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Friday, February 6, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Arts & Entertainment
'Lucien' warns us to remember
By CHUCK SACK
Reviewer
Louis Malle's "Lacombe, Lucien" is so casual complex that it gives the initial imitation of a larger aim than simply documenting the life of a young barbarian. But this impression quickly dissipates when an older man begins to begin quietly enter the story.
Lacien Lacombe, a farmboy in southwestern France during its occupation in World War II, decides to quit his job mopping floors in a hospital. The trouble is, he doesn't know what he should do with the POW, and he can't stay with his mother because her lover doesn't like him. So the boy must set out on his own.
When the local leader of the
underground, his former teacher, refuses to let him join the resistance. Lucien rides his bicycle to the next province. There, he finds a job working for the Gestane.
Traditionally, the man who turns on his countrymen in the city is considered the most despicable of all creatures. But Malle and his co-writer, Patrick Modiandi, don't mind getting caught up in a categorically反射 Lacien.
The boy is rough, maladjusted and something of a bully. He is very good at playing character, equally capable of killing a songbird with his shinglest and of being genuinely moved by the death of his horse. The boy's name is Gestapo headquarters is to betray his former teacher. He
does this in such an offhand manner that it is in no way malicious. How could he do that, if he didn't do it unwittingly. Nevertheless, this is how he wins favor and power, a member of the German police.
The main conflict in the film comes when Lucien fails in love with the daughter of a Jewish tailor. The opposing social backgrounds of Lucien and France Horn, the Parisian bourgeoisie who is often accused, both confuse and enrich the viewer's reactions to the problems faced by the characters.
In fact, neither the characters nor the viewer are allowed any simple choice. Lucas is "ultimately motivated." He is anomalously motivated. He is amoral rather
than immoral, and one suspects that his greatest fault is that he is too dull to ever puzzle out any of these issues.
The people around Lucien are really no better. Horn is both attracted to him and repelled by his hat. He has a new Jewish heritage and yet intensely worried about her father and grandmother. Her father is an avaricious coward. Every character in the film is afraid of her. They are warmly perceived as fragile human beings, too.
The actors in "Lacome, Lucien" are unknowns. Pierre Blaise, who plays the title role, is a fresh face who can establish himself as a co-star seemingly at will but hide everything behind a smoldering
mask whenever the scene calls for it.
The woman who plays the grandmother, however, is Theresa Gleise, whom Adoph Addison helped to create a great German actress. She responded by leaving the country, right after she mailed to the Fuehrer a letter in response to him that she was Jewish.
"Lacombe, Lucien" begins with a quotation from SantaYana: "Those who do not remedit the past are compelled to appear here is a reminder that the problems of the occupation are present today and that the ability to withhold all of others mustn't be coupled with a lack of commitment.
Fields' rare films come to KU
By WARD HARKAVY
Guest Writer
Stand in front of a mirror.
Take an average red potato and place it in front of your nose. If you were standing on the floor, you would now be W.C. Fields.
Fields' talent went far beyond the tip of his bulbous nose. He's been dead for 30 years, but his focus on each generation since then.
However, some of his short films are rarely seen. This situation will be rectified Sunday in Woodruff Auditorium, thanks to his Robert De Ronalos Fields; Robert De Flores, a film collector; the Lawrence Arts Center; and SUA.
It's likely that Ronald Fields and De Flores, both of whom talk about the man and his films, will be entertaining. But whatever they say won't match what of seeing W. G. C. Fields on film.
Four films will be shown Sunday at Woodruff; "Pool Sharks" (1915), Fields' first movie; "The Barber Shop" (1933), in which he plays a harried barber; the Goat Girl (1924), Fields' first sound film; and "The Dentist" (1932), a hilariously vulgar romp through the world of teeth.
Each of the four films is about
Concerts
This Week's Highlights
(3:30 p.m. Sunday in the University Theatre)
KIP PAPKA LAMBDA CONCERTO CONCERT-Lynn Cortez conduct the University symphony orchestra in concertos and arias. Composers include Cipol, Ravel, Handel, and Amira.
