The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 39

Page 36 The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, April 18, 1981 THE GOOD WEEKEND Arts and Entertainment I. It -Tmr 'Ct-T Breams of browning the boss over a slow fire Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) is an actress trying to keep a theatre open after her Jewish husband Lucas (Heinz Bennent) has supposedly fled. The atmosphere is tense and dangerous. A pro-Nazi theatre critic (lean-Louis Richard) has the power to ban plays and ruin lives, while the actors themselves are engrossed in intrigues which might be either personal or political. For the first hour at least the film maintains a powerfully ambiguous mood, blending mystery and menace, laughter and romance in a drama of uncertainty punctuated by rehearsals of a play called The Woman Who Disappeared, by the Norwegian Karen Bergen.

Gerard Depardieu is charming as Bernard Granger, the leading actor, and there are excellent cameo roles for )ean Poiret and Andrea Ferreol. But the force of the film is Deneuve, who is used for once as an actress instead of an icon, and who pours a strength and complexity into her role which intensifies the effect of her extraordinary beauty. Towards the end, however, The Last Metro seems to run down and become one with the melodrama the actors are rehearsing. It turns into a rather banal love story riddled with weak nostalgia and misty sentiment. As usual, the best thing about this The week in films Meaghan Morris THE Last Metro is the film by Francois Truffaut which was nominated for Best Foreign Film in this year's Academy Awards.

It didn't win, but it has been a great critical and commercial success in France. That's not always a good sign, since French audiences olten show remarkably syrupy tastes in film. But with a magnificent performance by Catherine Deneuve and a nice nostalgia for the theatre world. The Last Metro is the best film Truf-faut's made for years. The beginning is a stirring one.

with the mellow tune of a popular song giving way to the brusque, jerky narration borrowed from newsreels as the time and place of the drama are set in a prologue -Parts, 1942, the German this line-up of actresses led some critics to expect a profound, searching drama. It's not that but it is very funny if you don't mind shrieks and whoops, if you like corny jokes, and if you've ever dreamed of browning your boss over a slow fire. Franklin Hart Jr (Dabney Coleman) is an awful man. He runs his office as though he's king of a kindergarten, abusing his taking credit for their work, and blackmailing them into being at his beck and call. Besides the pleasure of seeing his downfall the film provides a gloriously detailed comedy of office life, such as the daily wrestle with a neurotic Xerox machine and anyone who has ever been subjected to this experience should find the film excellent therapy.

the extremist Baffo, with his brutal, benevolent honesty, plays the role of an anti-Pied Piper waving the children as far away from him as possible to a place where they might make a Utopia of their own. COLIN Wiggins' Nine to Five is also a fairy tale of social changes but this one is hardcore, commercial madcap comedy with a slick style, a laugh-a-minute pace, and a very strong trace of television in the forms of its humour. With half of Sydney skipping around to Dolly Parton's theme song at the moment, it's hardly necessary to say that it's a fantasy of a secretaries' revolution starring Par-ton, ane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The film has had a mixed reception overseas, and it's possible that A masterwork flows for Sydney SOME NEW EXHIBITIONS Coventry: Colin Offord Specimen IV and other works. Allen da Carteret paintings Bloomfield: Charles Cooper Topical Landscapes Cutcliffe Gallery (39a South Steyne, Manly): The Balmaln Aon (sewn Balmain artists) genio's distraught father at the end of the trip.

"By dumping Eugenio, 1 expressed your unconscious wish!" he sniffs indignantly. The Last Metro, NRC Showcase, Double Bay Voltati Eugenio, NRC Valhalla Paddington Nine to Five, NRC Hoyts Centre As the search begins, a long array of flashbacks slowly reconstructs the story of Eugenio's life as the son of two half-hearted radicals with spirit of Sydney, but is an integral part of the design. CONSERVATIVE, life-sized por-trait paintings and drawings of genre subjects by the" Melbourne artist Guy Stuart at Gallery A may surprise Sydney viewers not familiar with recent directions in his work. From this distance Guy Stuart has generally been regarded as a modernist painter who yet remained outside mainstream movements. Since the late sixties, in the heyday for instance of the big Trans-field Prize exhibitions which at Stephen of the Tank Stream Fountain older.

Besides, they want to emigrate to Australia. For a less-skilled director, this might have made ideal tear-jerker material. But the subtlety of Comencini's style emerges from the very first scenes, where we begin with the adults' point of view. To the tune of some bouncy music with a touch of melancholy, a car containing a man and a boy rushes through a rainy landscape. The boy torments the man by playing with the radio; and just as we realise they are strangers, the man does the unthinkable and throws the child out of the car then doesn't come back.

