CITY OF HOPE

US, 1991, 130 minutes, Colour.
Vincent Spano, Joe Morton, Tony Lo Bianco, Barbara Williams, Chris Cooper, John Sayles.
Directed by John Sayles.

City of Hope was written, directed and edited by John Sayles. Sales is the writer of any number of genre movies, from Alligator to Battle Beyond the Stars. But, since the early '80s, he has written a number of movies which he has directed himself. More serious in tone and style, they take on themes of contemporary America, social values and change: The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Baby It's You, Liana, Matewan, Eight Men Out.

City of Hope is much more ambitious than his previous work. It is a portrait of a contemporary American city over three days. We watch a wide range of citizens, wealthy and poor, honest and corrupt, concerned and marginalised as they cross each other's paths.

Sayles uses the technique that Robert Altman used to advantage in the broad scope of Nashville in the 70s and The Player in the '90s. The camera is continually on the move, filming some characters, then catching others as they come into view and then others - all in one take. It makes for fluid action and a sense of continuity.

At the centre is a young disillusioned man (Vincent Spano), son of a wealthy builder (Tony Lo Bianco), but alienated from his family. The builder is being asked to evict tenants (mainly black and Hispanic) from an apartment block that the corrupt mayor and city council want demolished for development.

And so the plot continues, interweaving characters and concerns: the ambitious police officer as well as the malcontent on the force, jealous of his ex-wife who meets the hero, and harassing two black kids who then assault a college professor and accuse him of molesting them. The local black councillor (Joe Morton) is called in and finds himself in the mesh of inter-race politics.

It is an excellent mix, involving the audience quickly in its range of characters and issues. The title is, of course, ironic. As one character remarks: that's the way society works.

1.The work of John Sayles? Writing popular movies? Serious movies? Editing and directorial skills?

2,His perceptions of the United States, especially the cities of the '90s? Pessimism? The way society works?

3.His fictional Hudson City - and his New Jersey experience? The poverty, the slums? The contrast with the wealthy buildings, golf clubs? The streets? The sense of realism? The musical score?

4.The title and its ironies? What hope? Everybody tainted with corruption?

5.The visual style of the film, the long takes, the fluidity? People entering into the scene, passing by, interacting? The interaction of the issues?

6.The focus on Nick, at work, his relationship with his father, giving up on the job, taking drugs, trying to buy them? The spectre of his older brother, idealised, dead? His estrangement from his parents? Inability to talk to his father? The pact with his sister and their mutual help? His depression? Going home, the socials, wandering through, going out? Wandering the city, alone? Carl and his friends? The proposition for the robbery job? His anger with his father and going to do the job? The car-driving, the guard, leaving the car? His being chased through the city? His meeting with Angela, the friendship, the school memories? Their easy talk? The relationship, her husband watching Nick? The danger, going to see his sister at school, her exasperation? The visit to Angela's apartment, her boy and his handicap? The affair? The encounter with Rizzo, his being shot? Going to the warehouse, his favourite place? His father finding him, not wanting to let his father leave, the talk between the two, the possible reconciliation? But his death?

7.Joe Rinaldi as a builder, the L Street site, not wanting to demolish it? The building site, the workers, union rules, city money? The pressures from the city, especially from his brother? The mayor and the DA? The tense relationship with Nick, the memories of his older son - and Nick idealising him? The truth about his friendship with Carl, cowardice, the hitting of the woman, the options of going to prison or Vietnam? His death in Vietnam? His daughter, his wife? The pressures, not wanting Nick to go to jail, the deal with the mayor? His brother-in-law? The meeting with Carl, the planning of the Arson? His presence at the fire, the deaths? His grief? His returning home, going to find his son, telling him the truth? Calling out for help - but only the mad vagrant hearing him? The desperate cry from the heart - and only a mad echo?

8.His wife, her support? His daughter, the tensions in the relationship, her helping Nick, her work as a teacher?

9.Nick and his friends, Bobby and Zip, musicians, playing? Small-time crooks? Their relationship with Carl? Persuading Nick to be involved? The robbery, their walking in, the new guard present? Their being taken, in jail, with the vagrant and his driving them mad? Their not betraying Nick?

10.Carl and the background of his friendship with Tony? At work, the young men with him, getting him to do robbery jobs? His giving the information to O'Brien about Nick? The setting up of Nick, the plan for the fire and the conversation with Joe? Nick confronting him and the clash? His bitterness about his accident?

11.Mad Anthony and his commercials, his store, technology and television and the future? At the party? The vagrant, Asteroid, mimicking him in the street? The effect of television patter? His wandering the streets? His going into jail, driving the young men mad with his words? His passing by at the end, hearing Joe's cry - and simply echoing it?

12.Wynn and his earnestness? Background, relationship with his wife (and her teaching work, support of him)? The intimate scenes of them at home - sign of hope? His work on the council, lobbying Levonne and Malik, their sneering at him? His lobbying, the council meeting, proposal about education, his speech, being defeated? His campaigning? Meeting with Desmond and Tito? His interrogation of them? The meetings with Les, understanding him, believing him? Persuading him not to prosecute for his own reputation? His going to see the former mayor, the golf course, the cynical memories of the mayor, the system and mutual favours for power? His behaviour at the meeting at P Street, his avoiding the issue about the boys and their accusations? His rousing the people up, demagoguery and rhetoric, the march on the mayor's banquet, the right-sounding slogans - but the basis? His wife, Levonne and Malik in support? The confrontation with the mayor? Tainted by the system - his future?

13.Levonne and Malik, P Street, their antagonism towards the whites? Suspicions of Wynn, abuse of him? The pressures about the two boys and their accusation? Their response to Wynn's rhetoric and marching with him?

14.Desmond and Tito, their background, Desmond and his mother? Hanging out, hassled by the police without cause? The anger, the encounter with Les, bashing him? Tito and the decision about their being molested? Their plans, the questions, their contradicting themselves? Desmond not understanding? The lies, the interrogation by Wynn? Desmond and his mother? A sign of hope in her saying that he should do what is right?

15.Les, jogging, relationship with his wife, being beaten, his reaction with the police, the accusations, the interrogations? The accusation against him, his standing on his reputation, the homosexual teacher supporting him? Wynn's visit and persuading him to withdraw the charges?

16.Michael Rizzo and his partner, at work? Disdain for O'Brien? Patrolling, hassling the young black boys? Rizzo and his preoccupation about his wife, not telling his partner about his son? The camaraderie in the hotel, the drinking? Rizzo and his watching Nick, confronting him and shooting him? The police taking him, their supporting each other and the law against him and taking his gun? The breaking through of them sticking together?

17.O'Brien, his politics, smiling to the members of the force? Giving the information to the mayor? His promotion and celebration?

18.Angela, at work, the restaurant, her friends? The encounter with Nick, the car and walking him home, talking, the truth? Their meetings? Going home, her disabled son? The pressures in her life? Her memories of her marriage to Rizzo, his brutality? At home, studying? The sadness of the ending - with Nick's death?

19.The mayor and his toughness, his advisers, his public smile? Meetings and quashing votes? Paulie and his connection with the mayor, pressure on his brother? The DA and organising corruption in the city? The mayor and his planning for the arson, the money coming in for the development of L Street? His final speech at the fundraising? The confrontation with Wynn?

20.Franklin, related to Wynn, getting the job, the uniform, doing well, arresting the boys - with the toy gun? The incident of his throwing the basketball and the conversation with Nick? The bond between the two? The memory of Nick's brother?

21.Kerrigan, the old Irish power, Joe going to see him, his advice to follow the mayor's proposal?

22.The fire, Ramirez and the drug suspicions, his wife and child and their being killed in the fire?

23.An overall picture of three days in an American city?

CITY HALL

US, 1996, 110 minutes, Colour.
Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridget Fonda, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau, David Paymer, Anthony Franciosa, Lindsay Duncan.
Directed by Harold Becker.

A critique of New York city politics and the use of undue influence on courts, especially by Mafia connections. This is a very well-written film with a strange ending that is both downbeat and upbeat. But most of what happens before the end is excellent. Al Pacino is at his best as the humane and canny mayor caught up in a crisis when a policeman and a mafioso shoot each other in the street and accidentally kill a little boy. Pacino's speech at the boy's funeral is a superb sequence. John Cusack is his assistant, an ambitious young man of integrity. Danny Aiello has never been better as a corrupt local politician. This is a thoughtful dramatic thriller.

1.American politics of the '90s? Politics, corruption? New York City?

2.The New York locations, official buildings, churches, Brooklyn, squalor, homes, the city streets? Authentic atmosphere? The musical score and serious tone?

3.The title, expectations, City Hall as the seat of local government? The contribution of the writers - and their personal experience of New York politics?

4.The technique of Kevin's voice-over, his comments, information, perspective, judgment? Values and morals? His perceptions of the mayor? His own moral dilemmas? His decision to stand for office - and the somewhat upbeat (even flippant) ending?

