who represent Mazursky himself at two discrete stages of his life. I doubt that Mazursky could ever concoct a movie around someone he didn’t ut- terly love. Yet infatuation being the myopic thing it is, this director’s gener- ous feelings are sometimes squan- dered on some pretty shallow objects. And usually the most piddling of these Tempest, directed by . inhabit those very Mazursky films that hh.directed bv Rainer Werner Fassbinder. need all the spine they can get-the ones that pay tongue-tied homage to some European high-culture land- Mazursky‘s hapless mark. So you have the laid-back poseur Alex at Malibu making sand- castle replicas of Fellini’s Cinecitd, or st rivers Willie and Phil playing at Jules and Jim when, actually, they’d scarcely be up to understudying ’s Os- car and Felix. What Mazursky lacks compared with the auteurs he so ad- ~~~~ ~ mires is not so much a breadth of vi- STEPHEN HARVEY Life, while America is just that bland place you have to get through once sion as the willingness to be a little New York palls and L.A. beckons. tough on the characters he creates. 8Yz N EIGHT MOVIES MADE Eventually, they all come to realize and Jules and Jim are comic tragedies over a dozen years, the world ac- cording to Paul Mazursky is about as consistent a vision as you’re likely to find on the American screen. Apart from the occasional shiksa girlfriend, everyone in it is Jewish, or maybe Greek or Italian (which, after all, amounts to pretty much the same thing). Mazursky men are thwarted romantics with self-absorbed souls, and talk to distraction about big stuff like love and joy and fulfillment, none of which they’ve got. His women may seem dithery at first, but they’re able to connect with life’s basics in an in- stinctive, practical way that bewilders their husbands and lovers. People in Mazurskyland always want to be art- ists, but rarely get farther than the media crafts. They go to shallow, zeitgeisty parties where everyone gets giddy and no one has a good time. They haunt the offices of sphinxlike shrinks whose batty serenity is a re- proach to their own hyperventilating TEMPEST selves. Young (Next Stop Greenwich El- lage, Mllie and Phil) and old (Harry and that you’re stuck with yourself and about people trapped by their human Tonto) alike must trudge through a rug- might just as well enjoy it, especially if limitations. and ged odyssey toward the Self, but for you can join hands in a ring-around- Mllie and Phil are romantic comedies most of Mazursky’s offspring, the mid- the-rosy with that thorny but irresist- about guys whose plodding menschi- dle years are the worst-one pro- ible supporting cast in your life. ness makes them heroic. tracted anxiety attack. They often set Bob, Carol, Willie, Phil, enraptured Tempest, his newest, finds Mazursky out on journeys to shed their malaises Blume, and unmarried Erika-all once more pirouetting on a tightrope and find themselves, only to discover foolish but sincere, dumped-on yet op- between daring and hubris. As the title that Europe and the rest ofAbroad are timistic, and always redeemed, in implies, this time he’s paying fealty to awfully romantic but scarcely Real Mazursky’s eyes, by their hunger to the Bard, and the attempt to renovate grow and experience. So he indulges these motley raiments into a supple STEPHENHARVEY is INQUIRY%J$hreuiewer and the their foibles one and all, not least those pair ofdesignerjeans does justice to no coordinator ofthejlrn study program at the Museum of of the male protagonists ofAlex in Won- one. Structurally, this movie is made Modern Art in New York CiQ. derland and Next Stop Greenwich Ellage more chaotic by his attempt to observe 43 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG INQUIRY ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

TEMPEFI the classical unity of having this story complaint would have seemed rather the overbuilt isle of Manhattan. Yet take place within a single day; commonplace when the righteous this aimless distraction from Cas- Mazursky is left with all this exposi- dropout ethic was more B la mode; as it savetes’s knitted brow and knotty cares tory material to explain how his bour- happens, the times have tripped up turns out to be comic relief in the full- geois Manhattanites got to this Mazursky, who is usually so attuned to est sense of the term. inaccessible Greek isle and what the temperature of the moment. In fact, this Tempest is at its most they’re doing there, and no place to Amidst the rigors of the eightirs, our audacious whenever Mazursky man- put it all; so it’s just crammed in, seem- architect’s mopey disillusionment ages to forget about The Tempest en- ingly at random, in huge chunks of seems positively quaint. tirely. His men may be dim con- flashback. He’s dazzled by the play’s Mazursky’s purposefully comic up- temporary Xeroxes of the Elizabethan mystical grandeur, but his would-be datings of Shakespeare’s