FILM

The Maltese Falcon. Don't call it a thesis, but it seems that some of the most talented directors of American films have done their finest work the first time out. I'm thinking especially of Orson Welles and Citizen Kane and John Huston, who produced this hard-boiled masterpiece on his first feature assignment for Warner Brothers. Like Welles, Huston grew up around the greasepaint. And like Welles, Huston came to films with a gleeful yet prodigiously discriminating eye for characature and atmosphere-creating jargon. He handles Humphrey Bogart perfectly in the role of Sam Spade--by letting Bogart do Bogart, but without the "sentimantalist" soft spots of Rick in Casablanca or the nervousness of the hunted criminal in Petrified Forest. Bogart is nothing more nor less than leather-skinned in this role: cool, jaded, manipulative. Dashiell Hammit included a last scene in his book during which the reader really grasps what a contemptible specimen Spade is. But Huston thankfully understood that a film version could dispense with this redeeming moralism especially at the expense of Bogart's persona. A remarkably sophisticated insight for a director so seemingly wet behind the ears.

The Big Sleep. Let's get this straight: it's the nymphomaniac younger sister, played in this film version by Martha Vickers, who finally turns out to have murdered the missing Irishman and to have set off this story's complex web of blackmail and murder. That's the answer to the question, asked whenever this film is brought up, of who comes out as the culprit in the end. At least that's the answer in the book; whether it actually carried over into this screenplay is not at all clear. One of those great rumors has it that Faulkner, who was out in Hollywood taking his day in the sun touching up this script, could make neither heads nor tails of the plot-line and got in touch with novelist Raymond Chandler for some clues. "Beat's me if I can figure the story out," Chandler said. Maybe your luck will be better. Or maybe you won't much care, since Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, as the undauntable Philip Marlowe and the seductive older sister, make for such an entertaining romantic tandem as to make the detective element perhipheral. Maybe Chandler should take the credit--but, like Altman's The Long Goodbye, this film manages to be technically flawed and almost incoherent in spots, and yet still infinitely more enchanting and memorable than many a slicker package.

The Bicycle Thief. Not much substantive sticks in my mind about this simple DeSica film about a man and his son and their search for a stolen bicycle--only the glow I was left with as I left the theater. Perhaps I'm getting my genres crossed, but this movie would seem to fall under the heading of "Italian realist film;" at any rate, the scenery is all real, the camerawork is underplayed and the construction is perfectly scaled. Charming may be the best adjective. But this is all far too vague for such a touchingly accessible film, so make a point of seeing it for yourself.

Bound For Glory. Making film biographies is tricky business--it's hard to satisfy the often conflicting demands of entertainment and history. In Bound For Glory, based on folksinger Woody Guthrie's autobiography of the same name, screenwriter Robert Getschell and director Hal Ashby (who lathered up Shampoo) have tried hard, and by and large they have succeeded. The film is more accurate and coherent than the wonderfully rambling, episodic book on which it is based, and the recreation of the Depression-era dustbowl is understated and evocative. David Carradine doesn't look or sound very much like the real Woody, and at times he seems so cooly laid back that it's hard to see in him the burning curiosity, wanderlust, and stubborn passion for justice that come through in Guthrie's songs and writings. Ultimately, though, Carradine's Woody works because he captures Woody's optimism and stubborn wise-ass anti-authoritarianism, creating a sympathetic but not overly worshipful portrait of a fallible, but human and memorable man.

The Lady Vanishes. Mention a Hit-chcock title and you'll instantly flash on to a scene that has seared its way into your memory: Joel McCray threatened by the enmeshing gears of a windmill in Foreign Correspondent; the assassin's gun poised in mid-air amidst the concluding strains of a London orchestra in The Man Who Knew Too Much; or the ultimate vision of the master, the boydless hand ripping away the shower curtain in the nightmare-provoker of all time, Psycho. This truism does not apply to The Lady Vanishes for some reason I can't quite fathom. Perhaps the simple georgraphic limitations of the plot account for this anomaly; Hitchcock always works best with a script that offers a wide variety of settings and locations that allow his prodigious imagination its <*> rein. And there is, after all, only so <*> so you can do with the interior of a railway car. All of which does not detract from the film's credentials as a bona fide Hitchcock. In fact, viewers who encounter difficulties with the implicit morbidity and amorality that mark some of the Master's works will find this glib comedy-thriller a welcome relief. Dame May Whitty plays the title role of the innocuous old lady-spy whose disappearance aboard a train furnishes the central event of the narrative. Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood make for a formidable pair of amateur sleuths. And there's a good old-fashioned stab at the Fascist bugaboos thrown into the bargain. Engaging fare for a mid-week evening.

Network. With spring comes tolerance (revisionism, actually), and I have agreed to let a more gullible filmgoer play devil's advocate this week in response to my review of this movie last week. He says: "It is well worth seeing. Critics have said that Paddy Chayevsky's script about a network news announcer who goes berserk and climbs to the top of the ratings is out of control' but that is its beauty. The film is widely satirical--the very insanity of its premise--that the network keeps the insane commentator on the air because of his ratings--makes a film funnier than Eric Severaid. Faye Dunaway plays a programming executive who is without an ounce of compassion; William Holden plays a deposed news executive who gambles on her capacity for love--and loses. Holden is a little dull, but Dunaway and Peter Finch, the crazed commentator, manage to carry off the film's roller coaster ride of high-level network looniness." Well, as veterans of the Lincoln brigade might have said in response to Franco sympathizers during the Spanish Civil war: go to the front yourself and see what line you come away with.