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COUNTERCULTURE
Tucker Leaves You Flat
Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker has been
widely hailed as a return to the halcyon days
of his Godfather films and The Conversation,
all made in the 1970s. But it is by no means
the universal opinion that any of those films is
a masterpiece. Stanley Kauffmann, the
distinguished film critic for The New
Republic, said in a "Saturday Review" essay
that "for all its slickness, what is The
Godfather but a film that made people
mistake length for size and that reveled in
previously established artistic limits."
I concur with Kauffmann, and believe that
time has proved the Godfather films beauti
fully crafted and satisfying narrative entertain
ments, but to describe them as masterpieces is
to further diminish the value of a term already
too often conferred in film today.
Tucker is set in the late 1940s, in the period
brashness of a Preston Tucker and with an
impatience for accepted film forms that
recalls Welles. He synthesizes these
influences in substantive ways, both in the
charged, larger-than-life qualities he brings to
his compositions and characters, and in the
technical method he devises to structure his
film.
If Tucker is the work of a director who is
lavishly in command of his medium, it's also a
shallow piece of moviemaking, whose
message is spelled out in oversized block
letters for everyone to read in all their pastel,
Capraesque banality. The indomitability not
just of the human spirit, but of the enterprising
American male capitalist spirit as underdog, is
here evoked in a scrubbed-clean storyline.
Tucker might be the work of a boy genius
Cub Scout It's a film utterly without depth.
before many of the innovations Preston
Tucker fought for - seat belts, shatterproof
windshields, engines with better gas mileage
- became standard automobile features. The
movie chronicles Tucker's struggles to get his
car designs and innovations off the drawing
board and onto American highways, where he
could compete with the big three auto
companies in Detroit
The picture details the forces working
against Tucker, especially his own naivete in
the face of corrupt government officials
snugly tucked away in the money-lined
pockets of corporate America. But it also
shows how the resilience, the love and the
loyalty of Tucker’s family, allowed him to
survive when his dream failed to materialize
on the scale he'd envisioned.
Tucker confirms that Coppola's gifts as a
filmmaker are resplendently intact but it also
suggests that he is trying harder than ever to
break past those "previously established
artistic limits," purely in terms of technical
innovations. He's trying to find the film
equivalents of those seat belts and
shatterproof windshields that were harbingers
in Preston Tucker's automobiles.
Coppola directs here with the combined
You find yourself asking, "Is the director
whose sympathies and concerns led to The
Conversation now content to have the gravity
of his thinking represented by this film?"
Francis Ford Coppola is trying to re-define
and expand film language, to tell stories in
visual terms that are as satisfying in their
completeness as traditional forms of
storytelling in movies and in fiction. He's
trying to do this at the same time that he's
making a film that will more than break even
at the box office, so that he can continue
making films.
Artists working in film inhabit a special
circle of hell, because the constraints of film
economics leave their imprint more tellingly
on movies than any other art form. It is the
imprint of sameness and of conventionality,
borne of tens of millions of dollars at stake.
But even in an unsatisfying film like Tucker,
Coppola is working far beyond the artistic
means of most filmmakers. Technically,
Tucker is a formidable achievement It would
be grand if next time out Coppola could
combine his ideas on how films might be
made with a script of comparable
expressiveness.
- Terry Francis
Library Offers Excellent
Collection of Videos, Free!
The Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library
continues to loan videocassettes for free to
patrons holding a personal library card. The
videocassettes are a browsing collection, are
available on a first-come/first-served basis,
and may not be renewed. The loan period is
for 3 days, not including day of checkout
Over the past year the videocassette
collection has
grown
impressively,
especially in
terms of its
foreign film
collection.
Many of the
titles that film
enthusiasts
may have only
read about in
journals or
books now
appear on
library shelves. Films such as: Simon of the
Desert, The Battle of Algiers, and the long-
suppressed Soviet work Repentance. With
the local demise of repertory cinema, the
library is an important source for free access
to classic American and foreign films.
The collection also includes videocassettes
on opera, ballet, live theatre, concert films, the
art world, travel, cooking, exercise and
foreign language instruction.
The titles selected represent a high order of
imagination and expert awareness of what is
happening in
the film world.
From the
casual patron
to the serious
student of film.
APL's
videocassette
collection
should not be
missed.
- Terry
Francis
Videocassettes are only available at the
Downtown Central Library, 1 Margaret
Mitchell Square. For more information, call
688-4034.
Rebecca Ranson’s newest play. At Nexus Theater. September 29 - October 16
584-2104 for information
Phoebe is a midwife. Rosetta is a millworker.
Their love story lasts 39 years.
The R.W. Associates Presents
An Evening of Feminist Humor with
Kate Clinton
1374 W. Peachtree (at 17th) Tickets at the box office and all SEATS
outlets, including Turtles. To charge tickets, call 873-2500. For
information, 231-0751 or 633-2475.
wrm opening Act
Leigh McClelland
at Center StageTheatre
Saturday, September 24 8:00 PM
$13.50 General Admission
Southeastern
Arts, Media &c
Education Project
Romanovs^ & P hit tips
Coming October 31st
377-8312
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