creations originals, but Tempest’s principal Prosper0 is a drip out of daytime may be tinged with archness, but women are entrancing and original, drama. This character, played by John they’re a lot more resourceful. Alon- partly because Mazursky had to im- Cassavetes, is a soured architect zo’s farcical retinue comprises a provise where they were concerned. named Philip; he implores the powers frenzied physician (Anthony Holland) Rowlands’s Antonia has no equivalent above to “Show me the magic,” the with a taste for Greek sailors, and a in the play, but she’s a resplendent props department obliges with a surge Las Vegas jester (Jackie Gayle) who exemplar of a very New York type- of lightning and waterworks, and the spits out grungy one-liners like slugs the tough-chic achiever who may be only awe you feel is at Mazursky’s ner- from a slot machine. Mazursky’s Cal- bruised but can’t be fazed, no matter viness, and Cassavetes’s straight-faced iban, here yclept Kalibanos, is a kind what she has to deal with. Antonia is a composure while lobbing such cutesy of Zorba the Goat, eyes and lips kind of upscale variation on Row- portents at us. filming avidly at the sight of the mam- lands’s last stellar role in Gloria. She’d No wonder this guy Philip flees to mary “melones” adorning the Ameri- like to be the glamorous dame with Greece with his sullen teen daughter can females who have invaded his class she remembers from the Loew’s Miranda (Molly Ringwald) in tow- rocky eyrie. There’s nothing dan- Paradise reveries of her youth; mean- he sure does have a lot to contend with. gerous or disturbing about this crea- while, in the real world, love before He has to labor for lucrative sums as ture; in typical fashion, Mazursky has breakfast is all very well but first she master builder to Alonzo (Vittorio turned him into an impotent sweetie. has to go pee. Gassman), the casino magnate. He Still, it’s refreshing to see Raul Julia, a Rowlands is earth to Susan Saran- has to spend his leisure time staring at rather bombastic performer in the the- don’s pure ozone. Mercifully, Mazur- the same white walls of his confining ater, unleashing his overweening gusto sky didn’t strain to resuscitate Ariel West Village duplex, relieved only for acting in Hellenic pratfalls and intact, fairies not having the same when the heavens show him some malapropisms for a change. His most symbolic clout they did in the Bard’s more magic through the skylight. He triumphant moment finds him leading day. Instead, Aretha (so named by her has to endure the boredom of his long- his caprine flock in a prancing, leaping democratic mother after a favorite do- term marriage with Antonia. (Life chorus line to the tune of the Liza mestic) is the kind of blithe backpack- with Gena Rowlands boring? Intim- Minelli rendition of “New York, New ing expatriate who can be found on idating maybe, but it sure would have York.” This has almost as little rele- any beach on the Mediterranean. its compensations.) Tempest treats vance to the action of Tempest as it does When Philip first meets her, she’s em- these dilemmas with the utmost so- to Shakespeare-apart from under- ployed at a Greek taverna, singing briety, as does Cassavetes, the best scoring Mazursky’s notion that dis- “Hava Nagila” in a purple toga to an 44 brooder of his generation. Philip’s tance can lend enchantment evcn to audience consisting of holidaying LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG NOVEMBER 1982 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

Arabs and Nipponese. Previously wed it all in. Sarandon is a born comedi- & Ted & Alice and Blume in Love) segue- to an Israeli swimming instructor who enne whose skills grow more supple ing into a Manhattan rhapsody at couldn’t make a living because ‘‘Jews with each movie she makes, and she dawn, may be a slightly cloying con- don’t think they can float,” and an treats this Tempest as if it were her own ceit, but at least it’s indisputably Athenian shrink (ditto, since Greeks hard-earned, all-expense-paid frolic in Mazursky’s own, and not someone don’t believe in neurosis), if anyone the sun. else’s epic verse transposed downward can cope with Philip’s dour If only Mazursky had flung his into the vernacular. By now, he should eccentricities, it’s the ShockproofAretha. dogeared folio into the Aegean and have learned something from the hap- Sarandon plays her with an taken a full-time recess, this Tempest less strivers he’s chronicled for so unflappable nonchalance that is just might have been an undiluted spree. long-why go looking for more tsoris irresistible; she can’t help it if life is so The movie’s conclusion, a moonlit than you can handle, as long as you perverse and unpredictable, all she roundelay of reconciliation (see the can get by on a steady diet of yocks can do is widen her eyes and try to take wish-fulfillment finales of Bob & Carol mixed with schmaltz?

