MOVIES Dog Days

Movie Year 1979 is, in four words, “more of the same.” In the cases of Rocky II and the reissue of Jaws, the four words are “almost exactly the same.” The former seems to have inspired a small sports festival (The Main Event, Players), the latter teeth in outer space (Alien) and in your neck (Dracula).

On the subject of sports, we’ve got, in four words, “the same old teams”: Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal (The Main Event), George Segal and Glenda Jackson (Lost and Found), Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel (Escape from Alcatraz). One of the new teams in town, Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, is a decidedly offbeat surprise. John Frankenheimer as director of something subtitled The Monster Movie is a depressing surprise.

One of the most surprising things so far this year is how good the film version of Hair is and how few people seem to know it. Hair isn’t more of the same but a total renewal of a stage show that had little narrative resonance. Quite a few of you were surprised by how good Sally Field was in Norma Rae. Some of you were determined to resist the New York raves about Manhattan and found it the same Woody Allen. Those three movies have already made 1979 a better movie year than 1978.

At least three-and-a-half of the following movies make this summer seem a renaissance compared with last summer, arguably the worst of the decade. Maybe this summer will turn out to be the best.

Escape From Alcatraz (★ ★ 3/4) is almost as impressive for what it leaves out as for what it contains. This is not one of those old James Cagney top-of-the-table affairs but closer to Robert Bresson’s classic A Man Escaped. Both pay almost ritualistic attention to the technique of the prison break, involving us most intimately.

The movie begins documentary-style with a date – January 18, 1960. Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) is handcuffed by guards as if they were chaining an animal. A boat heads through a blue-tinged rain to Alcatraz, the American version of Devil’s Island. As prisoner and guards head up the Rock, a spotlight holds on them. Frank is inspected by a doctor with swift indifference and told to strip. He is guided naked to his cell. There is a sword-like flash of lightning. “Welcome to Alcatraz,” says a guard.

They are not the traditional sadists of prisons old, these guards. Mostly they are bored. There is a prison bully, Wolf (Bruce M. Fisher), who wants Morris for his “punk.” In his welcoming speech, the warden (Patrick McGoohan) tells Morris, “Alcatraz was made to keep all the rotten eggs in one basket,” and “No one has ever escaped from Alcatraz.” After the speech, the camera glances at Morris’ file to reveal a “superior” I.Q.

Scriptwriter Richard Tuggle and director Donald Siegel know that the best way to handle Clint Eastwood is to keep him quiet: Less is definitely more in his case. I’m not entirely sure that less is more in the case of this movie, which is mesmerizing while you’re watching it and as puzzling as the Sphinx when you reflect on its meaning.

The In-Laws (★ ★ 1/2). Dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) hands his daughter an envelope as she is about to head up the aisle and into marriage. She checks out the contents, mouth agape. No wonder. There’s a million bucks in the envelope. “Daddy,” she wonders, “is this all from root canals?”

Vincent J. Ricardo (Peter Falk) has a lot to do with it. He claims to be with the CIA, but he acts like a hood. No a wonder. The movie begins with the heist of a set of currency engraving plates. Vince is given the plates and promises to pay a million five the next day, only he doesn’t have it. Besides, his son is getting married and he has to have dinner with the about-to-be in-laws.

I soon wondered if Vince was on a permanent trip via Fantasy Airways. Sheldon soon wonders if he has wandered into a nightmare. He agrees to go to Vince’s office, open his safe, and return with a black bag. Unfortunately, he also returns with a pair of gunmen hot on his trail. He is shot at a lot during the rest of the movie, which turns very Monty Python at times, especially during a loony sequence with a south-of-the-border general.

Writer Andrew Bergman and director Arthur Hiller have the perfect Odd Couple in Falk and Arkin, the former playing wrinkled madras to the latter’s improved wash and wear. Arkin is particularly good at being scared to the point of catatonia and then loosing a scream that might give the Alien pause. They are so good together, especially in the transition to a sort of folie à deux, that I’m not sure why the movie is stop-and-go funny. It could have used more zanies like that general to inhabit this house of kookaboos.

Rocky II (★ ★). “The story continues. . . ” goes the ad, but let’s say the story is extended. Rocky (writer-director-actor Sylvester Stallone) marries the shy Adrienne (Talia Shire). He buys some presents, a car, a house. He tries to do some TV ads and bombs. He gets a job in a meat plant. He’s laid off. Adrienne gets pregnant. And Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) taunts Rocky about being afraid of a rematch.

No need for anyone to be afraid of a rematch. The only thing I’m afraid of is Rocky III. You can get away with coals to Newcastle once (“I didn’t know”) or even twice (“I forgot”) but three times? (“Yo, stupid.”) Depends, of course, on how well this sequel does. One movie person told me sequels do about 40 percent of the business of the original.