DANNY COX WITH JOHN PINEK known in the area for his blues guitar, Cox appears with a guitar duo from Florida who did the recording.
20 minutes long, and all except "Pool Sharks" are Mack Samson. The team has a debt to Fields' long vaudeville career, during which
(8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Off-the-Wall Hall)
(Through Feb. 13 in the Inge Theatre)
he developed his unique brand of comedy.
One of Fields' legacies to us is the wealth of identities be assumed on screen. In various
Theater
SACRAMENTO 50 MILES - KU Theatre for Young People presents a modern adaptation of a Grimm's fairy tale in which four animals run away from the witch, musicians in Sacramento, Calif. (2 p.m. tomorrow in the University Theatre)
SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND-An intensive, tense study of personal violence, in selections, by William Hanley.
(8 tonight in Swarthout Recital Hall)
Recitals
FACULTY RECITAL
FOR RECITATION
in the department of plano, will play works by Mozart;
will play Mannan and
Brian T. Griffen
FACULTY RECITAL-
James Moeser, dean of
the School of Fine Arts and chairman of the department of
Music for works by Bach, D'Aquin and Widor on the organ he organized.
(8 p.m. Monday at Plymouth Congregational Church)
Exhibits
PARIS; A COLLAGE—An interesting portrayal of Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries through its art. Major artists through its art. Casso, Chagai, Manet, Degas and Daumier are included.
DAY FOR NIGHT - Francois Truffaut's look at the old studio productions, he and he and he helped to destroy, is light, yet oddly touching. This Academy Award winner stars Valentina Torres, Jacqueline Blisset and Jean Pierre Leaud as members of the cast of "Meet Pamela" plays the slighty deaf director
(Through Feb. 13 in the Kansas Union Gallery)
ROGER SHIMOMURA AND ROGER GANEE 19-新 serigraphs by Shimomurai, sculpture in, his Sculpture and sculpture, in his "Oriental Masterprint Series." Twelve paintings by Gee, assistant professor of painting and sculpture, done in acrylic and lacquer on plexiglas with mirrors and non-reflective glass and nylon netting.
ROBERT DEMACHY
PROBERT DEMACHY
Photographs from the turn of
the century, which give
the effect of impressionist oil paint.
(Through Feb. 15 in the Museum of Art.
Films
CANARY—More a mystery than a horror feature. Pat Leml's featured Palm Leaf's a wonderful gothic style.
(Tomorrow through March 4 at 7 E. 7th)
THE LADY VANISHES
Michael. Redgrave
Richard. Search
the for the mysterious Miss Froy is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic films, a giant studio work gives the picture the necessary gloss to
Starring Laura LaPlante
Creighton Hale and Forrest
Stanley.
THE BLACKBANK-George Sainp Sam Jr. a frumpy prince with a live up to his famous father's reputation. The纵平 slot hiesp the Mallete Falcon." That "worst bird" mutes Junior
ROMEO AND JULIET-
Zorre Franzelli '1988 film-production wear well, meaning that if you are going around, it won't lose any of its luster for you this time. Purists may wish that it would, but the film's quality has its benefits. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are beautiful at the lovers, even if John Mercuto is more effactive.
features and short subjects he was S. Quentin Quail, Sneed Herm, Elmer Prettywillie, Ambrose Wofinger, Eustace McGarge, F. Trostingh II, Frothingh II, Whipmade, Cubbert J, Twille and Egbert Souse (accent grave over the "e").
Check advertisements for theaters and times.
Despite the different sobriquets, Fields portrayed what was essentially the same character in his films. This person was usually hempced, bumbling, slightly dishonest and insensitive, little things such as putting his bat on, taking a nap or shyling.
Besides being funny. Fields wrote funny and absurd screenplays for many of his movies. His scripts were always very hard, always gave himself the best chance to be funny. But he
wasn't self-conscious and he never tried to be "important," as Jerry Lewis does.
