Cinema
Petite Guignol
Kenneth Robinson
boctor in the Nude Director: Alain 8-slla. Stars: Alain Delon, Annie (Iirardot. 'X' Classic, Victoria (95 Minutes). banish Pillow Talk Director: John Hilbard. Stars, Ole Soltoft, Birte T Gve. 'X' Continentale (103 minutes).
1-,,octor in the Nude is not based on a book by Richard Gordon. It is a p • rench film from Alain Jessua. The
title, which packed the cinema on Saturday night, is a curious translation of Traitement de Choc.
There is hardly any nudity in the film and certainly none of the humour the title suggests. It is, in fact, a picture that gives us something new to worry about. Just lately producers have alarmed us with mugging, hijacking and a towering inferno. This week we learn about the dangers of rejuvenation. Though, to be fair, the health farm featured here is unusual. The doctor-in-charge (Alain Delon) has three ways of treating his rich patients. He injects them with sheep cells. He spends at least one night with them (if they are young and female). And he also gives each patient a dose of his own mystery ingredient. It is this that bothers an inquisitive patient, played by Annie Girarddot. The doctor, she discovers, believes that weak people must always be sacrificed for the strong. This is why he can cheerfully kill young employees and boil their organs in their own blood. The result, he finds, is a useful tonic for his patients.
This makes Annie's own blood boil. But when she tries to escape on a bicycle, she ends up by being run down. And that seems a shame. To be run down when you are already rundown must be even nastier than the sub-titles suggest. I have been asked not to mention the final scene in which the girl is arrested for killing the doctor. And I am not supposed to reveal the last line of this Petite Guignol. The detective who arrests the girl says he is a frequent user of the youth drug. He would rather stay young, it seems, than search out the truth about its contents.
This film would be quite entertaining if nobody had told you the plot. Which brings me to the question of how a reviewer should tackle his work. Take that other film of the week, Danish Pillow Talk. How much ought Ito tell you? Would you like to know it is one of the dirtiest films I have seen? Or would you prefer the distributors' slogan? "A rare combination," they say, "of humour and sex, which is never offensive." Is it better for me to say that this film presents fornication as entertainment? Or do the publicists put it more satisfactorily when they offer "lots of innocent fun and games"?
There is one great difference between going to a strip-club and seeing Danish Pillow Talk. At the cinema you get a few civilised extras thrown in. Here, for instance, you are shown some nice shots of Copenhagen's toy soldiers; a magnificent aerial view of the city's famous river-frontage, and a reminder that modern architecture does not suit the wide narrow screen. It is disappointing to see a truncated version of Arne Jacobsen's slender Royal Hotel.
I was reminded in this film of one of the more recent sights of Copenhagen. In the shopping precinct a church stands opposite a shop describing itself, with little subtlety, as 'Sex, Porno, Sex, Porno, Sex, Porno, Sex'. As the heroine walked from this shop to a seat in front of the church, I remembered being there myself and hearing hymn tunes played from the bell tower, While I was studying an illustrated guide to 'Perverted Nuns' the vicar was chiming 'Oh God, Our Help In Ages Past'. I asked him later why his church doors were locked. If they were not, he said, the young people of the city would be all over the floor. So why, I asked him, did these liberated Danes still need dirty books and dirty films?
To the Danes, he said, the books and films were not dirty. At one cinema the manager had found he could no longer attract customers with cardboard blow-ups of nudes. So he used two enormous pictures of the cinema's interior, showing the comfortable upholstery. He got his audience.
Danish Pillow Talk reflects the new attitude to sex in Denmark. To us it is still pornography. To the Danes it is merely up-dated Restoration Comedy in which off-stage actions are now shown in some detail. And that, I think, is sad. Not because such things are depraved or liable to corrupt. But simply because they are without taste.
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