5.The opening sequences establishing the status of the mayor? Al Pacino and his screen presence, authority? The contrast with Santos and Vinnie going to the rendezvous? Police work, Mafia background? The African-American? boy and his father, preparing to go to school? The rain, the Brooklyn streets? The dramatic confrontation, the violence and mutual shooting? Vinnie escaping? The dead boy?

6.The theme of violent action, the action consequent on corruption? Responsibility - and further consequences?

7.The mayor and his ideals? Honesty, his use of political quotation, his ability in managing the city? His reliance on Kevin? His ambitions? His team of assistants, their briefing sessions? Insight into the daily routine of the mayor? The bases of his decisions? His own personal initiative? His perception of situations? People's perceptions of the mayor and his role?

8.His leaving public ceremony (and the keys of the city given to the Japanese)? His courtesy, brevity? His going to the hospital and his support of Santos's wife? His going to the black community and his offer of sympathy for the boy? His statements about violence on the streets? His going to the boy's funeral, the music, his standing at the back, the brief introduction? The background of his having given a press conference and his handling of it - and having the black leaders, especially the black religious leaders, with him? His speech during the funeral, stirring the people, having them on side? Al Pacino's acting skill in making this a rousing and significant speech? His standing at the coffin of the boy? Leaving the funeral - and his words of sincerity in the car? His decision not to go to the Santos funeral? His distancing himself from Santos? Going to Washington?

9.Frank Anselmo - in himself, seeing him working with the constituent and his knowing everybody, making phone calls, everybody dependent on him? Schwartz and his visit to Frank, indicating that the information had got out? The discussions with Kevin, his refusal to listen to Kevin about the infrastructure, walking out on the breakfast? Singing with the waiter, loving Rodgers and Hammerstein, going to see Carousel and singing and mouthing the songs? His deals with the mayor during the performance? Meeting with his real estate friends and pressurising them? The Mafia links, the meeting with the Mafia boss? The $40,000 to plant in Santos's home? The increasing number of deaths? His meeting at home with the Mafia boss, discussions with his wife, going out, playing music from Carousel and killing himself?

10.The two Mafia cousins, the probationary report and its being suppressed? Vinnie wanting to do the deal, talking with Santos? The talk, his meeting with Kevin and the lawyer? His subsequent death? The uncle as the Mafia boss, icy control, making the decisions? Ordering the deaths? The $40,000 planted on Santos's home? The discussions with Frank and his cutting him loose?

11.Santos, his police work, not having back-up, wanting to pin down Tito? His death? The Santos family, the wife, the visit by Internal Affairs, the corrupt investigator - and his planting the $40,000? Her relationship with her lawyer, their discussions, being advised by the lawyer?

12.Abe and his Jewish background, working with Kevin, sound advice? Admiration for the mayor? The visit to Schwartz and his knowing that something was wrong? Continued guidance in finding the probation statement? The upstate parole officer and his having left New York, the information, his being scared? Schwartz ringing Kevin and his death in the telephone booth?

13.Kevin as the hero of the film: the background of his life in Louisiana, relationship with his father, the mayor as a father figure? Working in Washington, admiring John and his ideals? Three years of advice, deputy mayor? His information, not caring about his own home life and the mayor's concern about it? The dinner and the discussion about holding the convention in New York? The encounter with the lawyer, initial antagonism? Friendship, giving her the lift after the funeral, meeting Santos's partner? Their working together, discussions with Vinnie and the boat? The aftermath and his death? Kevin's visit to Frank Anselmo and his rejection? The visit to the judge? The discerning of the truth? Discussions with Schwartz, the help of Abe, going upstate with the lawyer, getting more information, finding out about the second document? The delay, the murders? His realisation of what had happened, the final confrontation with the mayor? The significance of the mayor's speech - and his own disillusionment and his own decision to run for office? The light-hearted touch of the campaign in the streets, meeting the lawyer - and their future together? The irony that he didn't win - but would try again?

14.Bridget Fonda as the lawyer, her intensity, at the press conferences, with Mrs Santos, at the funeral, clash with Kevin, attracted to him, giving him information, the discussions with the partner, with Vinnie, with the upstate probation officer? The happy ending?

15.Al Pacino as the mayor, strong character, family background, his wife? Ability at socialising and yet attentiveness to business? His assistants? Reliance on Kevin, friendship, concern about his health and welfare? The past contacts with Frank Anselmo, the information from the Mafia chief? Influencing the judge? The cover-ups? Personal integrity versus personal sincerity and ambition?

16.The judge and his decision, opening up of the case, his conscience, his discussions about the money with Kevin, his resignation? The assistant - and the information that the mayor had telephoned?

17.The political and judicial system? Corruption, the history of New York City? Great or not? New York as a microcosm of the US? A film of political ethics?

CITIZEN COHN

US, 1992, 112 minutes, Colour.
James Woods, Lee Grant, Joe Don Baker, Ed Flanders, Joseph Bologna, Frederic Forrest, Pat Hingle.
Directed by Frank Pierson.

Citizen Cohn is a tour-de-force film with a bravura performance by James Woods as the notorious Roy Cohn. Interestingly, this telemovie for home box office was made only five years after Cohn's death. His reputation was at a low and the film-makers could present this warts-and-all portrait of Cohn so soon after his death.

The film goes back to Cohn's family, a doting mother (Lee Grant) and a judge (Josef Sommer) who was a liberal and disapproved of his son's attitudes and behaviour. The film also goes back to Cohn ingratiating himself with Senator Joe Mc Carthy (portrayed by Joe Don Baker) and edging out Robert Kennedy from Mc Carthy's entourage. It also shows the relentless pursuit by Cohn of suspected communists, his unscrupulous getting of names, his legal skills and verbal abilities in pressurising his victims. However, he eventually overreaches himself and he and Senator Mc Carthy are shamed by Judge Joseph Welsh (portrayed by Ed Flanders - with the note that the real Welsh portrayed the judge in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder).

The framework of the film is Cohn dying in hospital of AIDS (which he won't admit) and his hallucinating with various characters from his life coming back to haunt him, especially Ethel Rosenberg because of his legal performance in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs and their execution. The film also shows his homosexual relationships, especially with a millionaire, David Shine, who brought about his downfall because of Cohn's manipulating the Secretary of the Navy into trying to get him better jobs. The latter part of Cohn's career shows him as an unscrupulous lawyer, trying to ingratiate himself with J. Edgar Hoover, especially during the Kennedy years and against Martin Luther King. Finally he was disbarred.

The film was written by Dominic Franzoni (one of the writers of Gladiator) and directed by Frank Pierson, a screenwriter who directed a number of films including The Looking- Glass War and the Streisand A Star is Born.

1.The quality of the telemovie and its wide audience? A film of the '90s reflecting on American history?

2.The American atmosphere of the movie, of the story? American history in the '50s and '60s, the investigations into unAmerican activities? The fear of communists? The 20th century, the '50s and the Red-baiting and the consequences on all areas of American society?

3.The stances of the screenplay, the portrait of Cohn, the critique? The presentation of Senator Mc Carthy and his tactics, the victims?

4.The era of President Truman and the introduction of the unAmerican activities investigations, into the Eisenhower period with Mc Carthy? The Kennedy era? Cohn surviving these decades?

5.American politics, the attitude towards communism, the aftermath of World War II and the alliance with Stalin's Russia and then the Cold War? The army and its protection? The entertainment world? Business? The social commentators - especially the portrait of Walter Winchell and his support of Mc Carthy and Cohn?

6.The structure of the film: Cohn dying, his not admitting AIDS, his attitude towards his own homosexuality, homosexuality in general? His hallucinating, Ethel Rosenberg and the other characters, his mother, Judge Welsh? Bobby Kennedy? The flashbacks and his remembering? The attitude of the doctor treating him and his own connections with victims? 1986 and Cohn disgraced, disbarred?

7.The prologue, the restaurant, Roy and his mother and father, his disdain and treatment of the waiter? His mother's influence, spoiling him? Her wanting prestige because of her husband the judge? Her interfering in his life? His father's disagreement with him, his wanting his father's affirmation? His father disowning him? His mother, the raid and her interference, her dying before he could tell her that he was vindicated?

8.Senator Mc Carthy and his role in American society and politics? His entourage, Cohn intervening, disdaining Robert Kennedy, his long speech explaining how necessary he was to Mc Carthy? Getting the job, his relationship with the senator? His relying on his skill in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs - and the film's showing the case, the condemnation, their victimisation and execution? Cohn and his aims in working for Mc Carthy, his statements about patriotism? Mc Carthy beginning to rely on him, the background, names? Mc Carthy himself and his drinking? Power? Following Cohn's advice - and trapping himself? His final intervention and being shamed by Judge Welsh? His death?

9.Cohn and his pursuit of individuals, their names? His being able to twist their arguments? The man from the government, friend of his father, his persecuting him - and his throwing himself out the window? The man from Radio America, Cohn's implications of communists at the radio and his involvement? The refusal to give names? His going out into the traffic and getting killed? Walter Winchell and his broadcasts and his patriotism and the support of Cohn and Mc Carthy?

