Robert De Niro is flanked by the rest of the cast in the Sam Spiegel-Elia
Kazan production of The Last Tycoon.

A cast filled with stars
- but the film is empty

When you walk out of the theatre
after seeing one of this kind, the
question invariably comes to
mind: Why did they bother making
it? What has it got to say? What is
it trying not to say? Was this the
“real” Hollywood, of the 1930s,
when men like Irving Thalberg, on

whom Fitzgerald is supposed to ,

have based his fictional character,
lived?

We arenowall accustomed to the
settings of unbelievable opulence,
the mandatory explicit sex scenes,
the obscenities coming from the
mouth of the charming leading
lady — all current fare.

In this film with its star-studded
cast, nothing is different, just a bit
duller. De Niro — playing the
dominating, arrogant film
producer who is looked upon by his
colleagues as a genius (but of
which genius no illustrations are
offered) — has apparently been
left grief stricken by the death of
his wife some time before the
opening of the film. In an accident
during the production of a film he
hurries to the scene and in the
confusion sees a young woman
glide by. She reminds him of his
departed wife, and he becomes
obsessed. He finds her, has her,
loses her, goes to pieces.

Rarely has such an important
cast of actors been gathered for
such unimportant work. Elia
Kazan (you will remember him as
one of the stool pigeon fingermen of
the Hollywood Ten days) creates
lots of hustle and bustle, and ut-
terly fails to bring forth a
recognizable human being.

The original novel — unfinished
at the time of Fitzgerald’s death —
has little virtue. It is definitely not
an in-depth view of Hollywood in
the ’30s, and it is a mystery why a
youngish English writer — Harold
Pinter — should have been given
the assignment.

Along with his ignorance of the
scene, Pinter has a rigidly built-in
formula for writing dialogue: he
insists upon pauses between lines
to give them = significance,
profundity. But what if, as in the
case of this script, there is no
profundity? Then you will doze
through dozens of scenes like this:

He: Listen. (three second pause:
she is listening, he isn’t saying
anything).

She: (finally) What?

He: (three second pause)
Nothing.

Almost 30
anthropologist,
Powdermaker, wrote a_ classic
book, Hollywood, the Dream
Factory. It created a sensation in
Hollywood, because she explained
and proved the triumph of the
profit motive over the creative, to
the great discomfort of the

years ago an
Dr. Hortense

THE LAST TYCOON. Based on the
novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Starring
Robert Di Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert
Mitchum, Jeanne Moreau and others.
Directed by Elia Kazan. Screenplay by
Harold Pinter. At the Capitol 6,
Vancouver, from March 18,

executives she excoriated.

In a way, The Last Tycoon has
within it elements about which she
was writing: the totalitarianism,
the passive creatures being
manipulated, extending through
the personal and social relation-
ships. But instead of truly
examining this, and showing its
rottenness, the film in a quirky
way sentimentalizes and glorifies
these qualities, about which she’
said, “In Hollywood, primitive
magical thinking exists side by
side with the most advanced
technology.”

Her real point here is how they
undermine each other. She was not
opposed to fantasy. She wrote,
“Escape, per se is neither good or
bad ... the real question is the
quality of what one escapes in-
to. ... Hollywood provides these
ready-made fantasies or
daydreams, and the problem is
whether these are productive or
unproductive.”

Amen, Hortense. The producers
are enriched, the audience im-

poverished. —Lester Cole -
People’s World

Here, in this reviewer’s opinion,
is Farley Mowat at his best. We
already know him as a man who
has written much about our
country, especially about the far
north and of its peoples and their
desperate struggle for survival —
peoples whose tragic lives he so
eloquently sets out in his People of
the Deer and The Desperate
People.

Canada North Now is an im-
passioned attempt by the author to
make Canadians aware of the
reality of the far north, and he
makes a most convicing case. He
looks at the far northin detail, area
by area, from the northwest Yukon
Territory, across to Hudson’s Bay,
to northern Quebec and Labrador
and to the Atlantic shore — taiga
and tundra, mountains, lakes and
waterways. He describes the
terrain and the abundant natural
resources. He writes elaborately of
the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
— hundreds of square miles of
lands that make up the “largest
island group on earth.”

