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PAGE 10 — The Georgia Bulletin. December 14,1972
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VOLVO HAS REMODELED
OUR SHOWROOM FOR’73.
We’re wall to wall in 1973 Volvos.
And although their model numbers differ,
they have a number of improvements in common.
Our new Volvos have redesigned instru
ment panels, energy-absorbing bumpers, built-in side
reinforcing bars, new colors, improved rustproofing
and windshield wiping.
All Volvos also have fuel injection.
Our sedans and wagons have more powerful,
10-outlet, 3-speed heaters. (The 164 E comes with
air conditioning, too. A sunroof is optional.)
Our 1800ES moves two people and 35 cu.
ft. of baggage in a style to which sports car owners
are unaccustomed. Our 145 wagon has three wind
shield wipers, five doors and room for a six-foot sofa.
Stop by. Once you’ve test driven a 1973
Volvo, you may want to remodel your garage.
Volvo I64E.
Volvo 144
Volvo 145
Volvo 142
CARS INTERNATIONAL
(Monroe Drive Exit Off 1-85)
873-3051
Churchill’s Formative Years
Viewed in YOUNG WINSTON
It isn’t hard to recommend YOUNG WINSTON (currently playing in Atlanta at
Broadview I). And many critics have done so unreservedly.
What’s difficult is to recommend this new film (based on Winston Churchilll’s
autobiography, MY EARLY YEARS) without seeming to be “damning it with faint
praise.”
A few years ago David
Ogilvy, in his own
autobiography-plus-advice,
CONFESSIONS OF AN
ADVERTISING MAN,
wrote: “Few of the great
creators have bland
personalities. They are
cantankerous egotists, the
kind of men who are
unwelcome in the modern
corporation. Consider
Winston Churchill. He drank
like a fish, He was capricious
and willful. When opposed,
he sulked. He was rude to
fools. He was wildly
extravagant. He wept on the
slightest provocation. His
conversation was Rabelasian.
He was inconsiderate to his
staff.
“Yet Lord Alanbrooke, his
Chief of Staff, could write: ‘I
shall always look back on the
years I worked with him as
some of the most difficult
and trying ones in my life.
For all that I thank God that
I was given the opportunity
of working alongside of such
a man, and of having my eyes
opened to the fact that
Nor is the film the same
type of boy-and-his pet movie
that SOUNDER’S producer
Robert B. Radnitz has done
so well and often since 1950
- with dogs, ponies, sheep,
dolphins and hawks.
More important, please
don’t think that SOUNDER
is a “black film,” one of
those current movies which,
by drilling their shafts into
the aggressions, frustrations
and fantasies of the
newly-discovered black
audience, have brought forth
gushers of black gold.
Sure it’s about a
sharecropper family that
happens to be black. (And,
during the Depression in rural
Louisiana, that wasn’t an
asset.) And sure, its outlook
is through black eyes. But it’s
not a black film in the sense
of our current cycle of films
of the brothers, by the
brothers and for the brothers.
And that says a lot about it -
and for it - as I’ll try to
explain. Black-orientated
films have been turned out on
an average of one every two
weeks for the past couple of
years. And melodramas such
as SHAFT, SUPERFLY and
SLAUGHTER have done
amazingly well with this
new-found audience. So well
are such black-MACHISMO
films doing that sequels, and
even series, are being planned.
Also, BLACKULA did so well
for its studio that there are
plans for BLACK CAESAR, a
gangster story a la the
Edward Robinson classic.
(What next for these white
producers: LITTLE BOY
BLACK, or BLACK
CHRISTMAS, or A
CLOCKWORK BLACK?)
Where originally the
movies patronized blacks,
depicting them as
superstitious, shuffling,
eyeball-rolling (but with good
teeth and tapping toes), in
the past decade they’ve
sentimentalized blacks, with
occasionally such supermen
exits on this earth.”
In looking back more than
a few years and trying to
open our eyes to this same
fact, the film uses three
young actors to play
Churchill across the two
decades which it covers (from
his 7th to 27th year). Simon
Ward is cast in the most
difficult role: that of the
Churchill of the second
decade. Like the two other
actors (Russell Lewis, 7, and
Michael Audreson, 12) he
bears a striking resemblance
to the film’s subject; and
additionally he’s successfully
captured the familiar voice
and mannerisms of the film’s
impatient, alienated and
ambitious hero.
The story begins in
Victorian England and ends
shortly after a Churchillian
oration to the House of
Commons urging a more
moderate fiscal policy for the
Empire. YOUNG
WINSTON is broad in
geographical scope, visual
such good actors as Sidney
Poitier and Harry Belafonte
forced to represent the ideal
members of their group in the
midst of a white-dominated
society. This was an unreal
portrait for noble reasons: for
the sake of the image and the
cause. Nowadays the black
hero is still unreal, but for
monetary rather than
idealistic reasons.