10.David Shine and his wealth, the party, the attraction to Cohn, his getting the job despite his lack of qualifications (and lack of humour)? The collage of the tour, Shine and his ignorance, wanting to burn books but not having read them - the international press and their ridicule? The pressures for him to do his service in Korea? The Secretary of the Navy and Cohn's phone calls, pressure? The homosexual attachment - and his behaviour, especially as watched by the Secretary of the Navy? The inquiry, the photo opportunity and the doctoring of the photo?

11.Judge Welsh and his calm, his indignation at Mc Carthy and Cohn? The discussions about the photo and his interpretation of it? The discussion about pixies and the implications of fairies and public reaction? Mc Carthy and his diatribe against the attacks on Cohn, Judge Welsh and his shaming Mc Carthy and the vigorous applause? Cohn knowing that he was defeated?

12.Ida and her divorce, Cohn's legal skills, alimony? His asking for the loan? The years passing, her phone calls, his trying to avoid her? Her finally suing him? And his losing?

13.Cohn and his homosexuality, the stance of the film writer and director towards homosexuality, the presentation of Cohn in the '50s and '60s? His discussions about being born heterosexual and making choices? His relationship with Shine? With the Italian model - especially during the raid? His contracting AIDS?

14.The presentation of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, the work of the FBI, its alliance with government, the files and the names tradition? Cohn and his pursuit of the black woman in the Pentagon - and the irony that Hoover had to tell him to stop because of plants in the various communist cells? Hoover's support - yet the raid on his home? The role of Hoover, the clash with Robert Kennedy? The tapes of Martin Luther King and giving them to Cohn, the tactics backfiring?

15.Cohn in himself, his alleged patriotism, the lust for power, wanting to be somebody? His cruelty? Ideology or psychological explanations?

16.The doctor in the hospital, his staff, the hallucinations, the visitors, their critique of Cohn and his response to them? The irony of the film being made so soon after his death?

JOHN HUGHES



Documentaries and features - do you make both or are you more of a documentary film-maker?

Most of the work I've done has been in documentary, but I'm not particularly persuaded of a radical difference, from the point of view of making the work and of gauging the work. In many ways the radical difference between documentary and drama, it seems to me, is a function of the market, so the kind of creative issues that are confronted in both realms are more similar than they are different.

Following that through with some of your documentaries: the film about Walter Benjamin.

Benjamin was a German- Jewish philosopher and critic of the '20s and '30s, and with that project and others, a lot of the documentary work I've done has had a drama component but, normally, in the context of documentary. The drama has been highly stylised in one way or another in relation to whatever the kind of themes of the work. Whereas in What I Have Written, the feature drama, the performance style was much more in the traditions of realism, much more naturalistic than in those other works where performance style is part of a different kind of creative treatment. They're quite different deployment of the skills of acting and performance.

Staying with the documentaries and the creative treatment: Walter Benjamin was a philosopher. You seem to have taken more intellectual subjects. (And, in a sense, What I Have Written is an intellectual, intelligent drama as well.) So, early in your career, you seem to have favoured "intellectual topics". Are these subjects that appeal to you?

It's a difficult question really, because it presumes, in a way, a distinction between, let's say "intellectual topics" and "social topics", whereas my documentary work is really in a tradition of a political-social documentary film. But it seems to have had a connection with cultural practices. I'm thinking of the film Film Work, which is the beginning of a certain theme that's continued through in my work. Film Work was about that Waterside Workers' Federation film unit of the '50s, where a group of filmmakers made a commitment to work in collaboration with the Trade Union movement at the height of the Cold War when it was not possible to speak outside a very rigid orthodoxy of mainstream press. In a way the work that I've been doing identifies with that desire to make commentary from the outside of the mainstream orthodox elements of the dominant culture.

The film on Benjamin is consistent with that general idea, in that it's about recognising the philosopher whose work was insightful and critical in a very unorthodox kind of way.

That's probably the word I should have used, "insightful" instead of "intellectual". It's mentally stimulating to think about the themes you've pursued but there is a need to appreciate the social dimension. Since you've raised it, "political" is also the word. Traps comes from the mid-'80s. It seems to have that insightful, social and political agenda that you speak of.

Yes. It's hard, isn't it, to come up with the key word? Maybe "critical" is the key word. "Reflective" might be another one. One way of looking at it is to think in terms of the genres that are in play in documentary traditions. Not so long ago we used to think about documentary as a kind of monolithic category. Then we started to realise that there was a whole range of different traditions that were in dialogue in most documentaries, while some documentaries were very comfortable in one sub-category of documentary. My work has probably been more consistently part of an essay tradition than, say, an observatory tradition - not that they're mutually exclusive.

Traps was an exploration of a kind of play with genre. Its artistic project was to explore the borders between narrative drama and documentary. It was trying to develop a loose narrative framework within which to raise documentary questions about that present moment. It was trying to reflect on the Zeitgeist of that first period of the Hawke Labor Government from 1983-85.

The film was trying to explore, in an imaginative rather than a didactic way, what were the qualities of the political culture that was being developed in Australia at that time and to consider that political culture might be something that was not only determined by the actions of politicians, but it was something that had an input from the activities of artists and writers and from a whole range of cultural practices that somehow or other entered into a dialogue that constituted a political culture.

So that was the project. One of the things it seemed to throw up was how one might work with traditions of documentary itself: how could you open up the discourse of documentary in a way that would lay out space for a discussion about political culture to take place inside the form of documentary.

In retrospect, how does that particular period seem now?

It's very interesting. Traps was screened at the VCA relatively recently. I looked at it again over ten years later and it's actually quite weird. It's got quite a prophetic quality, because it was made during that period when, in many ways, the Labor Party's commitment to economic rationalism and the rejection of the traditions of its own Left were being fought out. Traps has an eerie kind of quality looking at it today.

What I Have Written. What drew you to the novel?

I saw an excerpt from the novel in Scripsi. That was the first point of contact, and I was quite stunned by it. I thought it was an extraordinary piece of writing. The two themes that drew me to it, I think, were the critique of masculinity and masculine sexuality that I thought was really rigorous in the excerpt that I read, which was something I felt was not being taken on anywhere, really, with that kind of intensity that John Scott had brought to the task. The other element was that it was an intense critique of aspects of academic culture. It was a mix of those two things that initially drew me to it.

Then I saw the full novel and the way John was working with points of view and with - almost - the re-purposing of texts, the interplay of texts and their meanings. That was the element I found most interesting to try and deal with.

The film's complexities seem to arise from the ambiguities of a literary text combined with the ambiguities of cinematic points of view. How much of a challenge was it to develop a cinematic objectification of literary texts?

There's a huge common ground that's been elaborated in what's called reception theory, where there is, in both cases, in literature and in the cinema, the role of the reader. In some ways What I Have Written is all about that. So to try and translate that to the experience of the spectator in the cinema is not so difficult. One of the bridges to that is the interesting connection that's made in the book between the fascination of the art connoisseur on the one hand and the fascination of the pornographic imagination with the pornographic image on the other. So the whole issue is like a bridge that leads directly to the fascination we have with the image in cinema.

The film also contains religious iconography, sacred and the profane, sacred iconography and pornography. Leonardo da Vinci's painting of St Anne and the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist portrays a manipulation theme.

One way of looking at it is to talk about it in terms of Freud's essay on Leonardo's painting. What you've got there is a whole series of reflected readings where you've got Freud psychoanalytically reading the unconscious motivations of the artist Leonardo. Then you've got, in this case, a lecturer then re-reading that material for a contemporary student audience. In each case there's a series of mis-translations that are actually at the core of that reading. The whole issue relates to the larger themes that are in play in the narrative of the film, so that the story of Freud's reading of Leonardo's painting becomes a microcosm of all the central issues that the film is dealing with across its whole narrative.

On the other hand it's possible to see a kind of parallel between the behaviour of the characters in the film and the story with which Leonardo's painting is concerned. It is the relationship between Freud's reading of a manipulative St Anne and Jeremy becoming St Anne and Angie Milliken's character becoming the Virgin while Christopher becomes the sacrificed innocent. There's any number of ways of going.

So using those images as you did, and the Paris setting as well as Melbourne, you offer an extraordinary look at the Australian psyche, Australian sexuality and Australian masculinity, but with an international context and the cultural traditions of Europe. This gives the film many layers as you worked on several levels at once, which is not the usual thing in Australian films.

Well, the book is incredibly rich, and John Scott, who wrote the original novel, also wrote the screenplay, so the whole process was one of working very closely with John. I think that's the privilege of the filmmaker's job. You get to examine a particular text over a long period of time. The more work I did on the What I Have Written project, the more I came to admire the skill of John's work.

My contribution was to have ideas about treatments, about visual styles and some structural suggestions. Some of the speeches are exquisite, the interactions complex and layered.