A.N (1915-1 ,982)

lessly devoted to her work as Bergman, and she simply had to find out more about this new mode ofmovies for her- self. The private liaison that became catnip for the paparazzi came after- ward. In the decades since, Bergman could always be found where the most challenging work was: in Paris with Renoir, an unearthed O’Neill play on Broadway, and the final return to Swe- den for her last film, Ingmar Bcrg- man’s Autumn Sonata. At the same time, her later career proved she was dis- armingly unencumbered with the pomposity which so often goes with the tcrritory of being an international Class Act. The breezy warmth with which she endowed tinsel-like Cactus Flower and Murder on the Orient Express betrayed Bergman’s own amusement at the prospect of chipping away at the monument she had become to so many admirers by the sixties and seventies. ‘ANY AFICIONADOS OF communicating presence-the sub- Where most of her acting contempo- movie acting claim that stitute eye of her costar of the moment, raries seemed to suspend their talents stars are those rare and and, most emphatically, of all of us in the amber of their recollected hey- fortunate performers whom the cam- rapt in our seats gazing up at the days, Bergman never lost the ability to era, by some mysterious act of chem- screen. I don’t think any other actress change and grow and surprise us. She istry, loves. The camera certainly did has ever taken to the close-up with the once said that one of the compensa- adore Ingrid Bergman, the movie star, intimacy and directness of feeling of tions of age was that it opened up a but it was the generosity of her re- Bergman. We sensed that the lens was whole new range of possibilities for an sponse to this brand of idolatry that her friend, lover, and confessor, a life- actress, now that celluloid notions of made her such a treasured artist dur- line that could convey the truth about glamour were no longer an issue. The ing a film career that spanned four herself to anyone who cared to watch. flaw in that argument was that her decades. From the moment she in- Bergman’s grasp of the craft of kind of womanly allure could be no vaded Hollywood in 1939 to remake movie acting was so innate that it was less potent in her sixties than in her her Swedish hit, Intermezzo, Bergman no surprise how alert she proved to be youth-maturity only enhanced it. was forever being praised for her “nat- in anticipating its evolution and But to the very last, her career was a uralism,” so in contrast, it was always adapting her own art in kind. She testament to her principles. Stardom said, to the lacquered narcissism of her found herself in Hollywood when it was all very nice in its way, but the rival movie queens. Yet the alleged re- was the apex of world movie making; demanding, illuminating task of act- alism of her acting was in fact the she was drawn to Rome and Rossellini ing was what Bergman cared about all highly intelligent artifice of a per- thereafter, because this director’s new along. And we, thanks to her friend the former who understood that the cam- approach to film making was a chal- camera, were and will remain the ben- era should be treated like a living, lenge and a tonic to someone as rest- eficiaries. 45 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG INQUIRY ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED

LTHO UGH RA INER WER- ject: matrimony. Where The Blue Angel and inventive. The climactic scene of ner Fassbinder died last closed on a note of expressionist angst, Lola’s unveiling is real virtuoso stuff, une, we’ve hardly seen the Lola concludes with a bleak “happy the camera swooping and lurching lastca, of this prolific director’s legacy yet; ending”-the commissioner is co- about the cafe in one sustained long- his Veronika KISSwill, by the time this opted, Lola gets her ring and joins the take as the commissioner simmers and appears, have premiered in the United middle class, and it’s back to bed with bolts from the room, while Lola de- States at the New York Film Festival, her Havana-smoking entrepreneur. fiantly bumps and belts at the micro- with his film adaptation of Genet’s Shortly before all this happens Fass- phone. Also true to form, the Querelle de Brest (left unedited at his binder unexpectedly allows Lola one performances are vividly archetypal. death) still to come sometime thereaf- moment of conventional human senti- Portly Mario Adorf plays the builder ter. In the meantime there is Lola, the ment; she is agonized when her profes- with beaming relish, as a man so as- central figure between Maria Braun sion is suddenly revealed to her would- sured of his powers, both sexual and and Veronika in his caustic triptych de- be fianck, not just because her game political, that he can afford to hold voted to Germany’s resurgence during plan has been derailed, but because them in reserve until the last trump. the postwar years. When it was re- she actually feels affection for her As Lola, Barbara Sukowa is a mes- leased in Europe a half-year before quarry, who now sees her in her true merizing chameleon, rearranging her Fassbinder’s death, Lola was largely colors. (Fluorescent pink, actually, sullen pout with aplomb to suit the dismissed as a rather superfluous recy- while he is usually photographed guise of a wild-maned temptress dur- cling of material more richly mined in through