Most adults have wanted to do something like that at one time or another and Baffo a satirical journalist played with perfect comedy by Mcme Perlini says as much to Eu- none of the symbolism, for instance, that one finds in the public murals of the late M. Napier Waller, of which there are many fine examples in Melbourne. It aspires more closely to the industrial murals painted in the United States during the 1930s. Diego Rivera's epic mural of modern industry, at the Detroit Institute of Art, is a recognised masterpiece of this particular genre. One would have liked to see a greater sense of the co-ordinated movement of workers pulling in unison that gives muscle to the Rivera frescos rather than the more static poses of Zofrea's figures.

But undoubtedly the many levelled areas of activity are depicted in a way that not only meets the decorative requirements of mural painting but conveys the excitement and atmosphere engendered in the process of producing a great daily newspaper. Zofrea's naturally flamboyant style is effectively curbed in his pyramidal compositions of men and machines. The one weak link is the sudden change of scale from the life-sized figures in the front panels to the miniature buildings at Circular Quay and the bent perspective of his wide-vision painting of Sydney Harbour, on the left wall. By contrast, -on the right wall, his picnic scene of people escaping into the great outdoors not only captures the holiday Si GIRLS IN NINE TO HIVE Truffaut film is the photography of Nestor Almendros. ANOTHER outstanding film which has opened this week is Luigi Comencini's Voltati Eugenio, winner of the Gold Hugo at last year's Chicago Film Festival as well as two prizes at Venice.

Variously subtitled They All Loved Him or Turn Around Eugenio. this film is a lyrical study of the desolation of modern childhood made like much of the best Italian cinema with a wicked sense of humour and an almost painful generosity of spirit Eugenio (Francesco Bonelli) has a fairly ordinary family. His parents quite like him, but don't really want him. They don't really want each other. His grandparents love him, but he gets in the way as they grow trivialising of the work can be dismissed.

In this imaginatively conceived and superbly executed fountain, they sensitively and affectionately take their place in the natural order of things. THE Lloyd Rees painting of Sydney from Dawes Point is now on view in the Herald exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. While the Zofrea mural lends itself admirably to reproduction, becoming indeed easier on the eye and more readily readable in the process, no colour photograph can do justice to the Rees painting. A good photograph can match the colour harmonies and faithfully record the composition of the picture. But it can't reproduce the paint quality or the spiritual essence of this magical work.

This is, I believe, a Lloyd Rees masterpiece, alongside which other nearby paintings suddenly become pedestrian. With its floating, visionary view of the Opera House, midstream in a sea of blue and gold, it exists in the realm of pure painting. The detailed research, design decisions and compromises required for the successful completion of a large mural project would be enough to deter most artists. But not so Sal-vatore Zofrea, who met the challenge face on. This is a work that has no real counterpart in Australia.

There is Stuart's Paula Lindlay Meldrum influence But Stuart casts his net far and wide in his quest for greater realism, or the Grand Style of Sir Joshua Reynolds he can't make up his mind which it is he wants. While on the one hand he turns romantic eye to English eighteenth-century portraiture in his paintings of Elizabeth Mortlock, more creditably he looks at the Spanish school and Velazquez in an admirably handled red painting of a girl with a cat, entitled Carol and Augustine Stuart A strange, melancholic rjaintmg (Darling People, Darling Space), depicting a raggle-taggle group of ill-assorted figures moving through landscape, is vaguely reminiscent of Goya. Other works are a splendidly fleshy painting entitled Figure with a Japanese Chest, in which he uses a male model, and a down-to-earth, pungently observed portrait of Oscar. Red and black crayon drawings impressionistic glimpses of life have a rich larding of social comment. The last notably visible works of his to be exhibited in Sydney were his huge hanging nets, or Lattice Constructions, in the Recent Australian Art exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, in 1973.

And except for the question of size he is obviously attracted to the large canvas a painting of his in the gallery collection from his Bowl and Wall series does little to prepare us for the impact of these recent works at Gallery A. His full-length portraits (or studies) of the single figure, standing or seated in dimly lit interiors, or posed against a dark, romantic landscape, could well have come out of that stronghold of late nineteenth-century academic tonal painting, the Aca-demie Colarossi in Paris. There is also the indigenous Max Meldrum influence. This is evident in his painting of Paula Lindlay, in the broadly brushed surface handling of her pink blouse, although the girl is generally more solidly modelled and sits more heavily than does a Meldrum figure. problems of their own unemployment, their families, poor housing conditions, emotional distress, and the constant tension caused by the refusal of Fernanda (Dalila Di Laz-zaro) to play little wife for Giancarlo (Saverio Marconi).

These episodes are as amusing as they are touching, and by winning our sympathies for the adults as well as the child, Comencini succeeds in luring us into a landscape of absolute sadness where life is an endless series of shaky compromises and there is no place for children at all. Yet it isn't a pessimistic film and despite a few well-placed, shattering moments of violence it doesn't sensationalise unlike Pocket Money, Truffaut's much-praised but inferior film about child-beating. Instead, Voltati Eugenio turns into a form of modern fable where tracted interstate entries, he has been seen in Sydney only occasionally. At times like this Melbourne can seem as far away as London or Paris. Apart from the showing of some surprisingly (at the time) academic drawings at Tony Coleing's obscure and now defunct Works on Paper Gallery in 1977, this is his first one-man exhibition here.

