HANDICAPPED CHILD ABUSED

HANDICAPPED CHILD ABUSED

movies

Robbie Cruger

TOMMY

Directed by Ken Russell (Columbia)

I am a real Tommy nut. I know every word and every note of the original score. I was there, third row center, for the world premere of Tommy which took place in Detroit in 1969.I bought the record the first day of its release. I pasted “see me feel me touch me heal me” in foot high letters on my bedroom wall. I played the original album until the grooves wore out, and then I bought another.

The movie Tommy. Visual brilliance to match the musical genius. I marched into the screening room at 10:30 one sunny morning fully expecting to be thrilled, amazed, dazzled and amused. 1 was not. (In all fairness, I should point out that I have not been thrilled, amazed, dazzled and amused at 10:30 AM since the morning of February 9,1968.) This wasn’t Pete Townshend’s Tommy; this was Ken Russell’s Tommy. Finally I understood how all the D.H. Lawrence lovers felt when Women In Love became Ken Russell’s Women In Love.

So much has been written (almost all favorable) about the movie by critics who know nothing of the original Tommy, little about The Who and nothing at all about rock ‘n’ roll, that a few random notes from a self-confessed Tommy addict might be in order:

• Ann-Margret, as Tommy’s mother, proves, as her publicist points out, that “Carnal Knowledge was no fluke.” The performance is uneven, but I think that has more to do with the uneven direction and the uneven script. Everything she is asked to do she does well. Her finest moments in the film are at the begining, right up until the point she falls

in love with Oliver Reed. This she does not do convincingly, but then, who could?

• Oliver Reed can act very well, but he cannot sing and his attempts to do so are painful. Even if he is Ken Russell’s best friend he never should have been cast in this role. (Nor should Ken Russell’s wife been asked to design the costumes, nor Ken Russell’s daughter play Sally Simpson.) Further, putting someone as powerful as Oliver Reed in what was originally a small part (the murderer of Captain Walker, who was on the record ail of two minutes) shifts dominance, and the film becomes a story of him and his mistress(Ann Margret) who happen to have a handicapped kid.

• Tina Turner has some fine moments as The Acid Queen. As proven in Gimme Shelter she has a forceful screen personality, and her acting abilities should be explored.

• Roger Daltrey gives a suprisingly good performance ... but he’s so serious! What happened here to the delightful abandon, the slightly above-it-all attitude that characterizes his live performances? I understand that Ken Russell spent six months training all that “silliness” out of him. Too bad. Score one for Russell.

Then we have the ending. This, you see, is a Robert Stigwood Production. It seems that in every Robert Stigwood production the hero or someone close to the hero must die. Part of the story.or not, when we get into the home stretch, somebody has to topple over. Moves the audience, you know. Reminds us we are all mortals. Rock tearjerking. It happened in Hair. It happened in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It happened in Jesus Christ Superstar and it happens in Tommy (twice!). Only in Superstar was it part of the plot. The rest are useless deaths, a cheap playing upon of the emotions. Stigwood, go home.

All in all, Tommy is not a bad movie; it’s simply a bad adaptation.

THE FOUR MUSKETEERS Directed by Richard Lester (Twentieth Century Fox)

When Richard Lester is good, he’s very good; when he’s bad, the chances he takes - loose story lines, frequent short takes - leave an audience wondering what just went by. Now Lester’s also prolific, his The Three Musketeers, Juggernaut, and The Four Musketeers all released in the last year. Besides, they have all been commercially successful and critically well-received. How I Won The War and The Knack were his most ambitious, but fell apart on the screen. The Musketeers movies are also ambitious, characteristically fragmented -but entertaining, and are his best since A Hard Day’s Night.

The Four Musketeers, sequel to Three, was assembled by the decision of the producers, unbeknownst to the actors who according to some reports sued when they found out that although their work would be marketed as two separate releases, they would receive only one check. The combination of an impressive cast - Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Michael York, and Charlton Heston - joined together in a celluloid retelling of Alexander Dumas’ epic tale of the historically based adventures of the Musketeers was bound to be overwhelming: either a smash or a colossal flop.

Like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Lester’s Musketeers movies are loosely plotted adventures set in the distant past, with colorful sets, props and characters. Zero Mostel, running around barefoot in a tunic giggling about eunuchs, set the pace for the Forum farce, comedy being its strength and grossness its punchline. In this pair, Oliver Reed dominates. The oldest and wisest Musketeer, he dives into the adventure of his profession, carousing his way from duel to duel. Throughout, he keeps one eye cocked high above his own exploits and those of his cohorts to simultaneously play a sarcastic narrator-observer and have the most fun of anyone. Early in Four he comments to a fellow musket, “Battles are boring,” and then Lester unfolds the story by centering it around the revolt of the French at La Rochelle. By using Reed as a spokesman, Lester leaves himself wide open to the audience’s speculation that this will be a boring film about a battle. Fortunately, for him and for us, it isn’t.

Various subplots serve to involve the entire cast again, although it is obvious that skimpy leftovers from the cutting room at The Three Musketeers make some of the funniest characters drop out in the this sequel. I missed Raquel Welch’s lead the most. She carried the first movie with comedic flair as Michael York’s lover and Geraldine Chaplin’s confidante. Every gag she pulled was funny; she was Martha Raye reborn as a dumb sex kitten. Where Raye flaunted her ugliness, Welch accomplishes the feat of making her beauty a foil to her clumsiness, so that her lovely face reflects an innocent befuddlement at the awkardness of her equally lovely body. Joe Blow, Michael York’s valet, was also expended in the first film’s footage.

But there is plenty of Michael York left, Oliver Reed, and most of Faye Dunaway’s part. In Three she appeared only near the end, bleached blond and emaciated. In Four, subtitled “Milady’s Revenge,” her character is fully explained. In fact, she is the only character in both movies whose past is detailed; in one scene, she attacks Michael York with a nifty glass dagger filled with acid because he has discovered that past. She is sinister and spiteful and her reward is death, by judgment of the noble Musketeers. And my only complaint with The Four Musketeers is that their kangaroo-court trial of Mrs. Dunaway labors the finale of the film with her unjust murder, because it only makes sense if you believe that the Musketeers are above judgment themselves, which of course they are not. When they are rewarded by the King for their implementation of justice, their boyish irreverence is no longer fun; it is annoying, forcing a heavyhanded ending (with questionable moral implications) to an otherwise lighthearted and entertaining film.