gels of electric blue-the ing working hours, or a demure and Maria Braun; arriving here when it did, whole movie is a symphony of fifties submissive maiden on an afternoon the film has had a more respectful formica hues.) Fassbinder retreats outing with her stuffy suitor. But to the press, reflecting the knowledge that from this revelation almost as soon as last, the most consistent element is Fassbinder’s gifts were inimitable, it’s introduced, and Lola reverts to Fassbinder’s own embittered sen- even if his perspective was, at this form with dispatch. It’s as though the sibility. His bead on the mechanisms point in his truncated career, exas- quest for power were the sole human that propel modern life was withering, peratingly finite. For me, Lola is an apt motive he could allow himself to be- to be sure. Yet the fact that he could summation of Fassbinder’s work and lieve in-Fassbinder shrinks from all never quite see past his own mis- of his contradictions as a film maker. other possibilities like Dracula from anthropy and rigid social determinism Based on the same novel that inspired the Host. is finally the saddest thing about the Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, this movie Lola? visual surface is always playful movies he left behind. is so indelibly a Fassbinder product as to make any comparison with the Jan- nings/Dietrich classic irrelevant. If Sternberg’s film was a study in per- verse psychology, this is an unrelent- ing tract of cynical sociology, which, per usual, is Fassbinder’s singular tri- umph and most frustrating limitation. As a tableau of bourgeois acquisitive- ness without quarter, Lola is ironic and CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING RATES: 60.50 PER PILMNI DE0 word. Six lo elmn insertions, I0 percent 00;. twelia or more MOVIES16MM,S8, VIDEO,ALLRATINGS!HUGE compelling, but Fassbinder’s inability insertions, 20 percent off Papent must accompany insertion catalogue $1. Write: THUNDERBIRD, P.O. Box order: INQUIRY,I320 G Street, S.E., Washington, D.C., to see the humans he surveys as any- 65157, Los Angeles, CA 90065. thing but the emblems of their respec- 20003. Copy should be receiucd six weeks bcfore each monthly cow d&. INQUIRYresems the righ! to r$ie aducr!isnncnls PINAN c I A L tive castes is finally as oppressive (hat we consider lo be ofguestionable task or inlcnt. Additional as the society he etches with such infomation regarding odwtising rates or !em will brsent upon “WORTHLESS”STOCKS? MAYBE NOT SEND PHO- reques!. tographs (no originals) and $15 per certificate and let bravura. us research them for you. Write: B.S. Lichtenstein and Like Maria Braun, Lola is an out- EDUCATION Co., 101 Maiden Lane, Dept. 20, New York, NY 10038. sider by virtue of her sex, erotic can- Specialists since 1939. dor, and proletarian origins; she wants IN DEBT? FACING FORECLOSURE? LEGALLY void hank loans on valuable consideration vs. paper a niche in the capitalist establishment, money. Keep your property free and clear. Proven. $15 which needs the craftiness and vigor NONRESIDENTIAL cashhoney order. Write: Crystal Industries, P.O. Box UNIVERSITY DEGREES 20280-q, Reno, NV 89515. offered by the hungry likes of her in -Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate- order to stay dynamic. In a world for the accomplished individual. POOD~RECIPES where money alone dictates status, ev- State authorized, inexpensive, efficient. AUTHENTIC TERIYAKI MARINADE-SEND 62 erything can be accommodated except Richard I,. Crews, M.D., President and SASE to Kim, P.O. Box 65157, Los Angeles, CA COLUMBIA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY 90065. weakness or idealism, which in Fass- 150 Shoreline, Suite 2711, binder’s lexicon of values are virtually Mill Valley, CA 94941 NEWORLEANS BREAD PUDDING AND SAUCES- Call Toll Free USA: 800-227-1617, Ext. 480 $I. Write: M.A.C., 4015 Ulloa St., New Orleans, LA synonymous. Lola’s rise to respecta- California Only: 800-772-3545, Ext. 480 70119. bility is traced in gradual, schematic stages. Cosseted by her lover, a corrupt MERCHANDISE building contractor who frequents the REAGAN, ROYAL BABY, THE QUEEN, ALL COMIC postcards. Also Ronnie and Nancy paper doll louche cabaret where she works, Lola PUBLIC SCHOOL RESPECTS IXDIllIDUAL FREE- postcards. 3 Yz“ x 5 Yz“, in color, artist signed. Send 544 dons ingenue whites to snare the dom. California public alternative school, no tuition. for description and price sheets. Write: CORAL-LEE, For more information write: Rosrman, 244 €&st \‘alcn- P.O. Box 314, Rancho Cordova, CA 95670 or call starchy local commissioner, who aims cia, Fullrrton, CL\ 92632. (916)635-6369. 46 to thwart her protector’s scams; ob- LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED NOVEMBER 1982

