FRAMED BY W.DART

Rip It Up, Issue 31, 1 February 1980, Page 14

FRAMED BY W.DART

ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ Director: Don Siegel It was nice in the late sixties when everyone suddenly realised that Don Siegel was a director worth noticing. Coogan's Bluff was probably the film that instigated this re-appraisal, even though he had been responsible for some fifties classics such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Riot in Cell Block 11. Interestingly enough he immortalised the rather plasticised Fabian on celluloid in Hound Dog Man and gave Elvis Presley the chance to act in Flaming Star. Escape from Alcatraz sees the master of the B movie back in action with a craftsmanlike little thriller, starring everyone's favourite macho man Clint Eastwood as a convict determined to escape from the inescapable. A good deal of Eastwood’s determination is provoked by the somewhat sadistic behaviour of the prison governor, played by a rather bloated looking Patrick McGoohan. The film is effectively photographed by Bruce Surtees with a sensitive eye for composition, particularly in the exercise yard scenes which convey a quite gripping sense of menace after the claustrophobic interiors of most of the film. Alcatraz fits in well with what Andrew Sarris describes as the Siegel stamp showing as it does “the doomed peculiarity of the antisocial outcast”. At times things hover perilously near to sentimentality in the episodes connected with one prisoner’s pet mouse and another’s dying mother, but the quite traumatic shock of one prisoner chopping off his own fingers comes across with considerable impact. The premise for the act is basically,sentimental (the warden has forbidden him to continue oil-painting)'but the act itself is such a moment of bleak violence that it transcends that sentimentality. • Siegel has garnered quite a reputation for violence; a sort of beginner’s Peckinpah, but l : am not sure that I liked the implications of all the nastiness that comes out of Eastwood’s dealings with a prisoner called Wolf who tries to line him up as his new punk. One feels that this sort of treatment of the gay theme is rather designed to appeal to the lowest and most reactionary denominator, and it contrasts strongly with the sympathetic treatment accorded the black prisoners in the movie. That flaw aside, and also the reservations one feels when one . sees all . the representatives of the law treated as either sadists or cardboard figures, it is a film that deserves your attention. ELVIS - THE MOVIE Director: John Carpenter Originally made as a three hour television film, this somewhat shortened version is now making it in cinemas around the country. It is a haunting biopic from the same director who chilled us with Halloween. It doesn’t cover all of the singer’s career, finishing with the 1969 Las RIP IT UP NO. 31 FEB 'BO * Postal address PO Box 5689, Auckland 1. Managing Editor Murray Cammick. Advertising. Enquiries: phone Murray Cammick, 370-653. Typset . by Typesetting Systems. Printed by Putaruru Press. Design Harry: Cram, assisted by Andrew Green. Distribution —. Van Railpost assisted by Bryan Staff.

Vegas comeback, but it does catch the fatalistic character, of Presley -in its ■ series of almost expressionistic tableaux (at• one point Elvis is soliloquising to his shadow on the wall). Ronnie McDowell's vocal . impersonations of Presley are immaculate, and the fact that Kurt Russell does not always seem quite right only adds a sinister undertone to the film! Shelley Winters, too, is in line form as . Presley’s mother. / THE MUPPET MOVIE Director: James Frawley I have always found the Muppets to be the last word in dreariness, even in their weekly video doses. The only fun I have derived from their tiresome little faces is trying to see parallels between Kermit Frog’s little friends and acquaintances of whom I am not particularly fond. But such parlour games were forgotten in the sheer horror of seeing such people as Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Milton Berle, Orson Welles and many many more debase themselves in this debacle. Haven’t we suffered enough on the tube? DAYS OF HEAVEN Director: Terrence Malick Widely touted as one of the ‘most beautiful films ever made’, Days of Heaven may well be so, thanks to the stunning photography of Nestor Almendros and Malick’s almost ritualistic visual sense in the film. We are given an encapsulated portrait of the human condition in this story of three souls emigrating from the grimy Chicago of 1916 to find fortune and relief, in the Texas Panhandle. The film .is distinguished by a quartet of exemplary performances (Brooke Adams, Richard Gere,. Sam Shepard and Linda Manz) and a score of Ennio Morricone built around Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals.