The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 322

LOS ANGELES TIMES CALENDAR MAY 28, 1972 More Clowns Than Aerialists at Cannes Fest BY CHARLES CHAMPLIN -An expatriate British author named Derek Monsey who lives said a vinegary goodby to nearby annual carnival called the Cannes has the Festival. Writing in one of the Film daily trade papers here, when the festival freaks have fled, it Today, Monsey noted that 14.000 or so will once again be possible to park, wall the croisette without bruising a rib, have a quiet drink served by less a for polite and eager waiter (and pay it) and bring small children to town without blushing at the porno posters. The telephones may even start working properly again, Ironsey said, and Cannes will go back to being a fishing where also the transient middlevillage aged take the sun. It would almost be worth it to stick around and see that kind of Cannes. not bloody quite.

Take it But not quite, Mr. Monsey, and I will take me away, away. White it's not really possible or fair to stick a summary label on an ingathering as multisplendored as Cannes, where there have been perhaps 350 films on hand, of which maybe 75 had some claim on your interest, still there this year all too few moments were when the heart leapt up at what it beheld. Orgy of mediocrity, as Tom Curtiss of Paris succinctly said. There were some pleasant things, which I'll get to.

But on balance the festival stayed resolutely earthbound. This year, in fact, that side of the festival which is a bizarre bazaar, a street market of schlock, sex fare and used goods, seemed to have become the main thrust of the event, creating at least a slight sense of irrelevance to the centter ring the clowns upstaging the aerialists, as it were. This year, too, the politics of the festival seemed more baffling and annoying than usual. Indeed, I wish that the Cannes Film Festival would drop the pretense and the ceremonies of being competitive. It is competitive, of course, but the real battle is to get your film into the festival in the first place.

And that battle must be frustrating to the losers because it is conducted without visible rules, or with rules to which every exception is possible. The festival programs are in fact assembled as a series of very private perceptions, often hard to follow. There is, for example, no conceivable reason why the festival should have chosen a flaccid and meretricious work like "To Find a Man" to be in competition, and to have invited John Huston's powerful and disciplined "Fat City," his best work in years, only for a late afternoon, out-of-competition showing as a one-shot homage (which felt curiously like a consolation prize). Same country, same studio, same producer (and he was as baffled as everyone else). There was, as always, a jury to choose from among the films which had won their way into the competition.

It was headed this year by the expatriate American director Joseph Losey, who now lives in England. The 25 Stones Bounce Back From Exile in 'Exile' Ode BY ROBERT HILBURN Director John -like Judge Roy Bean, hero of his newest picture -is a legend in his own time. A Hollywood maverick, he has survived near-disasters with flair and an inimitable style that partakes of both virility and vanity, sweat and silk. Legend Tackles Legend: Huston, Judge Roy Bean BY DAN FORD -You could tell at a glance that there was something special about Judge Roy Bean. He was a sturdy graybearded old rooster.

A genuine character with plenty of salt. They say he was descended from the Cabin Creek Beans of Kentucky, the kind of people handy in an Indian fight but awkward at a tea party. He regarded cheating as good clean fun and if he drank too much and washed too little, that was your problem, not his. The records of Pecos County, show that Roy Bean was appointed justice of the peace on Aug. 2, 1882.

His courthouse was his saloon, the Jersey Lillie. When his honor called recess everybody was expected to drink: judge, jury and prisoner. He kept a pet bear in the saloon. The bear drank too. His decisions were based on common sense: "They send me a new law book every year," he would say, "but I use it to light fires with." Roy Bean spent his last years on the porch of the Jersey Lillie greeting his admirers, helping them perpetuate the legends about himself.

He was regarded as a Ulysses of West Texas, the man who had swept the pimps, dicemen and gunslingers from the tent cities along the Southern Pacific. He had the audacity to call himself "Law West of the Tr, 1 With the start of their U.S. tour less than two weeks away, the Rolling Stones have released a new album that not only previews much of the material they'll be using on the tour but may well be the group's most important album since "Beggars Banquet" in 1968. "Exile on Main Street" (Rolling Stones COC 2-9600) is a collection of 18 mostly up-tempo songs that eases fears that time may' have been catching up with the celebrated rock group. Significantly, the album, a two-record set, takes the Stones an important step beyond the group's increasingly selfconscious, former role of eyebrow raisers.

Though sassy, sexy lyrics remain in some of the songs, the chief focus is on rock 'n' roll excitement rather, than shock. It is a small, but necessary, shift. Ever since the Stones entered their first recording studio nearly 10 years ago, both the group and its music have been symbols of various forms of outrage, nonconformity, anti Establishment behavior. While the Beatles attracted attention for such outwardly innocent pleas as "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Stones were getting to the heart of the issue with such requests as "Let's Spend the Night Together" and complaining that they couldn't get any "Satisfaction." To outsiders (in the form of either parents or other authority figures), they simply shouted: "Get Off' My Cloud." Thus, this raw, uncompromising stance--wrapped in some infectious blues-inspired rock-became the Stones' trademark. Time after time, they reinforced that image in their music.

By the time the "Sticky Fingers" album was released last year, however, there were occasional signs the old image was wearing a little thin. After all, Mick Jagger (who'll be 28 in July) was married, the Stones had formed their own record company and the group had moved to France to avoid taxes. Under the old, outrageous image, it was hard to imagine the Stones even bothering to file a tax return. They seemed above such ordinary matters. But the Stones, in short, had become big business; they had started to settle down.

"The old Mick (Jagger) who perpetually stuck two fingers at society is now well on the way to becoming part of that society," a writer for an English pop music paper noted early in 1971. "The hair is shorter, neater and well groomed, his jacket is superbly tailored velvet and a hand-made shirt replaces the vest." Indeed, "Sticky Fingers" suggested in its weaker moments that the Stones had lost some of the old rogance. In fact, the group seemed to be trying to copy its own image at times. But "Exile on Main repre sents a return to the control, direction and power of the Stones' best work. As with most two-record sets, there are some weak moments, but at least a dozen of the 18 tracks represent the Stones at their finest.

The key to the album's success is the Please Turn to Page 14 stick. This is the legend that director John Huston is celebrating in "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean." "I think we've got a hell of a picture here," Huston said at the "Rov Bean" Tucson location. "I think it will be very popular," he said, knocking on the wooden side of a building. "Of course I've been wrong before, but there's a grand sort of thing about it. The wind blows through it.

The story is a conplete departure from reality, a pure fantasy." Huston was dressed in his best Regency buck form, leather hunting breeches and knee-high boots. He was splattered with mud. John Huston has a face that belongs in a mine or on the road somewhere. It's a thin face, deeply grooved. Under bright black eyes that glow like sapphires are enormous puffy bags.

The gaze is steady. Right to the soul. Wispy gray hair and beard frame it. Clearly it is a face weathered by life. An experienced face.

It's easy to believe that by the time he was 32 Huston had been a bum rolled up in newspapers in Hyde Park, an officer in the Mexican cavalry, an artist starving in Paris, a boxing champion and a promising young actor. The artistic, theatrical side of Huston comes across in his delivery. The rich, mellifluous voice, thin pianist's fingers, Diagha Turn to Pano 17.