Considering the fact that about 75 percent of this movie is a prelude to that rematch, I’m surprised at how effective the picture is. Stallone does the dumb-witty Rocky so well he could probably turn the routine into a series. (In a way he has: The character in the arty Paradise Alley was a variation of Rocky.) When someone tells Rocky to invest in condominiums, he hesitates (you know what he’s going to say but smile anyway), and finally he admits, “I never use ’em.” ’em.”

After F.l.S.T. and Paradise Alley, there was much talk of the egotism of Sly Stallone. The irony is that the character he plays best is apparently egoless, self-deprecating, and quite appealing, even when you know your emotions are being manipulated. After Adriennne’s baby is born prematurely, she goes into a coma and Rocky stays by her side when he isn’t praying. It’s shameless; it’s also effective. Moviemaker Stallone is not a student of the medium like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Coppola, or Martin Scorsese. But he knows where the heart is and how to go for it.

Rocky II is slicker technically than Rocky, although the performances are properly gritty, especially Burgess Meredith’s as Mickey the manager. Bill Conti reprises his music. Stallone reprises his training regimen, climaxed by a run to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, followed by hundreds of kids.

The Main Event (★　★). “You snore!” he punches. “You drool!” she counter punches. You’ve seen the ads with the two of them in the ring and the slogan “A Glove Story.” They’re not Tracy and Hepburn; they’re not even Segal and Jackson. But Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal make interesting chemistry together, she playing ballsy manager to his pussyfooting fighter.

It’s an oddity, the couple that loves to fight. I imagine Krafft-Ebing could go an easy 15 rounds explaining the phenomenon : The risk of loving someone is that it leaves you wide open for the sucker punch. So you feint a little love, cover up, counter punch, fight, and then make up ’cause it feels so good.

Director Howard Zieff will probably do well with this summer divertissement, but 1 prefer his earlier, less commercialmovies like Slither and Hearts of the West.

Butch and Sundance, The Early Days (★ 1/2 ). From some angles and at some moments, Tom Berenger and William Katt look like the early days of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Berenger has the pouty-sensuous Newman mouth; Katt, after he grows a mustache, recalls the filled-with-implication Redford stare. But they are boys trying to do a man’s job, and the inevitable comparison with their elders is embarrassing and ultimately unfair.

One of the ongoing mysteries of this odd medium is that great technical talent often adds up to zilch. The scriptwriter is Allan Burns (A Little Romance), the cinematographer is the consistent Laszlo Kovacs, and the director is Richard Lester, who performed movie magic with the Beatles and made a definitive Three Musketeers. But after five or ten minutes of this movie, you realize you’re watching grass grow.

Players (★). A couple of my colleagues walked out during the screening of this movie. After about eight minutes, I wished I hadn’t walked in. A lot of people in the film business refer to movies as “product.” For example: “We don’t have enough product this summer.” (One reason for so many reruns.) It seems to me we have all too much product. Players is nothing but product, a movie tooled entirely by machines, it seems.

It is this season’s Moment by Moment: an affair between a kept woman (Ali MacGraw approaching 40, for Geritol’s sake!) and a former tennis hustler (Dean-Paul Martin) who has straightened up, thanks to Ali, and is now playing in the finals at Wimbledon. The movie begins with that match and then intercuts flashbacks to show us how the lovers met, the inevitable lovemaking sequence, the inevitable difficulties.

Ali MacGraw looks like an intelligent fashion model. But movies require some acting talent, no matter how modest. MacGraw’s talent is modest to the point of being a wallflower. She has only to open her mouth to become unbelievable, either as a character or as “herself.” Martin looks like a beachboy, although he does play tennis well and looks pretty good against some very good players (Pancho Gonzalez, Guillermo Vilas, Hie Nastase, et al.). I was embarrassed for Maximilian Schell; I hope he was well paid for lending his presence to this product. The director is Anthony Harvey, who once directed a picture called The Lion in Winter.

Prophecy (★). Steven Spielberg said that if the shark hadn’t “worked” in Jaws, there would have been no movie. The shark, of course, did “work” because of skilled technicians and the music of John Williams. It was a bonus that the picture was very well acted. But the bottom line is a believable monster or that bottom line will be red.

I predict a red bottom line for Prophecy, which is subtitled “The Monster Movie”; the first time we saw the monster, the audience started laughing.

Can you imagine laughing at Frankenstein? Bruce Shark? The Alien? You bet your gnawed knuckles you can’t.