It was important to give audiences the opportunity to recognise that there were three characters who have different ways of seeing, experiencing and assigning meaning to things. So it was important to come up with a way of allowing audiences to distniguish meaningfully betwen the difference narrative voices, one of which is a book - a 'contemplated text' - within the film. The visual styles flow from that necessity.

What I Have Written - is that the Gospel reference to Pontius Pilate?

Yes, that's right. It's a matter of interpretation and it's a beautiful formulation. What I have written, I have written, and it throws the matter back onto the reader.

Going back to reception theory, did the reviews and the public respond to the many layers? In retrospect, what is your impression of how the audience responded at the time?

I was surprised, basically, how widely the film circulated, because it was also going to be a "difficult" project and it was always going to be a minority audience project. And - this is the case with most of my work - when it encounters journalism a crisis erupts, but when it encounters its own audiences, it's usually quite well received and generates interesting discussion. I think that's what took place in the case of What I Have Written. It found theatrical release quite widely; it was quite well received in international context; it sold well. I recently discovered that it screened in Korea theatrically for three months, and God knows what a Korean audience made of it. I've got no idea. It was very nicely written about here, particularly in Metro. There were a couple of pieces in Metro that were really quite thoughtful.

After Mabo was screened on television at the end of 1997.

Yes, it was broadcast on the eve of the Senate debate, it was something like 27th November 1997. That came about because Richard Frankland, a Melbourne-based indigenous filmmaker who made No Way to Forget on which I'd worked as a script editor, was the chief executive, at the time, of an organisation called Mirrembeak(?) Nations Aboriginal Corporation, which is the indigenous organisation in Victoria responsible for native title issues, the representative body in Victoria for native title. He called me up in August 1996 and asked me if I would help him with a film project he was interested in developing on the amendments to the Native Title Act. I kind of knew that amendments to the Native Title Act were on the agenda of the government that had been elected earlier that year, but I hadn't paid close attention to what they were about up to that point. I'd been interested in the Native Title Act as it had come into play following the High Court's judgment a couple of years before, so I knew something about it. The project just grew, really, from my initial response to Richard's request.

It was very cinematic, the devices used. You gave a lot of thought to the editing and the structuring, the speeches, the visuals, the different perspectives.

Yes, it was a very interesting project. The thing that I find most interesting when I'm confronted with having to make a film is trying to work out what are appropriate or productive creative concepts that can animate the work. Apart from communicating the ideas on the level of content, it's always interesting to me to try and work out how one might make the work also speak to the traditions of documentary. In this case, how might you be able to make a work that can make a contribution formally? How can you build a dialogue between the creative, imaginative decisions about the treatment concept and the material that it's working with?

So, in all of the films there's a relationship between the creative ideas that are driving the work and the material that it's trying to deal with. In the case of After Mabo, the central problem was how to address the tradition of advocacy films, which is where it really sits. It's a film that's quite clearly, explicitly putting a position that represents the interests of indigenous people who are supporting the maintenance of native title in a context where the dominant political power wants to do its damnedest to destroy the real implications of native title.

So the idea arose that one way to mediate the tendency of the advocacy film, which is a tendency to didacticism - advocacy almost requires a didactic speech, a singular speech - was to employ a screen design and create a collage in the frame itself, as well as have a process of montage between sequences. It was about trying to articulate the possibility of a complexity of dialogue, of non-monolithic speech. Maybe it's possible to graphically represent a public sphere in crisis by exploring the possibilities of collage in concert with the traditions of montage.

And your work at SBS?

SBS is another matter altogether. All I'm doing here is trying to support the work of colleagues. I suppose I have resist the temptation to want to intervene too much in other people's creative judgment. But it's fantastic because I'm getting to see much more of the work that other people are doing than I would normally. That's great. There's so much really interesting work being done. But the other terrific thing about this job is that I get to see a lot of the work that's being done by the emerging filmmakers.

A particular project of your own?

I'm halfway through a film called River of Dreams which is looking at issues around the variety of futures that are planned for the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley where, on the one hand, some developers would like to see the Fitzroy River dammed and the water redeployed to the development of the cotton industry in the West Kimberley, whereas the people who live there don't see the Fitzroy River as wasted water. They see it as an invaluable moment of Creation that ought to be respected. And certainly the indigenous people, who have been systematically dispossessed there as everywhere, experience this as a final dispossession. It's been possible for people to keep in contact with traditional country while the country has been under pastoral leases with beef cattle - which is no longer economically viable - as soon as the land is irrigated and primary production takes place on the basis of irrigated agriculture, the land itself is completely transformed. You might as well build a city. It's a destruction. So that's the issue there, really, the way that landscape is lived in with a variety of values.

Somebody wrote of you, "Cinema thinking, the manufacture of meaning." Is your filmmaking manufacture of meaning?

It is a phrase that could have come out of discussions around Traps, because there's a strong theme in Traps about media that's really about what we now call spin doctors. The spin doctors are the... - I was trying to think whether they are the factory workers or the architects. They're the production managers of meaning.

Religious, even theological dimensions in your films?

An interesting book to write would be a book that tried to explore what the theological themes, the streams or the lines through what the cinema tells us about fundamental beliefs. You could get at this either through the way that characters' actions were explored, or else you could get at it in terms of the way the cinema seeks to make its connections with its audiences, its spectators. While What I Have Written has an explicit discourse in relation to that reference in the title of the film - I guess the theological moment in the film, as it is in that original statement, has to do with the extent to which language provides us access to a final reference and the extent to which human language simply creates a sphere in which the meanings that are available are determined by its borders. And I suppose that the film and the book, What I Have Written are an exercise in that latter exposition.


Interview: 28th October 1998

JERZY DOMARADSKI



Why were you drawn to Lilian's Story?

There are not many stories which could be so involving emotionally. I found, reading one of the first drafts a few years ago, a fantastic universal story about a woman who was, at the end, victorious over oppression and horrible experiences from her childhood and adolescent years. And I said, `wherever it was written doesn't matter, but there's a story here which I want to see on the screen'. And each time I asked myself whether it was worth it to make the movie, was it the right movie for me to make at this moment, I also asked myself if I really wanted to see this story on the screen. And I was absolutely sure that it was worthwhile doing it. The next stage was when Ruth Cracknell came in as a lead. Then I was a hundred per cent sure it was the right choice.

Sydney people remember stories about Bea Miles. Were you interested in the question of what is normal, what is sane and how do people judge? This seems to be a strong theme emerging from the film.

Yes, I think I would agree with this. Pascal said that we are half angels and half pigs, there are two parts to our nature. At the same time, it is difficult to say, `Well, we are normal', when there is a crossing of these borders. All of us have some kind of schizophrenia, our mind is in some state of schizophrenia. Only social control keeps us within a framework and very few of us are ready to cross these borders.

And Lilian - why is she so fascinating? Because she is sad at the end. Mediocrity? Mediocrity is something which some people can't stand. They have the courage to cross the borders - not in the wrong sense, moving against other people, but moving against the rules, against social conventions. For Lilian the conventions are what she grew up in. She grew up in a rich family. In most cases like this, her life would be probably have been easy at age 20-something - she would find a husband, have children and so on. But she wanted something more. Of course, what she wanted was a desperate acceptance, acceptance by her father.

She sought acceptance by a looking for love, which is like a motif for the film. You have people looking for love, even prostitutes. For Lilian, this looking for love and finding love is like a necessity of life. But it is love, not in the physical sense, but in a much more metaphorical sense, an acceptance of why we are here, what we have to do. This life must be terminated sooner or later, so why are we here? So Lilian's story is a more general story, universal. It doesn't matter if she's living in the street or is living in a rich house. She's trying to understand the why of life, the reason for life - because when she was young she couldn't follow her ideas or her destiny in any way because she was stopped by her father. She was rejected by her father.

When, finally, she is older, she still has the chance for that experience. She tries, in a short period of time, to get everything. She finds a lover. She is like a surrogate mother to her young friend from institution. Finally she finds the acceptance she wants.

A very important element we wanted to show was that she is capable of forgiveness. She is the one who could forgive her father. Her father is never able to forgive her. She's also completely opposite to her brother, John, who is always around the home without being comfortable, present at home from the beginning. But the only time when he is really himself is when he is playing the tuba.

While there is isolation for Lilian, it is as if she wasn't really exiled because she found Shakespeare and Shakespeare is real life, because in Shakespeare you can find character, the big crime, emotion, love, hate, everything. That's why, even if Kate Grenville does not use Shakespeare in her novel, not direct quotations, we decided to do so because in Shakespeare you can find answers for many questions. And Lilian's emotional life is expressed by Shakespeare and his lines. It would be great if some people after seeing the film came back to Shakespeare and read him, it would be fantastic.

Where was Lilian going in the taxi at the end of the film? Realistically? Symbolically?