Fields also appeared in works not of his own creation. He was a unique Micawber in "David Copperfield" and a rather startling Humpty Dumpty in "Alice in Wonderland."
Although a brilliant mime, Fields was at his best in sound films, whether he was grooming a "Godfrey Daniel!" or muttering appeasing words to the children of my kumquats! "in it's a Gift," It has been said about W. C. Fields that inanimate objects seemed to have a life and will all their own for him and that small children and dogs were his sworn enemies. But he must be a bit careful because he's been making them laugh for more than 60 years.
Beware the cat's claw
Contessa the cat, played by Judi Sterling, Lawrence sophomore, gains the grudging respect of Beauregard the rooster, played by Beryl Benary, Newberry, S.C., graduate student, in the Theatre Department.
Staff Photo by JAY KOELZER
'Slow Dance' idealism fails as answer
By EVIE RAPPORT
By EVIE RAPPORT
Entertainment Co-Editor
This is the second production in the Inge Theatre series this year that takes us back to those days of idealism in the early 1960s when-as a nation we apparently thought we could make things right simply by deciding we could.
All we had to do, it seemed,
was to identify the problem and
then fix it. Our good intentions
were enough to see us through
moral, political or
economic difficulties in our
naths.
The first such production, Telemachus Clay*, performed by the young dreamer finally discovered that if you can't find happiness in your own back yard, you probably never lost it
The second, William Hanley's
Playwright Hanley constructed a situation in which the great moral questions of our time—civil rights, political morality and right to life—demonstrated what could happen if we denied our responsibilities to them.
"Slow Dance on the Killing Ground," which opened Wednesday night in the Inge Theatre, shows that one lives with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life.
It's all terrifying sincere and meaningful, full of the gritty realism that delighted Ella Kazan and the Actor's Studio team. It's a sort of satisfactory attempt to resolve the issues it pretends to discuss.
The play opens in the tiny Brooklyn candy store of an aging German immigrant who's quietly moving through his
evening chores. In bursts an extravagantly dressed black dress- resplendent in his cap and bells and braid, wearing an extraordinarily wide-brimmed hat for years ahead of the fashions.
As they move through their edy introductions, we learn that each pretends to be something he isn't. Glas, the German, pretends to be a survivor of the concentration camps of World War II. Ranched by hatred and to be a survivor of the inner-city concentration camps of urban life.
They're later joined by a young woman, who pretends to be a cynical sophisticate able to force her daughter to pending abortion. She's in the store because she can't find the baby she needs. She was to meet the shady doctor
who promised to relieve her of her troublesome inconvenience.
The young black's in the store because he's hiding from the police. Despite his proclaimed genius, his IQ of 187, his knowledge of Kafka and Baudelaire, the only way he can solve his problems is by murdering his mother.
The German's in the store because he can't accept that he was sent to Germany as son in Germany to support Communism during the war, only to see his god—Stalin—join him with Hitler to destroy his army.
The actors responsible for portraying these characters do it ably, facing the challenges of intergalactic monologues and international diplomacy. Robert Smith, as the dusty and desiccated Glas, contrasts well
with the flamboyant jitteriness of Bruce Sayles, who plays Randall.
Lambriary the College Hedge, and Rosie the college girl, portrays the alternate cynicism and palate of her character with a that saves the show from its own simplistic sentimentality.
Director Anne Abrams moves the actors slowly and deliberately through their confrontations, using the depth available in the arena stage set with imagination.
But those strengths don't make up for what, finally, is the play's weakness. The answers it pretends to give are too easy, too obvious. But maybe we've all believed in the easy answers to the hard questions for too long.
'City of Lights' skines brightly in exhibit
By MARY ANN HUDDLESTON
MINT ENVIRONMENT
Entertainment Co. Editors
Paris, the "City of Lights",
shone most brightly, perhaps,
during the last quarter of
the 19th century. The brilliance
of its society acted as a magnet,
drawing from all over the world
artists and intellects who found
inction in their surroundings.
This gray, avant-garde world provides the setting for the game on display in the Kansas Union Gallery through Feb. 13.