With SOUNDER we have a
story of people who are
persons; fully persons,
uniquely black. And that’s
why it’s a human rather than
a black film. Or a children’s
film. The difference is that
it’s about real people. The
man is not a superman and
superstud, not a cool cat
reveling in the sex and
violence of the James Bond
format these black films copy
(but without its
tongue-in-cheek touch). The
woman isn’t a mere chocolate
bunny who’d look more at
home on a centerfold than on
the screen.
SOUNDER’S people are
real, complex humans, trying
to “beat the life they got laid
out for you in this place.”
Director Martin Ritt never
lets matters slip from human
depth and warmth into easy
sticky sentimentality. The
script by playwright Lonne
Elder III is based on William
H. Armstrong’s novel. And
there’s no problem of
“identification” for a white
audience; for if we - black or
white - can only identify
with “our own” then
something’s wrong. Especially
if we profess to believe all
men in the human
community are truly
brothers because we share
the same Father.
Education is the weapon
the older son (Kevin Hooks)
uses to beat the economic,
social and legal barriers that
face him. Through the
determination of his mother
(unforgettably played by
beauty and feel for the
period, if a bit slight in
dramatic depth.
We see Churchill at first (as
a war correspondent out to
“win a reputation and get
started in politics”) on a
punitive mission in the sunny
clime of India’s northwest
frontier; later, fighting
Dervishes at the Battle of
Omdurman with Gen.
Kitchener (John Mills); and in
South Africa’s Boer War
where, after being captured in
a suspenseful Dutch ambush
on a troop train, he escapes
to fame.
The film approaches its
subject without awe, yet not
without caution. You get the
impression that the
moviemakers - producer-
writer Carl Forman and
director Richard
Attenborough - know a lot
more than they choose or
dare to tell us. Indeed, the
film is a strange combination
of daring and playing it safe.
The daring is not so much
in its cutting back and forth
in time and place (neither
irritating nor confusing the
viewer), as in its use of a
gimmick that seems
inappropriate to the film’s
rather traditional style. At
various times we see
Churchill, his mother and his
father, being interviewed by a
snide off-camera reporter
who hints at what the story
doesn’t always admit to; or,
worse yet, show. Somehow
it’s too reminiscent of a TV
interview; and the reporter’s
approach and tone wouldn’t
be tolerated by the characters
as depicted, especially in
those times.
The film offers much, in
every department - touching
moments, action and
adventure, and even a few
Cicely Tyson) who works the
white owners cane crop with
her children while the strong
but frustrated father (Paul
Winfield) is on a prison farm
for stealing food to feed
them, and the encouraging
efforts of a teacher (Janet
Simon Ward
flakes of soap opera - but not
as much as it could or should.
Somehow and regrettably,
the moral and social issues of
England’s subjugating and
suffocating colonialism never
crop up in the story any more
than they did in the minds of
the characters. Even worse,
for drama’s sake, we’re told
things about the characters
rather than being allowed to
discover them for ourselves
through movements, glances,
remarks or gestures. Sublety
of implication isn’t a strong
point of the script. And the
central theme of personal
alienation (due to parental
neglect) as being the main
reason behind and spur to the
former Prime Minister’s later
achievement, seems dubious
since his accomplishments
seem to have begun only
after, rather than during his
schooldays.
The character of
Churchill’s American-born
mother, Jenny Jerome, might
have been more clearly
defined in script and
interpretation; as it is Anne
Bancroft plays her as if she
were a Victorian version of
Jackie Kennedy. But Robert
Shaw’s playing of her
husband, Lord Randolph, is
excellent. Hot-headed,
hot-tempered, lacking in
understanding of his son and
unable to express his paternal
feelings to him.
Furthermore, the film is
never dull. And Director
Attenborough unobtrusively
does well by both the action
scenes and the overall mood
of the times.
“You know, Churchill,”
says his friend, Lloyd George
in one scene, “you’re a child
of your class and you may
never outgrow it. But you’ve
got something.” And so has
the film.
MacLachlin) who couples
book learnin’ with the skill to
awaken him to his personal
potential and dignity, the boy
becomes a man. It’s an
almost-radiant motion picture
for all the family.
Master T. Y. SERVICE
Peachtree Battle Shopping Center
Domestic and Foreign Color TV’s
Stereos, Radios, Tape Players, Etc.
Phone 262-2638
FOR ENTIRE FAMILY
SOUNDER “Almost Radiant”
BY JOHN E. FITZGERALD
Please don’t think that SOUNDER, currently
playing in Atlanta at Peachtree Battle, is just another
boy-and-his-dog film; the type of thing the Disney
people did so well, and then so often. Curiously,
SOUNDER is the only film I’ve ever seen in which
the title character - a coon hound - could be totally
eliminated without affecting the film one whit. In
fact, he almost is. However, the dog isn’t that
appealing to the audience or important to the story.
Rebecca (Cicely Tyson) helps her son David Lee
(Kevin Hooks) get ready to leave his home and go off
to a faraway school in SOUNDER.
,NO. 1 WAY
TIMMERS^r°^