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style over substance. If Marcos anc Reasan- merely needed Diningwith Marcos to talk to each other, they could use a telephone. But the State Dinner, the mutually admiring toasts, the glittering One of the many dubious advantages of living in guest list, and every other sycophantic excess put an Washington is the opportunity to observe the endless indelible stamp of approval, even endorsement, on Marcos procession of foreign heads of state and other dignitaries and his policies. who come to pay their respects to our leaders. Whichever There were real reasons, of course, to approve and president, prime minister, or potentate happens to be in endorse Marcos. The United States has military bases in town, he rates at least a feature article in the “Style” section thc Philippines, and Reagan wants desperately to keep of the Washington Post. them, presumably to be prepared ifwe ever get into another This procession can be charming, as it was when the Southeast Asian land war. In addition, many American president of Iceland, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, passed corporations do substantial business in the Philippines- through town some time ago. We learned that Vigdis is the business that might be seriously threatened if anything only directly elected woman head ofstate in the world; that untoward happened to Marcos and his family. U.S. everyone calls her by her first name because last names are government support of the Marcos regime, both real and largely irrelevant in Iceland; that the Icelandic telephone symbolic, amounts to a direct subsidy to these corpora- book lists everyone, including Vigdis, alphabetically by tions. Marcos, for his part, needs this country every bit as first name; and that she isn’t much into partisan politics but much as the United States thinks it needs him. He has no she does believe in peace. Now that’s my kind of head of desire to sce his name added to the list offormer U.S. allies state. that includes the shah of Iran and Anastasio Somoza of A more depressing example was recently provided by Nicaragua. Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines. He was Thus a symbiotic relationship, based on the mutual accompanied by his wife Imelda, who coincidentally is maintenance of power, is forged. The icing on the cake is the governor of metropolitan Manil a; various Marcos spare-no-expense State Dinner. relatives, who also coincidentally hold high government On such matters as relations between the United States positions; and a retinue of other thugs with somewhat less and the Philippines, I hold a purist position. If Reagan impressive titles and functions. Marcos may not be the shared it, he would renounce our intent to intervene in the polar opposite of Vigdis, but he tips the balance at no less Far East, pull our troops out of the Philippines, shut down than 175 degrees. our bases, cut off all aid to Marcos, and turn American Anyone who is the least bit sensitive to the lives ofother cornpanics in the Philippines loose to sink or swim on their people in other nations knows that Marcos is the epitome of own. And, of course, he would no longer hold lavish State a corrupt dictator, with a documented list of human rights Dinners with hypocritical toasts. violations as lengthy as his term in office. Even American If this position seems extreme, I have a compromise conservatives don’t talk much about him; as with most strategy for President Reagan, perhaps to employ in his last dictators whom leftists label “right wing,” he’s really more months in office when it shouldn’t matter too much. When of a corporate socialist, whose idea of an enlightened Marcos or any other bandit chief comes to Washington, measure is to promulgate a Five Year Plan. let’s be totally honest about what he is, why he’s there, what Marcos was in town at the invitation of Ronald Reagan, we need from him, and what he needs from us. But let’s who treated him and his gang to a formal State Dinner in spare the taxpayers the considerable financial and psychic the Rose Garden. The Post provided its usual chatty burden of a State Dinner. account of the dinner, complete with a guest list that Instead, we should pick him up at the airport, put him in included such experts on U.S.-Philippines relations as a Pinto, and take him to the back room of an Arthur ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn, artist Andy Warhol, and Treacher’s for a dinner offried clams and Diet Pepsi. While former Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach. he’s eating, hand him a telegram from the president that Upon seeing Staubach’s name on the guest list, the reads: “Dear Tyrant: Even though I think you’re the moral careful Posl reader should have taken a second look to equivalent of a carpet beetle, political pressure from a wide confirm that the paper he was reading was truly the Post range of special interests has forced me to choke back my and not some Nalional Lampoon parody. What does Roger disgust long enough to reassure you that 1’11 keep sending Staubach, who now makes his living selling Rolaids on T\I you checks as long as you behave yourself. Call if you have commercials, know about the Philippines? Perhaps he was any questions. Have a nice day.” there to film another commercial: “President Marcos, how I’m anxiously awaiting the implementation of this do you spell relief?” “Well, Rogrr, for the upset of moderate, sensible strategy for dealing with friendly insurgency, 1 spell relief R-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-0-N.” dictators. In the meantime, I’m soliciting private The presence of such irrelevant luminaries at the Marcos contributions toward a gala banquet for Vigdis Finn- dinner underscores what everyone already knows: these bogadottir of Iceland the next time she’s in town. formal events are purely symbolic, thc ultimate triumph of -CHRIS HOCKER 48 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED NOVEMBER 1982