SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES

(The Fifth Annual Atlanta International Film Festival put down ten days of exceptional films in what is probably the grandest across-theboard representation of the cinematic arts in recent years. From 1,500 entries in categories ranging from slick commercial films to 16mm student films, the festival literally had something for everyone. Pretty neat for a Southern town in which people still say, “Frank Capra? Isn’t he the guy who did 200 Motels?’’ Some of the outstanding films seen this year follow:

The undisputed (and pre-ordained) star of the festival was James Dickey’s Deliverance, screened to open the event. At the awards banquet, , Deliverance was given the Golden Phoenix (Best Film of the Festival), best actor and best director awards.

SOUNDER — A feature about sharecropper life in the deep South, during the Depression. Patronizing in spots, but featuring a performance by Cicely Tyson, well worth the price of admission. Also starring Taj Mahal, who wrote the musical score.

SOLO — An incredible documentary filmed by seven camera crews, about one man’s attempt to climb a mountain. Most of the angles shown are clearly impossible to film, and give the viewer a heady case of vertigo. No dialogue is used, only the natural sounds heard by the climber, and it emerges a tribute to patience, confidence and skill.

THE LOCUST — A mean short financed by Joseph E. Levine. A motorist on a L.A. freeway passes by several people in trouble on the road, before his own car gives out and he has to pull over. As he goes for help, slowly, methodically, travelers passing by begin to strip his car; first tires, then accessories, finally doors, fenders, headlights, upholstery. More and more people arrive, leaving this guy helpless until the entire thing is eaten clean.

PRE-SORTING FIRST CLASS MAIL -A public service short from the U.S. Postal Service trying to convince big companies to sort their mail before it leaves their offices. Shot in a screening room, where a super-straight Postal Service guy has a big problem with a buckskinned avant-garde director, who has signed to do the project because he had the lowest bid. The director wants to shoot asses, noses, postage stamps and sorting machines in quick, unintelligible cuts which’ll make a “byewtee-ful” picture. The Uncle Sam guy has to explain pre-sorting to this cat in order to make him understand how important it is. The end title says the production company did do the short “for the lowest bid.”

Tom Dupree

TEN DAYS WONDER - In which Claude Chabrol, the Gallic Hitchcock, remakes ... oh, maybe Psycho, maybe something less crushing. Orson Welles, Anthony Perkins make an unlikely father-son duo, except they’re both psychotic. The best thing about Chabrol is that he’s the only French filmmaker who makes deliberately inconsequential (and therefore fun) movies. (Unless you count Truffaut, who doesn’t know it.) The fact that almost all of Chabrol’s movies are also brilliant has nothing to do with it. Le Boucher looked great on 42nd St. So will this.

D.M.