In Melbourne he exhibits fairly regularly at Bruce Pollard's Pinaco-theca Gallery, considered a showcase for progressive and off-mainstream art. earth, pungently observed AS PART of its 150th anniversary celebrations The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned three art works: the Sal-vatore Zofrea mural for the foyer of the Herald building in Broadway, the Lloyd Rees painting and the Tank Stream Fountain in Herald Square, Circular Quay. Of the three works, Stephen Walker's fountain will undoubtedly have the most far reaching consequences for the people of Sydney. A Tasmanian sculptor, Stephen Walker has executed commissions for sculpture fountains throughout Australia. His Tidal Pools piece outside the Bank of New South Wales, Martin Place, is one of the most agreeable public works in Sydney.

But now, on a much more conspicuous public level, in his Tank Stream Fountain he touches unprecedented heights. In a work that miraculously involves people, he sets a new standard for civic sculpture. I know of no work utilising the play of water at one point 2,250 litres (500 gallons) of it, flowing across gently sloping terraces, retracing the curves of history as it bubbles and spouts over and through the sculptural forms that so enhances a city or captures the imagination of the public. The commissioning of the fountain and the choice of artist by the Herald can only be seen as an act of inspired patronage. It surely ushers in an era of greater public enjoyment of sculpture, encouraging an awareness of our natural environment.

It is to these ends that Stephen Walker dedicates his art. For instance, in this great com-i plex of water and bronze, a specially designed children's fountain with its secret crannies, its nesting birds, its rich surface embellishments of native animal, insect and plant life, is dedicated to "all the children who have played around the Tank Stream." The main fountain, conceived as a single entity, is composed of five interrelated pools. A towering centrepiece of four vertical bronze The week in art Nancy Borlase columns represents the four seasons. Cyclical change is richly evoked: in the austere, gaunt form of Winter with its cap of crystalline spears, trail of ivy and snails clinging to its bare trunk; in the sensual, full-bodied bud forms of Spring; in Summer's pagan shedding of bark a ritual that Walker equates with the shedding of clothes in Summer; and in the lovely, languid linearity of autumn, with its medallion spray of gumnuts and leaves native to the region. Utilising the natural incline of the site from George to Pitt Street, the flow of water gains momentum and volume as, metaphorically, it reaches the sea in the fifth and largest pool.

The sea is powerfully evoked in the turbulence of water tumbling over ledges, the wave-like rhythm of the massive sculptural forms and the alert, salty presence of two pied cormorants, one of them guarding its eggs. Any fear that the introduction of realistically sculptured wild-life' creatures, inhabitants at the time of early settlement, could result in a N.S.W. Premier's Department DIVISION OF CULTURAL ACTIVITIES Millie llii! Wmm THEATRE AND DANCE Cultural grants for 1982 The New South Wales Government is inviting applications tor grants under the Government's programme of assistance for theatre and dance in New South Wales during 1982. Grants under this programme are generally given to subsidise salaries or fees paid tor professional services. Grants are not normally made towards the administrative costs of organisations or the purchase of equipment.

The Cultural Grants Advisory Council, which will consider applications, prefers to direct its assistance to professional groups. Support tor amateur groups Is available only In special circumstances. Application forms and guidelines are available from: The Director Division of Cultural Activities Box R.105, Royal Exchange P.O. Sydney, 2000 The closing date for applications is 12 June, 1981. COMMUNITY ARTS OFFICER Written applications, for the above position, are Invited from suitably qualified and experienced persons and will be received by the undersigned until 4.30 p.m.

on Monday, April 27, 1961. As this position is a new one end the appointee will be the first Community Arts Officer employed by flandwick Municipal Council, it ahould appeal to highly motivated and community minded persons interested in establishing a Community Arts Programme aimed at stimulating awareness, education end interest in the arts in th local community. Joint funding of the position by the Australia Council Community Arts Board and Randwick Council provides tor the appointment to be tor twelve (12) monlhs only. However, subject to satisfactory service end the availability of funding, opportunity will exist for the period of employment to be extended. The successful applicant will be required to undertake the usual duties of Community Ans Officer and the salary is negotiable but as a guide will be in the vicinity of S13.000-$14.000 per annum depending on qualifications and experience.

A proven record of achievement in the community arts field. auTenfe academic qualifications and administrative end organising skills would be an advantage and applicants are requested to submit details together with at least two recent references. It further information is required, please contact Mr C. Sneddon 39902Hext.224 Administrative Centre. ROSE, Acting Town Clerk 30 Frances Slreet, Randwick.NSW 2031 Oscar down to.