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"May be the.
Tunniesi
movie of the year.
Will Jones. Minneapolis Tribune
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oves were ready tor Lenny s stor
Lenny is a candid and realistic, yet
unconsciously sentimental movie
biography, the type seldom made in
Hollywood any more. What is doubly
unique about the film is that it is the
story of a cult figure most of us have
heard of but probably will know most
about only after we've seen the film.
"You all need the deviate!" cries
Dustin Hoffman's Lenny and the movies
were certainly ready for the biography of
a deviate. The same things that once put
Bruce in prison are now up on the screen
for all America to see and hear. Lenny
Bruce was too explicit to be
misunderstood. He was, however,
tragically misplaced.
greg lukow
H
lieu grip
Lenny unrolls in the form of interview
flashbacks told by ' Bruce's agent, his
mother and his on again off again wife,
Honey Harlow, played by Valerie Perrine.
It takes us from Bruce's early years as a
young and very unfunny Jewish
comedian, to his subsequent string of
obscenity and drug busts.
The movie was adapted by Julian
Barry from his Broadway version and
directed by Bob Fosse (Cabaret). Fosse's
remarkable cinematic approach once
again brings about an intense feeling for
filmed night club decadence.
Photographed by veteran Bruce Surtees,
the movie captures, perfectly the jazzy,
close-up, black and white sleaziness of the
crowded underground West Coast dives
where Bruce was weaned. The editing
here is also worth noting, since the movie
skips back and forth among the
interviews, Lenny's progressing career and
an obsessive, cynical routine that runs
throughout the film and serves to
comment on all that is happening in
between.
Lenny is an immensely watchable
film, one that is distanced in it's hindsight
but entrancing in its urgency. The lead
performances are both deeply felt
although Perrine's Honey has been
overrated, probably because of her ability
to maintain an acting intenseness even
when we are distracted by the absence of
her clothes. Her outpourings in front of
the tape recorders are reminiscent of Jane
Fonda in Klute but she lacks Fonda's
hesitant honesty.
Hoffman's performance often
perfectly captures Bruce's anger,
frustration a"nd recklessness. The movie
uses much of Bruce's original four-letter
word comedy and satirical dirty talk. Yet
the movie is not trying to work on the
same levels as Bruce did. Lenny is too
preoccupied with humanizing Bruce's
character to deal with the influences that
created, surrounded and destroyed him.
Here he is alone in a vacuum, devoid of
the needed explanation that could tell
why he was what he was.
There's a silent request for sympathy
in Hoffman's role as the movie has
conceived it for him. There's not enough
of the brilliant, punk-hustler and too
much of the little Jewish boy lost.
Hoffman still has Ratso Rizzo in the back
of his mind.
This semi-sentimental indulgence is
one of the movie's few weaknesses. It is
at its worst in a scene where Hoffman is
dragged from a courtroom and screams
one of the cinema's all time killer lines,
"Please, don't take away my words!"
It is at its best in a simple, poetic shot
that finds Fosse pulling back his camera
on a long, uninterrupted take of one of
Bruce's acts. His mind blown on drugs,
and dressed in only a raincoat and one .
dark sock, it is a perfect and rare,
objective look at the man and his
fascinating, cryptic perverseness.
Series shows
Italian film
This week's Union Foreign film is
Accatone, a 1961 movie from Italian
director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Accatone was the first directed
feature of Pasolini, who became one of
the leading Italian filmmakers of the '60s
after having earlier worked with Fellini.
Accatone is a corrupt, earthy story of
a young pimp living in the slums of
Rome.
Accatone ("The Sponger") is played
by nonprofessional actor Franco Citti.
Pasolini is a Marxist director and in
Accatone he decries materialism and
pleads for the human condition. The
movie has been termed a rejuvenation of
the Italian neorealism movement.
Showings will be at 7 and 9:15 p.m.
on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Admission is by Foreign Film Series
ticket. .
Musician
hoping for
harpsichord
donation
Harvey Hinshaw is hoping for a special
audience at his faculty harpsichord concert
Tuesday. What Hinshaw and the School of Music
are hoping for is a donor someone to purchase a
performance and teaching harpsichord.
Hinshaw, professor of Music, will start
teaching a course in harpsichord next fall.
Although someone has donated a practice
harpsichord, Hinshaw said that for performances
and teaching, they will be using his own
instrument.
The free concert at 8 p.m. in Kimball Recital
Hall will feature Hinshaw playing pieces by Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach, William Byrd, J.S. Bach,
Francois Couperin and Jacques Duphly on his
own B.W.M. Benn, handmade harpsichord.
"Of all the composers who wrote for the
harpsichord," Hinshaw said, "probably Couperin
wrote most perfectly in the idiom." .
The long waiting period and the tight
budgetary outlook for the school are reasons,
Hinshaw said, that they hope for a donor soon.
The University Percussion Ensemble will use
almost every type of percussion instrument in
their free concert tonight at 8 pxn. in Kimball
Recital Hall.
Under the direction of Albert Rometo,
instructor of percussion and Marching Band, the
Ensemble will play a variety of drums in Michael
Colgrass's "Chamber Piece for Percussion
Ouintet. "
Iron pipes and auto brake J rums are among
the exotic instruments used in Lou Harrison's
"Canticle No. 3." The Ensemble will also
perform "Puppet on a String" by Harold
Farberman, "Prelude for Percussion" by Malloy
Miller, "Latin Resume" by Thomas L. Davis and
"Three Brothers" by Colgrass.
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.3 PRESENTS
plus special guest The Charlie Daniels Band
In Concert Thursday, April 17 8:00
st Pershing Auditorium
Tickets $5.00 in advance and $6.00 day of concert.
Tickets available et Union South Desk, Dirt Cheap, Ben
Simons, Miller & Paine, Ths Daisy and Pershing Box Office.
A contemporary Production
page 8
daily nebraskan
monday, april 14, 1975