KANSAS REVIEWS
FILMS: Newley's Merkin
By MIKE SHEARER
BY MIKE SHEARER
Arts & Reviews Editor
Arts & Reviews Editor
I don't think Anthony Newley set out to make a great film when he decided to make Can Heirionymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
I think he was trying to make an enjoyable film, and in that he succeeded. His unusual new movie is an enjoyable better-than-average mediocre film.
Newley wrote the music. He wrote the script. He produced the film. He directed it.
And he saved it by starring in it.
Newley is a rare talent, whose pleasure in making this film manages to get off the screen and into the audience by varying the film's intensity from the flippant sex scenes on Merkin's bed on the beach to his song to God on a high cliff.
Thankfully, Milton Berte plays a role which requires that his humor be what it always is—dull. And George Jessel is used beautifully as the white-suited Death, a vulture telling corny jokes in an memorable monotone.
Some critics charged that Newley had integrated his Freudian film with sex and nudity merely to get an "X" rating and garner a few dollars that the script alone couldn't.
So Newley bares his own rear end and those of several young ladies. All of which add a funny sort of glamour to the movie. And there's really nothing wrong with bare rear ends, now is there?
Someone obscure once said of someone else, also obscure. "He did nothing in particular, and he did it very well."
Anthony Newley has done his "nothing in particular" very well.
And if you see the movie and a few months later remember that you once saw an Anthony Newley movie which you have forgotten entirely. Newley won't have failed entirely.
An old proverb says that for a trout to thrust magnificently out of the water in a moment of beauty and then go under again forever without any human eye ever having seen the splendor, the beauty of it still exists.
Newley's film is one of this kind of fleeting beauty.
Meet our new friends
We were delighted when freshman Dave Sokoloff showed us his portfolio early this week.
So delighted, in fact, that we decided to share his fantastical cartoon strip with you.
The whimsical world of Griff and the Unicorn has been copyrighted by the Kansan and will appear three times weekly on the Kansan editorial page,starting tomorrow.
Summer Tree opens
Summer Tree, a play by Ron Cowen, will open the KU theatrical season tonight in Swarthout Recital Hall.
The performance at 8:20 p.m. will begin a three-day run of the Experimental Theatre Series production.
Sept. 16
1969 KANSAN 5
Next on the KU theatrical agenda will be Die Fleddermaus by Johann Strauss, Oct 31, Nov 1, Nov 2, Nov. 6 and Nov. 7.
spotlight
Beware of critics!
MIKE SHEARER
Arts & Reviews Editor
Sydney J. Harris, one of my favorite columnists, once wrote a column warning his readers about erities.
The only reviewer who is ever quoted is the reviewer who can tear the very meat off the bones of a play, movie, book or record. No one ever quotes praise.
Many fine critics, Harris says, have been crowded out of the profession because they would rather give an honest evaluation of a work of art rather than write quotable prose.
"As every professional writer knows," wrote Harris, "it is much easier to jeer or sneer than to make a balanced estimate."
Since every critic is in danger of being attacked by someone who liked what the reviewer panned or detested what the reviewer relished, the start of a reviewing season seems a good time to warn readers that critics are human, and are given to the human tendency of afflicting their analyses of any work of art with their own writing style.
Art and entertainment, unlike politics and philosophy, need not necessarily be treated with the utmost seriousness because much of art and entertainment solicits an emotional response more than an intellectual one.
Should one of our reviewers at any time fall into the rut of emphasizing his own writing style rather than his analysis of the subject, artists and fans should forgive him.
And remember, in judging whatever comes," Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative," as Oscar Wilde said.
Leading off the season, which will include seven events, will be the Prague Symphony performing Oct.17.
"A review might be garnished with wit, and perhaps even a soupcon of wickedness," wrote Harris, "but when these become
meant he didn't like the movie so no poison pen letters, please
Music majors will be interested in the line-up for this year's KU Concert Course.
the substance, a reviewer has relinquished his magnifying glass for a mirror that diminishes everyone, including in the end himself."
Perhaps there is room for the Rex Reed type of reviewer who considers anyone an artist who has a personality which pleases the Rex Reed type of reviewer, and anyone else—a hack.
Hopefully, our arts and reviews page this year will not feature this type of personality rating but will rather center around the performance, the manuscript, the sound.
One last word on this subject:
all opinions on this page will be those of the author:
***
Simone Signoret's Diabolique will open the SUA Classical Film Series Sept. 10.
. . .
And if that author says a movie is bad and you happened to like that movie, the author really only
. . .
Tonight. Some Like It Hot and One, Two, Three will be presented in the Special Film Series in the Union Ballroom. Some Like It Hot is an excellent movie, worth seeing more than once. One, Two, Three is a rather dated story about the wall separating East and West Germany.
On the campus film agenda for the rest of the semester are such classics as Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Oct. 7), A Man and a Woman (Oct. 10 & 11), Sawdust and Tinsel (Oct. 15) and an Oct. 22 Douglas Fairbanks festival.
Navy denies Evans motion
SUBIC BAY, Philippines (UPI)
—The military judge trying Cmdr. Albert S. McLemore today denied an acquittal motion which claimed the Navy had failed to show that McLemore was responsible for the collision of his ship, the U.S. destroyer Frank E. Evans, with an Australian carrier.
Capt. James E. Keys, 49, of Kansas City, Mo., the sole authority in the case, considered the
motion for less than 10 minutes and then announced to the court that "the motion is denied."
Law student fees are $220.50 for residents and $450.50 for non-residents.
The Evans, on Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) maneuvers in the South China Sea, sank with the loss of 74 Americans on June 3 after being sliced in half by the Australian carrier Melbourne.
Keys' ruling did not mean that McLemore, 40, of Vallejo, Calif.,
An itemized statement of University fees, including optional charges for class dues, Jayhawker yearbook and student insurance, will be mailed to each student within a week.
Fee payments due September 24
A late payment charge of $10 will be required of any student whose fee payment does not reach the Business Office by Sept. 24.
Fee payments are due in the Business Office on Wednesday, Sept. 24. Full-time undergraduate or graduate students who are residents of Kansas will pay $170.50, non-residents will pay $400.50.
A JEROME HELLMAN-JOHN SCHLESINGER PRODUCTION
DUSTIN HOFFMAN
JON VOIGHT
"MIDNIGHT COWBOY"
BRENDA VACCARO JOHN McGIVER RUTH WHITE
SYLVIA MILES BARNARD HUGHES
Screenplay by WALDO SMIT. Based on the novel by
Serenade by WAHIDALYA Based on the novel by JAMES LEO HEILHJY
Symphony by JOHN SCHLOSENGER
Mini Impersonation by JOHN BARRY FAVORITE
PERSONAL LICENSE
NOT ADMINISTRATORY
COLOR by DeLuxe
United Artists
Mat. 2:30 Sat. & Sun.
Eve. 7:15 - 9:30
All Seats $1.75
The defense then prepared to present its case.
was guilty. It only meant the government had raised some doubts of his alleged negligence and dereliction of duty.
Defense counsel, Cmdr. Robinson Lappin, 40, of Washington, D.C., earlier moved to have the charges of negligence and dereliction of duty dismissed after the prosecution rested its case.
The government has produced "no evidence, not a scintilla, to show the commanding officer had any knowledge of the flight schedule of the Melbourne," the defense said.
"Inga is so graphic, I could have sworn the screen was smoking." N.Y. Daily Column
JERRY GROSS and NICHOLAS DEMETROULES
Persons Under 18
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