Cinema
Lead balloon
Clancy Sigal
Nickelodeon (ABC, Shaftesbury Avenue) Inserts (Prince Charles)
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (Warner 3) Sitting opposite Peter Bogdanovich during a posh publicity lunch at the Ivy was a lot more instructive and entertaining than watching Nickelodeon (U certificate), his comedy about the birth of the movies. He talks about the early silents with disarming sincerity and respect. In Bogdanovich's cosmogony, one suspects, Creation began with Rescued Iron, an Eagle's Nest and is still ruled over by ancient propitiatory gods named D. W. Griffith, Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan (the latter two get special credit for their contributions to Nickelodeon). Frankly inspired by a whole pantheon of pioneers—John Ford, Howard Hawks etc—Bogdanovich has made several fine films, including a couple of good screwball comedies. What's Up Doe? unlocked a potential for wackiness in Ryan O'Neal which O'Neal has not since excelled, and At Long Last Love (roasted by the critics but enjoyably lightminded) used Burt Reynolds's oily obnoxiousness for clever satire which other directors have not been able to recapture. But teaming up these superstars is a symptom of what's wrong with Nickelodeon. In a picture about the risks of early film-making, Bogdanovich takes few risks.
Creative paralysis caused by his symbolic fathers' disapproval is the only explanation I can think of for the pedestrian unfunniness of Nickelodeon. Almost nothing clicks. Yet the stories—of hilarious shoot-outs between the Patents Company monopoly and fly-bynight film pirates, of the wild and improvisatory nature of those primitive silents—are authentic enough. Many of the ideas in the script (by W. D. Richter and Bogdanovich) came from interviews with silent-era directors like• Walsh and Dwan and incidents from Karl Brown's fascinating memoir, Adventures With D. W. Griffith. Yet the detachment that helped Bogdanovich in other films to re-create 1950s Texas or 1930s New York deserts him here. It's as if a gigantic Moloch-like statue of D. W. Griffith himself had bestrode the production, booming out : 'Thou Shalt Be Zany!' And we alrk now what happens when Daddy tells us to do anything in that tone of voice.
Technically the film falls apart because of a bad script. It takes forever for O'Neal. as a divorce-lawyer-turned-film-director, to meet Reynolds, a naive country boy who becomes O'Neal's cowboy star. Dutifully, with a kind of tired precision, they fight and stumble over each other pursuing the same girl, but their selfconscious antics only signal that Bogdanovich has balked at reproducing, in anything like a relaxed way, the images of the primal gods.
Yet In The Beginning they were but mortal men—cooks, hoboes, cowboys and con men. The likes of Griffith, Ince and Sennett grew out of an essentially Victorian America—and something seems to happen to Bogdanovich in this period (witness his unendurable Daisy Miller). His imagination seems to stop at a time when movies didn't exist, as if he's incapable of even conceiving such a Nothingness.
There are two giveaway scenes in Nickelodeon. The first involves a 'wild man,' a human dummy hired by some companies just to sit around and dream up illogical but funny ideas. Bogdanovich's wild man is not a holy idiot but a blubbering moron used strictly for cheap laughs. The second is a
direct homage to Griffith. Towards the end of the picture, Bogdanovich lovingly recreates the premiere of Birth of a Nation in a fancy Manhattan theatre, including a little of the famous battle sequence from Griffith's masterpiece. This older footage is so gripping and emotionally felt that the flimsy, out-of-touch structure of Nickelodeon seems to collapse at the first flicker of the 1915 film. Yet in The Last Picture Show a clip from Howard Hawks's Red River showing Montgomery Clift herding cattle fits beautifully. Bogdanovich—only thirtytwo then—understood about kids growing up in a Texas small town in the 1950s. But Nickelodeon invokes ancestor worship, a stiffer ceremony not normally associated with the kind of risk-taking he tries to celebrate here.
In the past Bogdanovich has shown a willingness to dare. Maybe next time he should try making a picture that is a tribute to nobody but himself as a genuinelY talented, if perilously nostalgic, movie to nobody but himself as a genuinelY talented, if perilously nostalgic, movie maker.
Inserts (X certificate) is a risky—not risque—film about a Hollywood genius reduced to making porno movies in his own home. It is basically a one-set play, a kind of Cherry Orchard of Sunset Boulevard circa 1930. (The jack-hammers of workmen blasting a freeway nearby sound the same ominous note of worlds-ending as the tree axes in Chek hov's play.) It has a young, hungry intensity that could have done wonders for Nickelodeon.
It doesn't matter that Inserts was actuallY filmed in England; or that its pretensions occasionally outstrip its dramatic energy. This perfect porridge of a romantic, messy, self-pitying vehicle works because of lovelY acting and a nervy, modest sense of its own limitations.
Wisely director John Byrum (who also Wrote the script) has kept his picture totallY inside an authentic-looking Los Angeles house where the Wonder Boy, excellentlY played by Richard Dreyfuss, swills cognac and lives grubbily among his fading memories of old-time stars like Wallace Reid and Mabel Normand. Impotent and alcoholic, he demoniacally grinds away on his hand-held camera at his 'star,' the dope addict Harlene, who will do anything with her stupid, vicious leading man Rex, .0 gravedigger by night. The enterprise is financed by a Godot-figure named Big mac who brings along a seemingly dumb but ambitious cutie, Cathy Cake, to watch the fun. The names, the bitter ambience, are imitation Nathanael West—but it's a good imitation. Despite the brutal language and subject matter, Inserts—the technical term for extreme close-ups—is an innocent film, self-regarding and raspingly funny and bursting with talent. Veronica Cartwright as Harlene, Jessica Harper as Cathy and Bob Hoskins as Big Mac are just fine; I enjoyed Inserts partly because they re allowed plenty of leeway to build character, to act. Given the overweening length of so many of today's pictures, that's a pretty rare thing. Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (X certificate) is another 'small' film of good performances and modest ambitions. It's an unassuming road comedy about two crazY girl hitchhikers-cum-bandits, a sad country singer and a bad-tempered orphan runawaY. who kidnap a mournful ex-Marine and take him on a ride in his broken-down jalopy from Los Angeles to Arizona. Nothing special, hardly any violence or sex, just a nice feeling for American underdogs. Alan Arkin is decent and funny as the forlorn Marine, and Mackenzie Phillips as. th,e spotty and toothy brat is surprisinglY attractive. There are all sorts of sharp, sometimes cruel vignettes: the best involves a one-legged Vietnam vet who confronts Arkin for being in the Marines twenty years without getting a scratch, but then they both sadly agree that that's life. RaffertY 1.5! shrewd, likeable look at losers in America.
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