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Confasing, surprising film looks at inner tltoiiglits
By Jennifer Bauman
8. directed by Frederico Fellini
(1963), centered on the activities of a
filmmaker named Guide (played by
MarceHo Mastroianni).
Guide wants to create a pure artistic
statement through film, and it is this that
occupies much of his thought, lie is seen
engaged in typical director's tasks-visiting
the sets and production office and viewing
screen tests.
Interwoven with these duties are
glimpses of Guido's mental activities. His
anxious memories of his childhood and his
fantasy life inspire many of his themes. As
Guido's consciousness focuses upon these
inner visions, the visions are translated to
the screen. Movement between different
levels of consciousness is so fluid that it is
often ambiguous exactly where the shifts
come.
Fantasies become obsessions
In addition to thoughts about his film,
Guido is tormented by many aspects of his
personal life. The very memories and
fantasies that are fuel for artistic inspira
tion are also specters that bedevil him.
Guido is obsessed with his dead parents; he
imagines visiting their tombs J sees them
watching the world from their positions of
confinement.
His adolescent years and his first sexual
experience also occupy Guido's mind,
creating scenes that are reminiscent of
Feliini's Amarcord. He is uncertain and
guilty about his feelings toward the Catho
lic Church and its role in Italian society
as well as in his own life.
Guido is also having problems juggling
the time and affections of his wife and
mistress. He thinks much about his
relationships with the two women, as well
as harboring a mnning fascination with a
mysterious woman in white. "
Finally," Guido is having health prob
lems and is under a physician's care. Like
so many people undergoing a sickness, he
thinks much about medical examinations
and medicine.
Attitude formation examined
8Vz examines how these various parts of
Guido's life come together to form his
collective attitudes and his creative process.
As Guido struggles to make his artistic
statement from many loose strands, he also
is influenced by criticism he receives (or
imagines he will receive) from the Church
and his colleagues.
Fellini is an important director who uses
surrealism and subjectivity as central
qualities of his films, and 8'z is a widely -taiown
and influential piece of cinema. As
he has in many of his other films (Juliet of
the Spirits, Satyricon Fellini uses
exaggeration and unorthodox juxtaposi
tions of objects and themes to create a
sense of fantasy and surrealism.
Aspects of people in his memory-the
severity of the ecclesiastics who sat in judg-.
ment of him, the earthy sensuality of a
woman to whom he was attracted during
his adolescent years-are heightened to
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Photo courtesy of The Museum of Modern ArtFilm Stills Achive
Pictured is Guida, the central character in Fredrico Feliini's movie,, 8!i showing at
the Sheldon Film Theater starting Friday.
grotesque degrees.
Fellini shows a conversation with a
Cardinal in a mud bath, and a cabaret show
on a set constructed to look like a missile
launching site. Such incongruous com
binations are presented matter-of-factly as
if Fellini does not regard them as any more
absurd than anything else he has
experienced.
Mental process important
What is most important to Fellini is
Guido's mental process. In the final
analysis, it is not even important to know
if Guido is actually making a film at all or
not. As the audience contemplates
Guido's activities, certain parallels with
Feliini's role as a director and screenwriter
become apparent.
Guido is not intended to be a surrogate
Fellini, but methods of learning and seeing
and creating are at issue. What Guido
experiences shares some common ground
with what Fellini goes through in his film
making. If 8A is sometimes confusing, it is
always surprising. From time to time, it is
difficult to decide whether or not Fellini is
serious. His attitude toward women, for
instance, seems exploitive unless it is
understood as a satire on a specific set of
values as represented by Guido's mindset.
Fellini is ambiguous about such specific
attitudes in 8!4 likewise he leaves it up to
the viewer to decide if the film is just a
melee of episodes without any philosophi
cal statement, or whether there is some
thing of depth to be taken from it. Regard
less of which light 8Vz is taken in, it is fuU
of fine details and surprising images that
are fun to watch.
8Vz is showing at the Sheldon Film
Theater Friday through Monday. Screen
ings will be at ? and 9:30 pm.with week
end matinees at 3 pjn.
Wainwright music appeals to the 'sick at heart'
By Michael Zangari
There is an element of benign cynicism that is fashion
able in recording right now. Any darkness that makes its
way into wax with any punch is usually quickly buried.
The glaring exception to the rule has been the work of
Pink Floyd, and the album The Wall must sound like fin
gernails scraped across the blackboard to proponents of
"happy feet" music.
Pink Floyd does not have the corner on the market,
however. For several years now, guerrilla folkie Loudon
Wainwright HI has been jumping from the brush with the
darkest humor and most vitriolic bile available. His stuff
represents the closest any rock artist has been to living
publicly on the edge.
