FILM

Rip It Up, Issue 58, 1 May 1982, Page 22

FILM

Reds Director: Warren Beatty Or ... how Hollywood managed to make a box office bonanza out of the rise of the American communist movement. In all seriousness, though, Beatty has made a worthy film, even if it is a trifle on the long side.

There is much that is successful here: the way in which the film is able to cover so much historical and social mileage through the in-

terplay. of . the three main characters (fine performances from Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Beatty himself), the very look of the film' itself with its gallery of faces that have genuinely experienced the weathering of time to, of all surprises, a score by Stephen Sondheim.' /' The - 196-minute length is a problem at times, but on the whole Beatty's directorial touch is much more assured than it was in the 1978 Heaven Can Wait, apart -from the occasional indulgence in tricky editing - which, we can blame on the Russians anyway ... Absence of Malice Director: Sydney Pollack Sally Field as a hound dog reporter investigating the criminal alliances and associations of liquor merchant Paul Newman. The major problem of the film is already apparent and that is associating such a character with a 'star' of Newman's stature. This forces other compromises in the movie, until what could have been a totally engrossing movie on the responsibilities of investigative journalism ends up being another slick Hollywood assembly line product. On Golden Pond

Director: Mark Rydell Stanley Kramer is alive and well, and working under the pseudonym of Mark Rydell ... well, not quite, but the whole ambience of Golden Pond is something similar to an underplayed Kramer piece. A. difficult film to be critical about with nostalgia ruling the day and Hepburn and Fonda proving that they certainly don't make stars like they used to. William Dart