Film

Rip It Up, Issue 97, 1 August 1985, Page 8

Film

William Dart

CAME A HOT FRIDAY Director: lan Mune It is curious how two Ronald Hugh Morrieson novels, The Scarecrow and Came A Hot Friday, have been made into a couple of the most successful local films of the last few years. While not underrating the directorial flair of Sam

Pillsbury and lan Mune, it must owe something to the nature of the novels themselves and the way in which they reflect the very idiosyncratic character of our island nation. Immaculately set within its period, Mune’s new film offers a zesty portrait of post-War rural New

Zealand a world, to quote the press release, of "horse-racing, gambling, fast cars and loose women." Alun Bollinger’s camera-work must be his most virtuosic to date and Ken Zemke’s editing snaps like the top of a cool DB, but what Mune offers especially is some of

the best character acting yet seen on a New Zealand screen. Those most amiable of conmen, Peter Bland and Philip Gordon, lead the bunch, but the acting alongside them ranges from the perceptively observed playing of Marise Wipani and Erna Larsen to the more flamboyant theatrics of Don Selwyn and Billy T. James. James’s Tainuia Kid, best described as a comic Zapata in Taranaki, is a particularly energetic performance. Came A Hot Friday might well be the success that Mirage Films want: it certainly deserves to be. Not only is it a good piece of cinema but it has all the virtues of racy entertainment, a worthy companion piece to Pillsbury’s earlier film and such recent successes as Gaylene Preston’s Mr Wrong. RAMBO Director: George Cosmatos Within the rather limited genre that Sylvester Stallone has circumscribed for himself, Rambo is an effective movie not exactly a likeable one, but undeniably effective. Its production values are unimpeachable, from Jack Cardiff’s spectacular cinematography to the bristling score of Jerry Goldsmith.

This saga of Hollywood’s most celebrated Hunk single-handedly rescuing a group of American POWs from present-day Vietnam has obviously been geared to a very targeted American audience. As if the often gratuitous lashings of violence which run through the film aren’t enough, one can’t help but read Rambo as a piece of disturbing right wing propaganda. Although Rambo does show both sides of the political coin, with Charles Napier’s military commander being just as devious as anything the KGB could dream up, the main premise of the film is fiercely anti-Russian. To reinforce such prejudices in America, especially considering the present state of the world's nuclear politics, seems incredibly foolish. It's altogether less disturbing if one reads Rambo as a 70mm comic book and the film certainly deals in the exagerration and hyperbole of the comic book. From Stallone casually kung fu-ing an inquisitive snake to Steven Berkoffs rasping Soviet villainy, it’s not difficult to see the whole affair as a latter-day Grand Guignol: occa-

sional moments such as Stallone’s impassioned speech of patriotism at the end are a little harder to take in this vein, particularly when Rambo does touch upon the social problems of the many victims of the Vietnam conflict in America today. STEAMING Director: Joseph Losey The combination of Nell Dunn’s popular feminist-influenced play, Steaming, and the cool, objective cinematic style of Joseph Losey would seem to be one of the most intriguing one could imagine. Losey,’s films, from 1963’s The Servant, deal with the world in claustrophobic terms, their characters trapped as much by their own personal problems as by the society that engulfs them. Within the confined world of the women's steam baths, the various characters one by one free themselves of the shackles of their social manipulation. The male oppressors are never seen and, when they do threaten to impinge on the women's world with the Council trying to close down their Victorian sanctum, they are triumphantly vanquished by the socialistic eloquence of Patti Love. Losey has proved before, in his 1969 film Boom!, that, when presented with essentially theatrical material, he takes pains to preserve the stylisation from the original stage play. So it is in Steaming, with a good deal of the film’s punch coming from the brilliant ensemble playing of Sarah Miles, Vanessa Redgrave and the feisty Patti Love. Other characters, from Felicity Dean's simpleminded, mother-dominated Dawn to the statuesque Diana Dors as Violet, manageress and mother confessor, ring less true. It is strange, and significant, I think, that so many of Violet’s lines are delivered straight at the camera, giving her a distinct feeling of separation from the other characters.

Apart from an eminently forgettable theme song that tends to hammer home a theme that the film itself makes quite adequately, this is a worthy envoi from Losey, who died soon after completing the movie. It is also Diana Dors’s final film and, as such, many of the scenes gain a special poignancy.