The picture begins with an exploration of domestic demons. Rob (Robert Fox-worth) is the dedicated doctor determined to keep knocking his head against slum walls. We see him treating a black baby who has been bitten by rats. His wife Maggie (Talia Shire) plays cello in an orchestra (quite convincingly, by the way; Shire comes from a musical family and shows it). She is pregnant and afraid to tell her husband, who does not want to bring children into this screwed-up world.

The movie begins to screw up when Rob is recruited by a friend in the Environmental Protection Agency to fly up to Maine and check out a lumber company. The local Indians, led by an angry John Hawks (Armand Assante) and Ramona (Victoria Racimo), say the woods belong to them. There is also talk of Indian women giving birth to deformed children. When Rob and Maggie are attacked by a crazed raccoon and later find a hideously malformed baby animal, they realize that Nature has been corrupted in some way, possibly by the lumber company.

The real villain of the piece would seem to be Thomas R. Burman, who gets credit for make-up and artifacts. Those artifacts apparently include the creature that stalks the woods and kills people. When it does, the picture turns into one of those B movie quickie horrors. What happened to John Frankenheimer, the director of Manchurian Candidate and Seconds?

Moonraker (★ ★ 3/4).. The vodka martini shaken, not stirred. The lovely ladies who succumb as if they had never heard of Betty Freidan. A gondola that turns into a speedboat. A wrist gizmo that shoots darts, explosive or poisonous. Bond. James Bond. “My friends call me James,” he says.

He and the makers of this movie are going to have a lot of friends. My guess is that Moonraker will rake in more dough than any of the Bonds. I still have a fondness for From Russia, With Love (also the best Ian Fleming novel in the series). But the new film may be the best-made with regard to pace, imaginative variations on the old gimmicks, amusing musical references (2001, Close Encounters), and a splendid villian, Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale like drawn butter.

I have belabored Roger Moore’s Bond in the past, kicking Sean Connery in his face like sand. Let’s make a separate peace here and call Moore James Bond fils. Besides, Connery returned to the series in Diamonds Are Forever, much of it taking place in dreary Las Vegas, and it was a two-hour drag. Moonraker takes us to Venice, Rio, the depths of Brazil (for one of those wild water chases), and then into outer space for a little visual satire on those aforementioned science fiction films.

Christopher Wood’s script is nicely literate (a reference to Oscar Wilde) but sprinkled with the inevitable Bondisms.

Admirers of Richard Kiel’s Jaws should be pleased both by his return and by some fresh surprises. And the producers should keep director Lewis Gilbert as a regular. He and cinematographer Jean Tournier give the movie a stylish European surface.

Encore, Mr. Bond.

Alien (★ ★ 1/2). Recipe for Stylish Stew of Terror: Take the special effects of 2001, add the isolated situation from The Thing, and garnish with the gut-grinding menace of Bruce Shark from Jaws. In fact, the alien in Alien is so hideous that you may have recurring nightmares. An outstanding cast is mostly upstaged by the creature, with the exception of Sigourney Weaver, who has some of Jane Fonda’s presence. The simplistic screenplay is by Dan O’Bannon, the direction by Ridley Scott, and the alien, its ship, and its planet were designed by Swiss painter H.R. Giger. Mr. Giger and the special effects should win awards come next April. Predictably, the movie has inspired the usual spinoffs: a novelization by Alan Dean Foster ($2.25, Warner Books) and Alien: The Illustrated Story by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson ($3.95, distributed by Simon and Schuster).

The Prisoner of Zenda (★ ★ 1/2). I was beginning to think the triple talent of Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove was a fluke and the seemingly endless Clouseau flicks were the real Sellers. Good news: Peter does three turns in this amusing remake of the old chestnut. One of them is just a cameo (crazy King Rudolph of Ruritania takes off in a balloon). So his eldest son Rudolph is about to be crowned, only there is a London cabbie called Syd who is his double. . . But why am I telling you all this? There are at least four other Zendas around somewhere. It may be an old chestnut but it’s a tasty one.

Saint Jack (★　★ 1/4 ) The rumors of Peter Bogdanovich’s artistic death are exaggerated, as he proves in this portrait of Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara). Jack likes his cigars and his scotch, and he has plans to open the classiest whorehouse in Singapore. The year is presumably 1971, but the ambience is 1940’s Warner Bros. The “saint” of the title is ironic: Jack is in a sort of moral suspension of disbelief. The catalyst to his malaise is a British accountant (Denholm Elliott), whose friendship offers an unlikely redemption. The movie is static – it’s a portrait of a man and a condition – and I grew restless sitting through what seemed like old news. But it renews itself in the mind, possibly because it’s literary material rather than movie material. Gazzara and Elliott are perfect, and Bogdanovich, as director, co-writer, and actor (slick and sleazy), is no slouch. Welcome back, Peter. All – except At Long Last Love – is forgiven.