Intellectual hodge-podge which succeeds on film

Press, 14 April 1980, Page 12

Intellectual hodge-podge which succeeds on film

The- main character in “Steppenwolf” (Academy) ..is enticed to go through .a mysterious door by a cryptic; invitation: “Magic Theatre — Entrance Not For Everybody. For Madmen Only.” . The people going to see this film should take heed of this warning for it may apply to them also. “Steppenwolf” takes one into a world of illusion, and although it may deal with schizophrenia and possible, touches of lycanthrophy, there are no standard Jekyll and .Hydes or werewolves of the common garden variety. The film is based on Hermann Hesse’s strange but fascinating 1927 novel by the same name about Harry Haller, a sad, dour man in his late 40s whose wife has left him, and who lives in the attic rooms of one of those respectable, spotless middle-class' houses in Basle (where much of the film was shot. He has a hatred of the middle-class bourgeois world in which he lives and spends most of his time alone, reading old books or wandering through the city. Besides, contemplating sui : cide, he follows his intellectual pursuits of studying Goethe and Mozart, who both manage to pop up occasionally. , His existence is best summed up by the introduction to a pamphlet, “Treatise on the Steppenwolf,” which he

is given one evening: “There once was a man, Harry, called the Steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being. Nevertheless, he really was a wolf of the Steppes. “He had learned a great deal of everything that people, with a fair mind, can, and was a rather clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his. life.”, •' The treatise is suitably illustrated' by the animation

of the Czech cartoonist, Jaroslav- Bradac.

Flis sterile existence becomes somewhat more interesting when he meets a girl (the beautiful Dominique Sanda). He is horrified when she passes him a razor but it is only to clean himself up as he looks a bit scruffy. She cleans his glasses as they drink she tells him that he

AT THE CINEMA Hans Petrovic

must obey her: “Obedience is like sex —there’s, nothing! like if it you’ve not.had it for a. long time.” Later, she tells him that he needs her and, one day he will fall in love with her. When that occurs, she will need him for something important and beautiful — he must kill her. Again, he meets her at a masked ball, although he does not recognise her at first because she is dressed as a young man. At this stage, one may begin to wonder whether she does not represent his alterego, in the nature of the anima-animus theory which Carr Jung had already formulated at that time.

His anima was personifica-

tion of the feminine nature of a man’s unconscious. The anima manifests itself most typically in personified form as figures in dreams and fantasies (“dream-girl,” “dream-lover”), ■or in the irrationalities of a man’s feeling or a woman’s thinking. Harry .then wanders through the Magic Theatre, where he has a series of weird, cathartic experiences (visually, somewhat reminiscent of the light show in “2001: a Space Odessey,” but not as good). Eventually, he finds ■ the girl asleep in a room in the theatre with another man and he plunggs a knife into her body.. For this, Harry Haller is “accused and found guilty of I the wilful misuse of our Magic Theatre . . . he confounded our beautiful picture gallery with so-called reality and stabbed to death the reflection of a girl with the reflection of a knife; he has, in addition, displayed the- intention of using our theatre as a mechanism of suicide and shown himself devoid of humour.”

He is condemned to return to life. The Court members burst into laiighter, and at last even Harry / begins- to smile and then 1 to laugh heartilv. Those a little confused by all this would at least have to admit that this ending is a reaffirmation of life — like it or not. Max von Sydow, as Steppenwolf, does a, wonderful

job in holding together this filmic jumble which, however, comes across much more exciting than it may sound.

Making a movie out of this intellectual hodge-podge must have proved as much of a challenge as filming James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” I cannot help but wonder what they are going to do with Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game.”

The theatre was packed last Friday evening, when I saw the film, probably mostly by people who have already read “Steppenwolf.” It certainly will stir sufficient interest to eagerly send many back to the book.