There must always be some ambiguity because we cannot expect that, at her age, Lilian would have a bright future. I think it is, as Dostoyevsky said, that a man is equal to the gods when he is not afraid to die. Lilian is ready for the final leap, to die -, but without necessarily dying tomorrow or a week later nor, necessarily, after months or after years. She is ready for a new experience. She is not afraid. That's why the metaphorical black angel with very different, smiling Bob Maza eyes is the taxi driver. I wanted to find somebody who is from a different culture, from a different perspective. Aborigines aren't afraid so much to die because they have lived through generations and now through the period of white culture. Death is something scary. Not for them. Physically, maybe they're scared, but there's a different build-up in the rhythm of nature. So the struggle is through the desert, through the endless landscape. This was intended to be more symbolic but it's difficult in a film to use strongly symbolic language because it could be very pretentious. But in some way something is opening for her, a new horizon is opening up. She speaks a line about the past, future and the present - and now she is somebody who is ready for everything, for whatever comes next, for what's happening around the next corner. Or something like this.

The film treats a theme which has come up so much in recent years, that under the surface respectability of families is an extraordinary amount of abuse. This is one of the striking, even shocking parts of the film, especially the portrait of Lilian's father.

That was a problem from the beginning for us because we didn't want to deal with child abuse. We knew it's the fashion and it is hard to know how much is true and how much an exaggeration. I don't know if it really happens so often now, maybe more in the past. But it is a real subject so we couldn't completely cut it away. Each time we tried to tell the story without the sequence, we couldn't. It happened. We have to make the connection. Something horrible happened, and if you can't talk about it for forty years...

It's not that she was really an intellectually disabled person with schizophrenia or a similar mental illness. She found a place where she was secure. It's not that she chose this mental institution. But it was locked and she locked herself away.

I asked for some advice on what the law is in Australia. Since the beginning of the 70s, you can't lock somebody up against their will. It is difficult, even if the family very much wanted this to happen. We had an example a few days before the film was released, the young man who committed the massacre at Port Arthur. There are too many mad people out there. But Lilian is not a lunatic at all. She simply chose to leave home in order to be safe from her father. So it's not a story about some experience of abuse - but we couldn't reject, completely remove this. We tried, but if there were to be some conflict and she was simply locked away - then we would be starting a completely different problem: how is it possible to keep somebody enclosed for so many years without a court decision or something official. It was a completely different issue. But, for dramatic effect, it's important something horrible happen between two people, otherwise why they are in such opposite worlds, why does she want his acceptance so desperately?

Forgiveness was another element which was very important for me: she could stand on her father's grave, giving him back this Lilian, the Lilian in the photo, her past - but without any hate. She wants to say sorry. She is very happy to say, `Sorry father', because his behaviour towards her was not simply the act of a person who had a normal sexual desire; it was the act of a dominant, authoritarian father. He was pressing her in order to control her. And, probably, behind this was a very strange but great love. It was not just a love and hate relationship. This gave some kind of dramatic edge to the whole story.

It came out completely independently, not our intention. Otherwise we would have tried to make the film about sexual abuse. I would prefer such a film to be really confronting. I have seen stories between brothers and sisters, love stories. But to show the story of a relationship between father and daughter, I have never seen this kind of film. It would be probably such a taboo that it would be rejected.

A few days ago, I read a story that in Japan it's not so unusual in fact. More often than we imagine, there is a sexual relationship between mothers and sons. This is a really strong taboo and probably we are not ready for this theme yet. I remember a dramatic story about this relationship; home becomes a madhouse for both of them because their bond is so close, so strong. It's very easy to cross the line but it is irreversible later. You can't forget it. But it was not our intention to make something extremely confronting. It was like the logic of Kate Grenville's book and in our treatment it helps for the characters in finding some kind of better understanding of why Lilian was like she was.

A quite different question - your vision of Sydney? It is not a Sydney that we immediately recognise as in more realistic films or series. But your cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, worked with Kzrystof Kieslowski on The Double Life of Veronique and Three Colours: Blue. In Lilian's Story, Sydney is filmed through filters. Fractured images of Sydney are offered which made the film different to look at and very striking.

There are two reasons. First, Sydney is connected with many features which are well-known from the many photographs, so it's like a tourist attraction. It's not only the Opera House, but Sydney has this very popular look. I didn't want to make the picture in a place which has been seen so many times. At the same time, Sydney is a unique city for me. This kind of story has a fantastic background and the city is high-rising, it is buildings in the background. So we tried to find a location which could help us more for the inner story, given the life of this big city, a 20th century city, of the new becoming older. There is something about Sydney and Lilian not being in this place which is for everybody. So we looked at Syndey from a different point of view.

Second, I wanted to make a picture this way, that it be recognised, as I said, but, at the same time, for people from outside, there would be a more universal story. This story could happen in any big city and probably in most of the big cities they have this kind of bag lady living on the streets. When you look closer at her life, why she was like this, you can discover very strange things.

I remember seeing a documentary on television about a woman who was living in Central Park, an incredible woman. She was a hippy in the '60s and she was quite successful living where they made this strip through the Park for the horses, this riding path. At one stage she fell in love with another hippy. She got pregnant. One day he left her one day and she lost her mind, simply. But she decided to stay and she lives in this place under the bridges because there's such a lot of them. It is a really dangerous place, Central Park. But she never left and she is building a completely imaginary world, that she is connected to the family of the Kennedys. In part it is true, but at the same time it's her fantasy story. I said look, that could be Lilian in New York, Lilian in Paris. You have these kind of people living along the Seine River in Paris. A few months ago I met a lot of beggars living under Waterloo Bridge in London. Nowadays more and more people are living on the street. I remember in New York, downtown, I met a man and we started talking. He was a professor at a university. Now he is living on the street. So it can happen that some tragic events trigger this and that's why I think Lilian's story is a universal story.

With regard to universality, your Polish background and that of your cinematographer seem to indicate that, along with the universality, you are bringing a European- Polish sensibility to an Australian experience.

Yes, but it's not for me to judge. It's as if I am growing up. Slawomir and I, we started together in film school. Slawomir, in recent years, has been working with many leading directors. He worked with John Duigan, with Kieslovski before that and with many, many others. He's not working now in Poland, he's working mostly in America. So, properly, his background is from Poland. His attitude to film-making is different. It's less commercial. It's more - and the industry loves to say it but hates to use it - `arty'.

I remember when I went to New York at the beginning of the 80s with one of my movies. There was a screening in the New York Museum of Modern Art. I was praised and everyone said, `Oh, it's a fantastic art movie'. I was so proud. Then a friend of mine who had been much longer in the States said, `You have no chance in Hollywood', because 'arty' is not commercial success.

Now, it's changing - you can be arty and make money if you can. So it's not so bad. But at the beginning of the 80s still, arty was not really a compliment from an American point of view. He was a fantastic collaborator because each time he said, 'Don't worry about these images. We'll find them. You have to know exactly what you want to say through the scene.' He's not the kind of cinematographer who wants to make a beautiful picture. It's nothing that he has made more than 40 feature movies - for him just having a nice look doesn't matter. He wants some intensity and if I, as a director, gave him the chance with actors acting with some emotion, he said, 'For me it's very easy to find the equivalent with the light, with the colours'.

The worst is when the scene is about nothing. In those cases he was lost. He said, "I don't know how to do it." He was very honest; he admitted it. Because he's a very sensitive person and he could react to the scene, watching it, very often he would change the decision we planned and did it in a different way, 'Have this different light, or use the sun', because we were shooting a lot of it in the streets. It was difficult to predict some events. There can be different weather, like today or tomorrow it can be rain and we have to shoot because there's no option in eight weeks' shooting. So that's why when somebody told me, 'Oh, you have a European way of filming,' I said, 'No, we have simply a way of filming by reacting to what we have around us'. It would be stupid if I planned shooting this way and planned that there would be rain. I could do it with a Hollywood production because they could cover the scene with rain or whatever. They can make it up in the studio.

But it's not the same with the actors. If the actors are giving me something I didn't expect, something new, my task as a director - and I tried to work this way with Barry Otto and Toni Collette - is to give them a free hand and say, 'Show me whatever you feel. If it is too much, I will tell you when'. The worst thing is an actor trying to keep too rigidly to what is written. It doesn't matter what is written. It is what you feel - you have to create a character. So it's more difficult to improvise but, as Milos Foreman said, to improvise, you have to be very well prepared, because improvisation is very dangerous if you take the first idea as the best one. Improvisation should be as a result of many ideas. Finally, you are taking something which became new because of all this work around.

Some reflections on Struck by Lightning?

It was my first film in Australia and I made it less than two years after I arrived. I came to Australia as director in residence at the Sydney Film School. When I read the script, written by Trevor Farrant, I said to him, `Look, I don't know how to do it, how to work with those kinds of actors'. I had worked with professional actors, but how to combine professional actors with non-professional? I didn't know how to do it.

But it isn't a really great task. I think Trevor has, as a writer, an enormous sense of humour. What I like is that we tried to make this a bittersweet comedy. I don't know if we succeeded at the end because of many factors, because it was low budget, shooting in South Australia. Unfortunately, I hadn't the chance to invite the best actors, to choose whoever I wanted. I had to work with whatever cast was available in Sydney and Melbourne. I was also limited because I had the Downs Syndrome amateurs. They can't act in the same way. It was difficult. I didn't want to risk manipulating them because that would not be fair. But I had Garry Mc Donald and that was a great experience for me.

