U.S. accolades for N.Z. film

Press, 18 May 1982, Page 16

U.S. accolades for N.Z. film

NZPA staff correspondent Washington “Smash Palace” has received the accolade of a review (and two photographs) in the North American edition of "Time” magazine last week. It’s a good review too. “Odd,” said the reviewer, Richard Schickel, "that we have to look as far away as New Zealand (not exactly one of our major movie centres) for what may be the most melodramatic but also the most acutely motivated film yet about divorce.” Schickel blames Jacqui (Anna Jemison) for the explosion of anger by her husband, Al Shaw (Bruno Lawrence). “It is possible that ‘Smash Palace’ is either very brave or very foolish in its refusal to calculate how its moral is

likely to anger feminists," he said. “But since it is a movie stamped with intergrity in every frame, it seems more likely that it was made with no ideology in mind, just a desire to show how a specific marriage was put asunder.” The film has also had the rare distinction of two reviews in the “New York Times” — one on a weekday, the other on Sunday, May 9 — as Well as a long interview with its producer, director and writer, Roger Donaldson. It was chosen to kick ofl an annual New York festival of new films, and is now being shown commercially there, with the second review filling the house. Two Washington chains are vying to release it in the American capital.