The exhibit combines prints, photographs and posters, as well as books and artifacts, to give as much of the artistic flavor of Paris as possible. Most of the works are from the Kansas Museum of Art and private collections in Lawrence.
Although works from earlier and later periods are included in the exhibit, the works of the 1880s and '90s deserve the closest attention because they illustrate the uniqueness of Paris.
Some of the works are by major artists, including Pablo Picasso, although those are by only the only ones worth looking at.
Two color lithographs by Marc Chagall are included, "Champs-Elysees" and "Place de la Concorde." Both are from the 1950s but they display the brilliant colors and fantasies of
Chagall's first days in Paris before World War I.
A dry pointet by Picasso, "Saltinbamque," depicts a paucity clown drawn with the most pure and simple line. Circus people were popular contemporaries, many of whom settled in Paris around the turn of the century.
Among Picasso's friends were literary patron Gertrude Stein and artist Douanier Rousseau, leaders of the avant-garde that made its home along the hill, winding streets of Montmartre.
Here, and on the Left Bank,
artists, poets and men of leisure
met in cafes to thrash out the
intellectual questions of the day.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a few years before, had depicted some of the gaudier, seamier sides of Paris. His two novels about Paris were characteristic of his work in their sketch-like qualities.
Toulouse-Laurence's theatrical subjects, "Marcelle Lender, en Buste" and "Oscar Wilde and Romain Coulus," must have spelled together successfully encapulated with the glitter and fantasy of the stage.
The lithographs by Honore Daumier are among the best work of the period, because they represent people because they represent amusingly the simple.
everyday scenes of Parisian life. The vivid expressions on his faces make his characters come alive.
Damier's best work in the exhibit is "M. Chose, premier saltimbanque d'Europe." It is a caricature of King Louis-Philippe as a pear balancing on a tightrope, the first clown of the tapestry made the lithograph in 1833, being released from prison for publishing prints damaging to the French throne.
Two Art Nouveau posters by Alphonse Mucha, "Job" and "Mona Lisa," by Bernhard as La Santaritane, are beautiful for their exotic women subjects, drawn with chalky lines in faces and complex, flat patterns.
Several photographs taken of Paris buildings in the late 1800s bear a striking resemblance to the Paris of today.
Jules Cheret depicts the
The cartoon sketches delightfully express the moral climate of the time, so different from the rigid Victorian sentiment in England and America.
Jean-Louis Forain's cover illustration for Le Rire, a popular humor magazine, is especially characteristic. Titled "Erennes uties," it shows a man asking his wife, "Are you as pleasant awakening? My mistress left Paris last night!"
However, not all the 19th century artists chose to portray the stylish world of cafes, operas or promenades in the Bois de Bologne. Some saw them in the lives of the poor of Paris.
carefree fervour of the 1890s through his swirling, dromed dressed figures in "Palais de Glace." His cancan dancers in "Moulin Rouge" give a taste of the ravis sky night life.
"Workers Leaving the Factory", a dark, smoky print. The neophile Alexandre Steinlen explains the apathy for the working classes.
Earag Chaine's "View of Paris" is a dismal look at the smokestacks and factories that exist on the outskirts of the city.
Charles Meryon has the largest number of works in the exhibit. Meryon was a close observer of Paris who interested in city scenes. "Le Strgey," a gaggle atop Notre Dame
cathedral, symbolizes what to Meryon was "stupidity, cruelty, lust and hynocris."
A few, but not enough, works by Americans in Paris are also included. Mary Hunton's "A Room in Room" portrays the clutter of an artist's studio or a student's room.
The exhibit also contains books written in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly in French, and some beautiful examples of buildings such as La Renaissance crystal and Sevres porcelain. In spite of the variety of scenes and subjects the exhibit displays, it can only skim the surface of the Paris of old, which in many ways still exists. The museum's focus lifetime to understand the complexities that make up Paris.
However, "Paris—A Collage" makes an admirable start at describing the city. It should be possible to formulate a lot of how familiar he is with Paris.
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