Secondly, I was probably a little at a distance from the culture - not now, as I understand it more after nine years in Australia. But it was a fantastic experience for me and it took great courage from the producer to risk this. Finally, I think, we didn't do badly. It was a small film, but in some way it was different. I know people are very often surprised when they watch this film on video. It's a different kind of movie.

Very humane.

Humane, yes. There was a different factor and it's coincidental, people from the fringe. This was the script they gave me and I preferred this script to a different one. As you know, sometimes it takes many years before a film comes to fruition. But I think the fruition this year, 1996, already means that there are too many films that are similar in some way. But I think the distributors are ready to take the risk because most of the films could have been done five or six years ago. I can imagine that Lilian's Story could have been done four years ago - Shine, Cosi, Lilian's Story, Angel Baby - but probably there was a time when the distributors decided they wanted to take the risk. And, accidentally, they came from different companies - from Miramax, from Fox, from Beyond and from South Australia. Maybe Rain Man, My Left Foot were the movies which gave us more encouragement to risk. We're all always looking for the theme which has a different emotional expression when we focus on some extreme situation that characters are put in. Because a movie is not about life, it's something more, in some way it's compensating life.

So having a character like Lilian, immediately you can exercise your imagination. And, for actors, the play is much richer. It's very difficult to make a film about a very average life. There is a flaw like in the water, but you have to take a magnifying glass and look at it. And, taking a magnifying glass, everything is bigger.

One of the reasons why more and more film-makers are trying to explore this kind of territory: what is normality, what is abnormal, what is schizophrenic?, is that society, and we, are under pressure from all sides. We are not as we were. Normality is a very different category, especially after the events of Sunday, the Port Arthur massacre. It's not about who has the right to have a gun - that's the wrong question, that's not the subject. What is the difference? They should reduce possession of guns to a pistol or rifle with only a small magazine with bullets. I say, 'So what?'. He could have a few magazines. He could do it with the one revolver because he was shooting from a very close range.

So the issue is not 'how?', but what created the mechanism that he could do this? That's the question. And it could be fantastic and a great movie, not that he is schizophrenic, but why this schizophrenic is goes in this way. We have to be positive and explore how this person has tried to cope with this very traumatic experience from his earliest years.

Bea Miles and religion?

I didn't introduce religious themes, not even once was the name of God mentioned. But that was a real question, especially with Bea Miles at the end of her life. She was close to religion, to the Catholic church. She was in St Vincents. But, at the same time, maybe there was a reason that she was older and she was simply being taken care of, so I couldn't find a deeper reason except that, for her, Shakespeare is like looking for God and looking for love is her life at this stage and looking for love is looking for God.


Interview: May 1st 1996

CIMARRON

US, 1961, 147 minutes, Colour.
Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Lili Darvas, Russ Tamblyn, Henry Morgan, David Opatoshu, Charles Mac Graw, Aline Mac Mahon, Edgar Buchanan, Arthur O'Connell, Mercedes Mc Cambridge, Vic Morrow, Robert Keith, Mary Wickes, Royal Dano, Vladimir Sokoloff.
Directed by Anthony Mann.

Cimarron is a lavish M.G.M. 1961 remake of the Oscar-winning 1931 western, Cimarron. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber (Showboat, So Big) it shows the history of Oklahoma from the late 1880s to the time of World War One.

The film originally starred Irene Dunne and Richard Dix. Their roles are taken here by Glenn Ford and Maria Schell. Ford is an ambiguous American hero - a man of the West, yet abandoning his wife and family for years at an end. Glenn Ford combines his kind of heroism and weakness. Maria Schell is a curious piece of casting for the strong-minded Sabrah. Arthur O'Connell is very good as a down and out farmer who turns into one of the most ruthless of the oil tycoons. Mercedes Mc Cambridge is his wife. There is a strong supporting cast which includes Anne Baxter, Russ Tamblyn.

The film is interesting as the history of the state of Oklahoma. It was directed by Anthony Mann, who was noted for small black and white thrillers in the '40s, made a number of features with James Stewart, especially westerns, in the '50s and moved to spectacles like El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire in the '60s.

1.A big, sprawling western? Edna Ferber and her perspective on American history? A remake of the '30s classic? The work of Anthony Mann?

2.A re-creation of the period, Oklahoma, the 1880s and growth, the '90s and the turn of the century, World War One? Costumes and decor? The musical score by Franz Waxman, the title song?

3.The length of the film, its scope? History, a piece of Americana?

4.The background of the 19th century, the respectable families, the contrast with the gunfighters and the pioneers, the hopes of the settlement of the West?

5.The 1889 run: Yancey and Sabrah going from the settlement, their hopes, lining up with the group? The families? The group of people there, Sam and Mavis and the Texas paper? Tom and his large family and the hope for land? Dixie and her plans for the land? The Indians and those hostile to the Indians? Sol, the Jewish seller? Ike and his photos? The army? Those on bicycles? The visualising of this historic run? The start-off, the race, the number of wagons collapsing, success and failure?

6.Yancey and Dixie and the run, Dixie getting the land? Yancey's return to Sabrah, Sam's death and his grieving wife? Yancey taking on the paper, settling in the town? The friendship with Jesse and his continued work over the decades? The success of the paper? The birth of the son? Racial prejudice and the Indian lynchings? Yancey and his confrontation of the group, shooting the main man hostile to the Indians? Standing up for values? Taking the Indian girl to the school and her being rejected? His friendship with the Kid and the memory of his father? The Kid urging him not to have faith in him? The bond with Sabrah, the marriage? Dixie in the background, her style, wanting to sell and getting him to draw up the legal documents? Her visit to the office? She seeing through him? His restlessness, going away, being away for five years, the fighting in Cuba? His return, reconciliation, wanting to make it up to his family? The renewal of friendships, the discovery of oil, Tom and his good fortune, socialising? The clash with Tom and his exploitation of the Indians? Using the paper to condemn him? The request that he be governor? Going to Washington, his decision not to take the job after meeting with the pressure group? His disappearing for another 10 years? His letter to Sabrah, the story of World War One, his fighting, his death? Sabrah suggesting him for the statue of the pioneer? The ambiguities of the character of the American pioneer?

7.Sabrah and her personality and background, hopes, participation in the rush, supporting the paper, her pregnancy, the help from Sarah? The birth of her son? Her prejudice against the Indians, her fears? Taking in the Indian girl, the Indian servant? The clash with Dixie? Standing by Yancey? His disappearance, the passing of the years, the parcel with the bear skin? Swallowing her pride and asking Dixie where he was, the confrontation between the two, the greater sympathy between the two - and Sabrah swaggering down the street? Her friendship with Sol, people's gossip? The condition for the loan, his friendship? The return of Yancey and everybody waiting at the station, the reconciliation, his settling down, the paper, her support of Tom, society? Her clash with her son, with the Indians - and her harsh treatment, yet their preparing the afternoon tea? Her wanting Yancey to be governor, the pressure on him? Her reaction to his refusal after the joy of the Washington ball? His disappearance for ten years? Her friendship with Sol, getting the money, building the skyscraper, keeping the paper going? Alienating her son and his wife? The passing of the years, her friendships, the 25 year celebration and the surprise, her son and his wife coming back? The reconciliation? The letter from Yancey? The pioneer woman - and what she achieved?

8.Tom and his poverty, his wife and children, the help from Yancey, the dreams? Not getting the land? Experimenting with oil exploration? The striking of oil, becoming rich? The double deal with Indians? His becoming a wheeler-dealer, wealthy in society, Washington friends, the pressure on Yancey to become governor? Sarah and her friendship, the help with the birth of the child? In high society?

9.Sol as the young seller, prejudice against him, the shooting of the bottles in his hand, giving Sabrah the loans, business? Help and devoted?

10.Sam and the spirit of the journalist at the West, Mavis and the bond between them? In the rush, his death? Mavis's return for the tribute to Sabrah?

11.The Kid, his past, his companions, about town, shooting things up, shooting at Sol? The robbing of the banks, the siege in the school? The death of himself and his friends? The story of his background, injustice to his father, the bond with Yancey, not wanting people to trust him?

12.Dixie, her background, getting the land, her wealth, selling her property, buying the club, the woman of the town, the meeting with Sabrah, her love for Yancey, helping Sabrah?

13.The prejudice against the Indians? The ugly violence, in the rush? In the prejudice in the town, the lynchings?

14.The history of a territory, of a state? The run of 1889, the role of the government, the army? More people than land? The later Cherokee run? The establishment of a state? A portrait of the history of the development of this period and the transition to the 20th century world?

CHRISTINA

Canada, 1974, 95 minutes, Colour.
Barbara Parkins, Peter Haskell.
Directed by Paul Krasny.

Christina is a Canadian thriller starring a very glamorous Barbara Parkins. It has touches of the Gothic, the mysterious disappearing woman as well as a rather old-fashioned explanation of all the dark deeds going on before the violent conclusion.