The key to each album has been the question of his
survival to the second side without chucking it and climb
ing a bell tower with a rifle and taking pot shots at the
passers-by. He makes Warren Zevon look like a Girl Scout
loaded down with cookies.
If the name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because of
his fluke hit "Dead Skunk In The Middle Of the Road,"
an ecological love song about the only creature that has
the power to fight back (even in death) against human in
vasion into the wilds.
"Hold your nose that aint no rose. . ." Wainwright
sings, and you know it's true.
According to Rolling Stone his Atlantic recordings
contain his least comic, most morbid material, and his Ar-.
tists albums have his most freakish and bitter material. I
find all those qualities running rampant through his entire
library.
Wainwright has seven albums out that I know about,
but, for this peek, well concentrate on two of them.
Album III, (The "Dead Skunk" album) is probably his
finest work. In addition to his golden bisquit, we come
across the "Muse Blues, a yearning lament for the lack
of inspiration that leads our hero to drink, cocaine, and
finally to slugging electrodes into his brain to get him to
produce artistically. Wainwright virtually cries the haunt
ing refrain out like a banshee. "Oh muse, where are you?"
He evidently decides that it's not worth the effort-in
"Red Guitar he stomps his instrument to pieces and
burns it in his living room as the culmination of an argu-
V
ment with his wife. A photograph of a mangled and burnt
red Gibson adorns the back of the album, leading us gull
ible romantics to believe that Wainwright wasn't kidding;
he does live this way.
Maybe that's why we get the divorce songs and the love
laments on Unrequited to the Nth Degree.
I must say 1 prefer this album simply because side two
is live, featuring him as a solo artist, unadorned and entire
ly upfront.
Included are a good sampling of his live style, funny
but disturbing. Aside from the pointlessly obscene "Hardy
Boys at the Y" the songs are pointed. He lampoons a guru
in California, tourists and society, but his best material
remains personal.
"Mr. Guilty" is a song that starts off as an apology for
his being such a creep, but twists slowly around to be an
indictment of his beloved for allowing herself to be
abused. A 'Tunny" song that hits like a knife in the back.
"Refus is a Ht Man" is actually fairly pleasant. Despite
the title's immediate connotations, it's a nice ramble
written for his new-born son, who spends long hours at his
mother's breast. The song ends with Wainwright nostalgic
for simpler times. He wants to be on the other breast.
'Unrequited to the "Nth Degree, with the famous
laugh-a-long chorus (he sang it on an episode of MASH) is
a last-ditch effort to get attention, by dying.
Finally, the album ends with a truly unfunny song
called "Old Friend. It's a song about people who have
nothing left to share, even though they "kiss the past's ass
all night long.
Wainwright is Dylanesque broken glass for the truly
sick at heart.
Enthusiasm and technical emphasis
make Pennsylvania Ballet a winner
(stems
By Penelope Smith
Ballet companies can be ephemeral things. They can,
for all their value, good intentions and the enthusiasm of
their dancers, fade in a year or two, never to be seen
again.
The Pennsylvania Ballet is not such a company. From
its beginning in 1962 it has held out through thick and
thin in the world of dance-funding paucity to become
one of America's leading professional ballet companies.
In its opening night performance last night at Kimball,
what the Pennsylvania has going for it was apparent.
Enthusiastic young dancers displayed a fine attention to
craftsmanship and the visual technical quality of each
movement. Such quality leads to fine performances that
the audience will return again and again to see. This is
very important in a company like the Pennsylvania
because it is not a company of stars. In fact, most of the
members of their company seem evenly matched in terms
of technique and development. They must present a
unified presence rather than rely upon the dash of m
individual super dancer.
The first work on Monday night's program was George
Balmchine's "Allegro BrUlante choreographed to
Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 3, This abstract piece
gave a good chance to see the style of the company
because the San Francisco performed the same work when
it was in Lincoln last March.
The Pennsylvania Ballet has a more fluid lyrical quaUty
than the San Francisco. Technically the two companies
are equal but, while the San Francisco stressed. a sharp
attack and a certain athleticism, the Pennsylvania Ballet
was more subtle with a light, smooth quality in the move
ment and intricate , precise footwork.
Xoncerto Grosso, choreographed by Charles Czarny
to the deliciously ornate Xoncerto Grosso in D Opus 6
No. 5" by George Frederick Handel, is one of the
Pennsylvania Ballet's standards. The work is a comic piece
consisting of variations on different types of sports.
Monday the variations included a "warm up ' "shadow
boxing, "skating, -the tightrope, ccer and "the
karate minuet. The audience loved this work, especiallv
the tightrope walker .
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