the college grounds, be razed to make
room for a girls’ dorm to be built with a
federal loan. Hoyt, who has freed the
college from its legal and financial ties
to the Society of St. Brendan, is
confronted with the opposition of the
aging residents of Porta Coeli, the
retirement home for the society’s
priests. The deed by which a donor,
now dead and buried in Little Sem, gave
the society the land on which its
buildings stand also gave its golden
jubilarians a veto over the destruction of
Little Sem, its first building.
Around this theme of tradition versus
change are woven the conflicting
motivations of the aging residents of
Porta Coeli, their quests for power as
life is ebbing away.
Fathers Phelan and Noonan are the
principal opponents of the plan to raze
Little Sem. Father Tumulty, the agent
of college president Hoyt, hopes that his
success in persuading his fellow oldsters
to drop resistance will win his reprieve
from his assignment to Porta Coeli. By
aiding Hoyt, he hopes to be able to
move to a position where he can thwart
Hoyt in what is seen as abandonment of
the society’s traditions.
Flashbacks build echoes of the past
into the rivalry between Noonan and
Tumulty. Father Cullen, the society’s
nonagenarian founder, lying in a coma
in Porta Coeli’s infirmary, faces death
and the rivalry extends to the succession
to Father Cullen’s position as superior
of Porta Coeli.
The author unfortunately introduces
characters whose sole function seems to
be to serve as vehicles for the display of
additional knowledge of clerical life.
Turns in the story serve as occasions for
short discourses on various aspects of
contemporary life or contemporary
Catholicism.
“Gate of Heaven” suffers too from an
uncertainty of tone. There are cutely
devised names: Father Faiblesse, the
weak superior whose headquarters are
located on Cavil Boulevard. Like the
names, a number of incidents in the
novel seem intended to be comic. While
failing to be genuinely funny, however,
they do prevent the reader from taking
seriously the weightier issues the plot
raises.
The dialogue is seldom the interplay
of intelligent minds and is too often
banal exchange of information.
Mclnemy is at his best in passages of
philosophical reflection, but such are
not the stuff of novels.
Mclnemy, who emphasizes his
literacy by sprinkling the novel with
Latin phrases, can fashion well-wrought
sentences and is alert to the moods and
motives of a range of contemporary
types, particularly Catholic types. But
“Gate of Heaven” fails to be more than
moderately interesting because the
types introduced are not explored at
any great depth and because the novel’s
elements are not fully unified.
(Maher is a reporter-writer for NC News
Service.)
A V” LIFE IN MUSIC
e<S» '*' -4 .-V
BY THE DAMEANS
The Immigrant
Harbors open their arms
to the young searching
Foreigner
Come to live in the light
of the beacon of liberty
Planes and open skies, billboards
would advertise
Was it anything like that when
you arrived?
Dreamboats carried the future to
the heart of America
People were waiting in line for
a place by the river
It was a time when strangers
were welcome here.
Music would play
They tell me the days
were sweet and clear
It was a sweeten tune and
there was so much room
That people could come from
everywhere
Now he arrives with his hopes
and his heart set on miracles
Come to marry his fortune with
a handful of promises
to find they’ve closed the door
They don’t want him anymore
There isn’t anymore to go around
Turning away he remembers he once
heard a legend
that spoke of a mystical, magical
land called America
(By Neil Sedaka, Copyright (c) 1974, Don Kirshner
Music, Inc. BMI.)
Chances are that you who are reading this article now, call yourself an
American, but have your family roots from some other country. You are a child,
or a descendent of an immigrant. When your ancestors arrived, “it was a time
when strangers were welcome here. There was so much room that people could
come from everywhere.” And come they did. That very fact, of so many
different kinds of people coming together, is what has contributed to make
America one of the most unique places in the world.
All of this happened when our country was young. At that time she was
considered “a legend ... a mystical, magical land called America.” Now she is
older. She is growing up. And like all growth there comes a time when painful
decisions must be made. As America moves into her 200th year, she too is
having to make painful decisions and limit the number of people to whom her
“harbors can open their arms.”
“Sedaka’s back” and he is also growing up. The music he was famous for in
the early days of rock and roll is now mostly a part of his past. His style now is
more sophisticated and he seems to be calling all of us to become more realistic
about our music and about our world.
In his latest single “Immigrant” he captures well the bitter-sweet task of
growing up. The chorus of this song expresses musically as well as lyrically, the
pride of a country where “strangers were welcome here.” But it also feels the
sadness of having to decide that “there isn’t anymore to go around.”
Each year our country opens her arms to some 350,000 immigrants.
Sometimes the number is higher for special circumstances such as the Cuban
crisis, and even the recent Viet Nam airlift of orphans. But at some point,
decisions must be made as to how many people can come and what qualities
they should have to be allowed to stay.
In all growing up such decisions are necessary. At the same time, though, we
can continue to check the values by which we make such decisions.
Immigrants to our country can be refused for all sorts of reasons including
mental illness, physical illness, criminal records, etc. Perhaps Sedaka is reminding
us that many such people were our ancestors in the beginning and these qualities
may not indicate their real worth or lack of it. He even dedicated this song to
John Lennon, the Beatle super-star, who is having difficulty remaining here
because of criminal charges.
Maybe the most important element of a country’s strength is the way the
people relate to each other and their God, rather than who is allowed in or kept
out.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, P. O. Box 2108 Baton Rouge,
La. 70821)