Peter Haskell is the hero who is invited to marry Christina, a business bargain, so that she can retain an American passport. He falls in love with her - with some dire consequences.

Not particularly startling - but quite interesting and enjoyable, especially for fans of Barbara Parkins.

1.Entertaining thriller? Plausible?

2.The American city settings, affluence, employment and unemployment, private eyes, police? The mysterious mansion? Musical score?

3.The title and the focus on Christina - and the irony of her identity?

4.The credits and the mysterious keyhole view? The recurring images - especially in Christina's room? In Simon's unconscious?

5.The mysterious Christina, her approach to Simon, the bargain, his going through with it, the ceremony, the meal, the marriage night, her disappearance? The sending of the cheques? Simon's following her and discovering her? The house? The funeral and her pretence? The mysteries with the private detective? Simon's discovering her in the house, the blackmail, the long explanation of her being the nurse, her ambitions, her treatment of Christina, the drugs, her pretence, falsifying the documents, inheriting the money, the murders? Her shooting of the blackmailer, confrontation with Simon, attempts to shoot him? Her madness, setting fire to the house, the return to Christina's room, her being trapped in the burning building? A portrait of madness and evil?

6.Simon, unemployed, his reaction to the officials? Approached by Christina? Intrigued, agreeing, the ceremony, falling in love with her? Return home and discussions with his housekeeper? Moving out, employment? His employer and her daughter? The note? Tracking down Christina with the parking ticket, the visit to the mansion, being knocked unconscious? His being called to the private detective, the attempt to murder him? His searches? Employing the aid of the massage parlour, his employer's daughter and her help? Following the woman, overhearing the explanation, confrontation of Christina, his being shot, watching her in the burning building?

7.The private detective, his shrewdness, contacts, greed? Blackmail? His murder? His assistant? The police and their investigations?

8.The landlady, her admiration of Simon, help?

9.The employer, his daughter, the meal, falling in love? Her help in detecting Christina?

10.The real Christina, drugged, the drug sources, the employees, Kay taking over, assuming her identity, the overdose, the faked crash, her funeral? The irony of Kay dying in Christina's room?

11.An effective Gothic thriller?

A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL

UK. 1988, 99 minutes, Colour.
Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Briars, Gareth Hunt, Patsy Kensit, Prunella Scales, Jenny Seagrove, Barbara Ferris, Sylvia Sims, Lionel Jeffries.
Directed by Michael Winner.

A Chorus of Disapproval is based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn. It was adapted for the screen by the playwright and the director, Michael Winner.

In the '60s, Michael Winner made such comedies in England as The Jokers and I'll Never Forget Whatsisname. He then spent many years in Hollywood, making at least six films with Charles Bronson, including three of the Death Wish films. With A Chorus of Disapproval, he moves to his roots in English comedy.

The film is a realistic interpretation of a very stylised play. Realistic settings, very beautiful, at Scarborough in Yorkshire, offer a backing to this play about an amateur theatrical society putting on The Beggar's Opera. The characters in the society parallel the incidents in The Beggar's Opera.

Jeremy Irons is the central character - and is a sign of contradiction. He seems too eminently sensible for the role of the rather mediocre Guy Jones. In fact, what happens to him seems perfectly sensible. However, the play seems to indicate that he is a nincompoop who rises despite himself. This seems to put the film somewhat out of joint. However, the supporting cast is excellent. Anthony Hopkins relishes his opportunity as the eccentric director. A very strong cast of British character actors including Prunella Scales, Lionel Jeffries, Richard Briers, Barbara Ferris, Jenny Seagrove, Gareth Hunt and newcomers Patsy Kensit and Alexandra Pigg offer excellent interpretations of their roles.

The film has a sharp eye on eccentric British characters as well as a comment on British society.

1.British comedy? Characters, society, spoof?

2.The work of Alan Ayckbourn, his role in British theatre? His wit? Characterisations? His contribution to the adaptation for the screen?

3.Scarborough locations, the beauty, the boarding house, homes, shops and theatres? Authentic atmosphere?

4.How successful the opening out of the play? Real realism, stylised?

5.The basis in putting on The Beggar's Opera? The adaptation of the play to the characters in the 20th century?

6.Jeremy Irons as Guy Jones: the success of his casting? Arrival, in himself, his expression, finding a home, going to work, the car? Seeing the advertisement? Going to the audition, the mix-ups of singing `All Through the Night'? His gaining the friendship of Dafydd? The introduction to the cast, charming the ladies? His ordinary life in the town, widower, seeking information about the property? The old ladies and their friendship, Hilda? The visit to Dafydd's home, meeting Hannah, his tenderness with her, the bond between the two, leading to an affair? The meetings at the beach, the cafe and his being caught by Fay, his room and the landlady? The farcical elements? Hannah doing his laundry? Fay as the sexpot, the invitation to the dinner, the prospect of wife-swapping and his not noticing? His inviting Hilda? His being used to find out about the property? Jarvis and his wife and the giving of the money, the passing on of the rumour? His visit to Jarvis's wife? His friendship with Dafydd, the betrayal with Hannah? His participation in the play, his one line, his gradually being promoted to better parts? The practices, by himself, with the group, with Hannah? Performance? The information about the property, his company moving away, his being transferred? Angers? His throwing away the money? Dafydd's attack on him, his wishing him good luck, his praising him in the speech? His going to Blackpool, the advertisement for the new play, dancing The Merry Widow? How interesting a character? How ordinary?

7.Anthony Hopkins as Dafydd: his appearance, manner, directing skills? His manner and his skills? Eccentricities? With the cast, abusing them, praising them? Staging of the production? With them in the hotel, the fight amongst the girls? Cocoa at home, phone calls? His relationship with Hannah and the twins? The doll there in the house to signify his absence? His advice and help, his tantrums? Insulting Ted? Pursuit of Crispin for the part? The girls? The prompter? Guy and his friendship, talking - especially about Hannah (and the PA system operating)? Serious? The land and his work as a solicitor? The rehearsals, in the theatre, the lighting? Hearing the truth about Hannah and Guy? His being hurt? His attack on Guy? Then wishing him good luck and his final tribute to him?

8.Hannah in herself, repressed? Her husband thinking her icy? Her passionate nature, at home, dressing up and coming down to meet Guy? Talking with him? Feeling appreciated and loved? The affair, the ill-fated meetings? Doing his laundry? The fight with Fay in the restaurant? Hurt, deciding to leave Dafydd? The performance, the phone call about her children?

9.Fay and Ian, their part in the play, sex swingers, the arrangement for information about the property, the meal, Guy's misunderstanding, Fay's leading him on, the comic turn about veal? Hilda's arrival? The bribe and the land? The pressures on him? Their anger at the failure of the deal?

10.Crispin, the contrast between his appearance and voice, the two girls infatuated with him, the fight over him, the upset in the pub? The daughter of the hotel-owner, smart, with Crispin? Prompting? Ridiculing the girl? Their sulking?

11.Ted and his wife, nice, no ear for the play and singing, their concern about their daughter? Dafydd telling Ted off and humiliating him in public? Ordinary citizens?

12.Jarvis and his wife, age, the wife and her eye on Guy? Jarvis and his contributions to the directions, the property, sending the money, wanting the rumour spread? Guy's visit to the wife? The end and the money being thrown away?

13.Characters and social comment? A microcosm of England?

CHOICES OF THE HEART

US, 1983, 100 minutes, Colour.
Melissa Gilbert, Martin Sheen, Mike Farrell, Helen Hunt, Peter Horton, Rene Enriquez, Pamela Bellwood.
Directed by Joseph Sargent.

Choices of the Heart is a very well-made telemovie, providing world-wide audiences and the home audience with a glimpse into El Salvador, 1980. It is the story of lay missionary Jean Donovan who, along with three sisters, was murdered by the national guard. Their case became an international scandal, intervention was made by American Ambassador White, and it highlighted the oppression in El Salvador. This was the period of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who earlier in the year was killed by assailants unknown while celebrating the Eucharist in the capital, San Salvador.

Melissa Gilbert, best known for the television serious Little House on the Prairie, portrays Jean Donovan as a lively American girl with a sense of search and dedication. (Melissa Gilbert appeared in such movies as the remakes of The Miracle Worker and Splendor in the Grass.) The supporting cast includes Martin Sheen in a guest role as an Irish priest who had an influence on Jean Donovan, and Mike Farrell as Ambassador White.

The film gives one of the best pictures of lay missionaries and contemporary sisters in American-made films. (Comparison might be made with Judith Ivey in the African-set We Are the Children.)

Of significance is the presentation of Archbishop Romero, especially his final homily and the assassination in the cathedral. This incident was portrayed vigorously in Oliver Stone's Salvador as well as the biographical film Romero produced by Paulist Father Bud Kaiser and directed by Australian John Duigan with Raul Julia as the archbishop.

A documentary film was made on Jean Donovan and the lay missionaries, Roses in December. This is a fine telemovie companion piece.