The concept, widely held in
southern Canada, of the far north
as a barren land, writes Mowat, is
a “particularly grotesque
illusion.” He is aghast at the very
meagre knowledge of the great
Northland among most Canadians.
He voices this feeling in his Canada
North, 1967 (of which Canada
North Now is a revised edition):
“This North, this Arctic of the
mind, this frigid concept of a flat
and formless void of ice and snow
congealed beneath the im-
penetrable blackness of a polar
night, is myth! Behind it lies a real
world, obscured in drifts of literary
drivel and buried under an icy
weight of obsessive misconcep-
tions; yet the magnificent reality
behind the myth has been con-
sistently rejected by most
Canadians since the day of our
national birth.”

The myth has been somewhat
dispelled in the intervening years:
the Northern peoples themselves
have become more articulate and
demanding in their struggle for
their just rights and throughout
this country awareness has been
growing of the enormous threat to
the north posed by the multi-
national corporations. Credit must
also go to Farley Mowat who,

CANADA NORTH NOW: The Great

‘Betrayal. By Farley Mowat. Toronto,

McClelland and
Paperback $5.95:

Stewart, 1976,

perhaps more than any other
Canadian has appealed through his
writing to the conscience of our
people.

Mowat castigates the whole
succession of Canadian govern-
ments, particularly those in office
since World War II, which have
aided and abetted the U.S. multi-
nationals which have come
“Yerilously close,’ in Mowat’s
‘words, ‘‘to de facto control over
much of the Canadian Arctic.’
This process continues with virtual
impunity as far as our govern-
ments are concerned, restricted
‘somewhat by the rising tide of

anger and protest at this great. ’

betrayal.

Not only is Canada North Now an

enlightened and detailed
geographical exposition of the far
north and its resources. It is also a
recital of the long history of the
area — from the early Icelandic
settlement (10th century) of
Greenland down to the present — a
history largely of the search for
sources of exploitation.

And in all his able geographical,
historical and political exposition
Mowat is most passionately con-
cerned for the aboriginal Northern
people whose plight stands as an
indictment of government policy.

What do the Northern peoples
want? Wah-shee, First President
of the Northwest Territories Indian
Brotherhood, put it very suc-
cinctly: “What we seek is the
means to avoid the destruction of
the land and our people, and a
democratic right to take our place
in the economic and political future
of the Northern Territories.”’ This
is the core and kernel of the
demands of the Northern peoples,
demands so brutally swept aside
by governments.

An interesting aspect of Mowat’s
progress in his quest for answers
was his visit a few years ago to the
Far North of the Soviet Union
where he travelled extensively and
subsequently set out his finding in
his book Sibir.

Seeing for himself the tremen-
dous industrial development of the
Soviet North and the equal part-
nership of the Soviet Northern
people — some very akin to our

E
me A?
@

J
4

KS a

ja On co

peoples, he could come to only 0
conclusion, one that would confi
his own belief; if it can be, and
been, done there, it can be d0
here.

Mowat does not outline ‘~

program of action. This review!
believes that the Communist Pa
of Canada’s submission to
Mackenzie Pipeline Inquiry (1976

provides a realistic program in A

direction of bringing about
development of the North in th
interest of the enrichment of #
whole country and at the sal

time giving full and adequé’.

attention to the needs and demat?
of the Northern peoples,
sacrificing the very future of
country to the soulless mull
national corporations. zs,
An added valuable feature of

}
}

book are the maps that ve
each of the eleven chapters. Th —
help much to help give the readel’ —

visual concept of the are?
described. Appealing, too, are

sixteen black, glossy photograp!

(by Shin Sugino) which mirror ¥
life and attest to the character
dignity of the Northern peoples.

iy

The book, objectively and sv
jectively, is a grim warning. }
must surely be of great valtl!
especially to young people 6

whom the future of the count

rests. It is vital geography, histo!
and politics.

Don't Miss

Medderick

4

“A new concert from Bargain with new songs
about today’s struggles...
B.C.’s labor movement, Tom Hawken and Surrey’s
outstanding talent, Medderick. ’’

Bargain at half the price
March 25 — 8:30 p.m.
YORK THEATRE
639 Commercial Dr.
Vancouver

with the minstrel of

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RESERVATIONS: 255-0141 ALL TICKETS $3.50

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- Tom Hawken

own Northern: peoples — in te
development with the other Sovit :

-PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 18, 1977—Page 10

Fe ee Le EON