1.The impact of the film? Lay missionaries, contemporary sisters, working in central America, the dangers, political and economic pressures, violence?

2.The American atmosphere, Jean Donovan's background? Her visits to Ireland? The impact of life in El Salvador, the cities, the villages? Authentic atmosphere?

3.The Catholic background of the film: Jean Donovan's upbringing, her search, her faith, her commitment to lay missionary work, the Maryknoll training, work in Salvador with the other missionaries, the life and dedication of the sisters, the work of the clergy, Archbishop Romero and his preaching against social injustice and oppression, his assassination?

4.The portrait of Jean Donovan: Melissa Gilbert and her screen presence, life at home, affluence, her family, friends, education? Boyfriends? Study, vitality? Questions of faith and doubt? Her friend and their sharing ideas? The visit to Ireland, meeting Patrick, flirting with him, overwhelming him? Father Matt and his friendship? Raising questions for her, the possibility of lay missionary work? Her return to the United States, the decision, reaction of family, her friend? The training at Maryknoll and its impact on her? The meeting with Doug, friendship, attraction, shared time together, falling in love?

5.Her decision to go to El Salvador: meeting the missionaries, work in the city, the visit to Ambassador White and his wife? Her knowledge of the situation? Work in the villages? Living with Dorothy and the other nuns, their discussions about life and values, isolation, loneliness? Dedication? The dangers in the village, the friendships? The young man and his flirting, trying to get into the room, his friends, the assassination in the street and its impact on Jean? Coping with suffering? The visit to Ireland, meeting Father Matt? More serious? The social and the wedding? His getting her to speak to the students - and the expressions of her commitment and conviction? The decision to return to El Salvador? Doug's visit to El Salvador, shared time together, his fears? Time in America - and her decision to return, knowing the dangers? The return, meeting Dorothy and her friends, the airport sequence, the disappearance?

6.The flashback nature of the film - the sequences at the airport, the national guard, the sense of menace? The mystery as to what happened? The investigations by the ambassador? By Colonel Rojas? Piecing together what happened, the evidence of witnesses? Digging up of the graves? The information that the women were raped and murdered? The impact of their deaths?

7.Father Matt, his dedication with the students, influence on Jean, her visit to Ireland, his getting her to give the talk?

8.Jean and her friendships, Patrick, her being too much for him? Doug, shared experiences, love, hope for marriage, his visit? His disappointment at her return?

9.The portrait of the nuns, Dorothy, her background, working in Salvador, friendship with Jean, shared experiences, dangers? The other sisters, their experiences in Nicaragua?

10.Ambassador White, friendship, the difficulties of negotiations, civil war in El Salvador, his pursuit of the questions about the disappearance of the missionaries? The attempts to bring the killers to justice - and the failed attempts?

11.Archbishop Romero, the significance of his own conversion, leadership in El Salvador, his sermon, the assassination, her being venerated as a martyr?

12.The people in the villages, poverty, suffering, attacked by the national guard? Peasants, trying to live their own lives, victimised?

13.Colonel Rojas, negotiations with the Americans, administration of government in El Salvador? The national guard, the recruits, their brutality? Violence and rape? Colonel Rojas and his negotiations?

14.The title of the film? Its relationship to Jean Donovan and her commitment? The screenplay was written by John Pielmeier, author of the play and screenplay of Agnes of God.

CHOCOLAT

France/Germany/Cameroon, 1988, 105 minutes, Colour.
Isaach de Bankole, Giulia Boschi, Francois Cluzet.
Directed by Claire Denis.

Chocolat was written and directed by Claire Dennis. It is fine film-making. Claire Dennis takes us to the Cameroons of the '80s, beautiful and remote, yet `modern'. A young woman then remembers a month of her life as a child, in an isolated area where her father was an official in the last days of the colony. She observes with the innocence of a child, but the events are remembered with adult understanding. The servants, especially the house `boy', her friend, the cook, her parents are vividly portrayed. So also, a group of travellers, including a loud racist coffee-planter and a disruptive ex-seminarian, stranded by plane difficulties and receiving the hospitality of the official.

The film is perceptive, both in dialogue and in the setting of each scene. The audience feels that it has been to Africa and lived with these people and experienced the tensions of their colonial lives, black and white. It is a film of delicacy and understanding.

1.The work of Claire Dennis, writing, direction? Her memoir? Her interpretation of Africa in the past? Of the '80s?

2.The beauty of the Cameroons, the settings, the landscapes? The roads, the villages? The atmosphere of the compound? The rock? The style of film-making, close-ups, long takes? The audience observing with the characters?

3.The feel of Africa, the audience visiting it, remembering it with France? The moods? The musical background?

4.The focus on the adult France, sitting on the beach and contemplating, the black man and his child in the water, her getting a lift, her shyness and reluctance, the town and the bus, the second lift, observing the man, his interaction with his child and the vocabulary? Her own quest? The enigma of her presence, her understanding of the past, her future?

5.France and her being French in culture and origin, the experience of Africa on her childhood? Culture, outlook? Her empathy for the African people?

6.The '80s and changes, the American black returning to the Cameroons and feeling at home, but rejected and considered unimportant by the Africans? Wanting to go back to his origins and understand? France doing the same thing? The scene at the airport at the end, Air Cameroon, the men in their overalls with the machines, their work at the airport, talking, bonds? The Cameroons transformed into a modern nation?

7.France as her symbolic name? A month of memories? The little girl, her powers of observation, her relationship with her parents, to Protee, the cook, the visitors? The details of her life, being loved? Her experience, sharing with her parents, with the Africans, the work? Travelling with Protee, sharing riddles, the ant sandwich? The puzzle? Her sense of relationships, tensions? The screenplay blending her naive and childlike watching with the sophisticated realism and her empathetic understanding?

8.Mark as a young man, an official, his relationship with his wife, his love for her and tenderness, love for France? Trusting Protee? His duties, his sense of duty? Travels, the movement of the cattle, his decisions? The colonial presence - yet his being critical and wondering about the future? The plane, offering hospitality, getting the doctor for the sick woman, experiencing the insults and the prejudice? Aimee wanting him to move Protee from the house? His being the last vestige of the colonial presence?

9.Aimee and the significance of her name? Her age, experience, French background, love for her daughter, sewing and the garden? The clashes with Protee, yet the obvious sexual tension, her eventually touching him and his reaction? Wanting him moved from the house? Her anger with the cook, her moods, clothes? Boothby and his visit, having to dress up, to dance? The visitors and her listening, entertaining, becoming involved with them? Luc and his puzzles? Her colonial stances, racist stances, superiority? Love for her husband and daughter? The sense of isolation, boredom? What might have happened to her?

10.The character of Protee, his education and background, place in the house, his preserving the status quo for the colonials? His relationship with Mark, with Aimee? The sexual tension, his watching Aimee, his agony, the shower sequence? The friendship with France, being her teacher? The final interaction and each burning their hand? His relationship with the cook, with the jobs in the house, being insulted, returning to the compound for his meals? Mark's trusting him? The reception of the guests, observing them? Observing the insults? Not wanting Aimee to touch him? His being shifted out of the house? What happened to him in the times of independence?

11.The cook, his speaking English, not being able to read but looking at the book, Aimee and her tantrums, his angers and keeping face, walking out, returning? The comic touch?

12.The place of the servants in this colonial period, their own compound, manner of dressing, getting dressed up for guests and their reception? Eating alone? The background that the film gave of the landscapes, the native huts?

13.The plane going overhead and landing, the pilot and his assistant, not able to take the plane, being comfortable in waiting? Interaction at the house? At ease, handling situations?

14.The minor official and his wife, at ease in the place, their honeymoon? The wife's illness, epilepsy? The getting of the local doctor? The official's bigotry and outburst against the native doctor? The finale with Mark and the official saluting the French flag?

15.Mark going to get the doctor, his coming, the heaviness of the insult by the official? Luc's intervention and verbalising what people thought?

16.The planter and his being in a hurry, his bigotry, remarks to everyone, keeping the black woman as his mistress, keeping her out of sight, stealing food? His contempt for the locals? Friendships, the drinking and his singing?

17.Luc as the ex-seminarian, going on foot across Africa, working with the gang on making the tarmac, becoming a guest in the house, vocalising the bigotry, his interaction with each person, the shower out in the compound, eating the food with the Africans and refusing to come inside, the tensions of his relationship with Aimee? In transition - and disturbing people?

18.The visit of Boothby, the Englishman, his eccentricities in speech, dress, drinking, advances to Aimee?

19.The symbolic month in France's life, the disturbing of the isolation, her experience of colonialism?

20.Parks and his son, free, the use of the French language, teaching his son the native language, driving, attitudes of Freedom? The rejection by the locals and yet his sense of his roots? Talking with France, looking at her burnt hand - and not knowing her future? The symbol of the burnt hand erasing the lifelines?

21.The portrait of a country, its colonial history, clash of culture, isolation, damage by the colonial government - and a future? The perspective of Clare Dennis?