The Times from Shreveport, Louisiana • Page 94

Spaced mmeamis ttalemitt 4 illuminating this woebegone young woman that the picture turns mean-spirited when she is forced to exercise her supernatural powers. After looking drab and hunched through most of the picture, Miss Spacek becomes radiant when Carrie is given her one moment in the sun picked as the school queen (a joke that leads to disaster). That transition from dull to shining illustrates the chameleon effect of the actress. Of course other actresses have played roles where they went from the ugly duckling to a beauty, but those transformations are most often accomplished by face-altering makeup. With a minimum of that, Miss Spacek makes the switch.

That happens in most of her pictures. You look at her and think she's sort of plain and then, in another frame, there's a beauty about her. Certainly, few actresses could have portrayed the extremely popular Loretta Lynn. When called upon, Miss Spacek can be rawboned and of the earth, two descriptions that come to mind with Miss Lynn. It is a tribute to Miss Spacek that in Coal Miner's Daughter, a film biography in which one could, for once, believe in the character being portrayed, it wasn't a case of Sissy Spacek imitating Loretta Lynn, it was Sissy Spacek being Loretta Lynn, right to the famous cornpone accent.

There is an area in which the actress has not yet ventured. That is sophisticated roles. She hasn't appeared in a comedy or an out-and-out romance, or as a glamorous femme fatale. I hope she doesn't in the last two mentioned. Sissy Spacek is too good a dramatic actress.

It is not necessary for her to be glamorous. Her fresh and scrubbed looks are the girl next door. That's what is so likable about her. One doesn't really want to see that long, silky hair coiffed or the natural attractiveness of her face gussied up to look chic. One has only to look at her in The River to see that she is very attractive and has her own sex appeal, even appearing opposite the very good looking Mel Gibson.

She is at once girl and woman. Miss Spacek's girlishness does not act as a deterrent as it sometimes does for Sally Field. And unlike Barbra Streisand, Miss Spacek does not shove her features at you. It's easy to believe Mel Gibson's character could find her desirable in The River, as does Scott Glenn as a disappointed suitor. There is that something about her that illuminates the character she plays.

It is not something easily described. She isn't supposed to be extraordinary in Missing but she is. In that political film about a young man's disappearance, she is the desperate wife trying to wade through secrecy and red tape to unearth what happened to him. She's extraordinary. She's fascinating to watch.

Perhaps that is her ace in the hole. Sissy Spacek is one of the few actresses on the screen now who is fascinating to watch. The moviegoer doesn't really know what to expect. It's a quality that made Katharine Hepburn a much-praised actress. As a critic, I have come to expect Miss Spacek to be in dramatic vehicles, whether they always work or not.

The River In one film she's a picked-on waif who eventually uses awesome powers to rid herself of tormentors. In another she's a disturbed young woman draining the personality from a friend. In two others she's a country singer and a radical wife trying to find out what has happened to her husband in a South American country. What makes Sissy Spacek a star? She's frail. She has a face full of freckles.

In one scene she's attractive; in another she's almost homely. Her voice often cracks and slips to a whisper. She doesn't look strong enough to get through a movie. Strong she is, though. There's a toughness about actress Spacek that belies her frailness.

This young Texan has built an acting career that is not only respected but critically acclaimed. Her first big exposure came with Carrie, which earned her an Academy Award nomination. A couple of years later she took the Oscar for Coal Minefs Daughter. Unlike many of her screen contemporaries, Miss Spacek is a star without being a star. She never overrides projects she's in.

She creates a character and lives her. The actress's life is quiet and private. She doesn't ramrod her way through films in fits of artistic temperament. Instead she chooses fairly sound projects that demand some acting stretches like The Raggedy Man, a picture that didn't register well at the box office but allowed her to portray a plain young woman in a small Texas town trying to cope through World War II. In Robert Altman's dense 3 Women, she gave a brilliant performance of a simple, if weird, girl who her personality from nicey-nice to hardened calculation.

Despite the elitism of some of her pictures, she also is well into the mainstream of filmmaking. There was Coal Miner's Daughter, a film biography of singer Loretta Lynn that scored hugely at the box office. There was the aforementioned Carrie. And there was Missing mth Jack Lemmon a picture that leaped onto everyone's 10 best list. Now she's playing opposite the new and hot Mel Gibson in The River.

I think what makes Sissy Spacek register with the public, other than her well-documented talent, is her identifiable personality. She isn't glamorous. She seems wonderfully ordinary. That is non-threatening. You feel like you could walk up to Miss Spacek and just start talking.

The characters she portrays, with an exception or two, are characters moviegoers can empathize with. In Carrie, despite having telekinetic powers (which allow Carrie to destroy things through thought), the role is that of a wallflower. Looking frightened and shy, Carrie moves down school hallways trying not to be noticed and secretly dreaming about the high school heartthrob. Carrie tries to be all that she thinks is expected of her, but becomes the butt of others' jokes. Now, that is a role not hard to identify with and, in the hands of Miss Spacek, it is achingly painful.

In fact, she is so good at Sissy Spacek has proved an actress of changes is oddly uninvolving, but that did not take away from the fine performance Miss Spacek gave as the farm wife battling alongside her husband to keep it all together. The performance was shaded just enough so that one had the feeling that her Mae Garvey was battling more for her husband's principles than for any misguided love of land. It made her human, those few times doubt crossed her face. Her most surprising performance was in 3 Women. At the outset, she appeared as a naive girl whose innocence made her eager and bumbling.

As the film progressed it sprang from a surrealistic dream of director Altman's her character's, imitation of another character played by Shelly Duvall transmogrified the innocent from aping to being. She becomes brazen, cold, sexual. It's a stunning performance in a much-underrated psychological study of personality transference. It is made all the more harrowing because Miss Spacek seems so much the first character and has the ability to become the second without losing any edge or credibility. Here's hoping the actress remains as simple as we perceive her.

If all this reads like a valentine to Sissy Spacek, it is. Along with Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and maybe one or two others, she is one of American film's most valuable commodities a truly talented actress. Critic doesn't strain for his '10 best' of 1984 ers, especially coming from the lips of a sublime composer. Yet there's much to admire in the combination of Mozart's music and Miroslav Ondricek's cinematography, coordinated by director Milos Forman in his best large-scale film. Micki Maude has problems in the bad-taste department, since much of its humor revolves around bigamy and pregnancy.

Yet below the sex-comedy surface are human values worth cheering. There's surprising substance to this Blake Edwards farce, even if it does culminate in maternity-ward slapstick. The characters get into their stupid, misguided situations because they love each other so much they can't see straight at a time when many movies trade in mere lust and suspicion. L' Argent comes from Robert Bresson, the great French master. Although his work is often shown in revival theaters, it remains a pleasure for the few, partly because the off-putting word "austere" has been hung around his neck by countless critics.

That title fits his latest film, which simply means "money." It also suits the camera style, which allows not one wasted frame. The story is about deception and murder growing from a seemingly minor crime. Bresson is studying the relations between good and evil, guilt and innocence, flesh and spirit. and incisive comedy-drama that puts his earlier movies in the shade. Love Streams is the messiest movie of 1984 and one of the most exciting.

John Cassavetes has done it again spilling out urgent emotions and romantic images without a nod to anything more commercial than his own instinctive love of filmmaking. Cassavetes draws more emotion from 10 minutes of conversation than most directors can find in a whole movie. He feels so deeply for his characters (a loose-living writer and mentally unstable sister) that his camera all but weeps with them, penetrating the action more deeply than anyone else's camera would have dared. Nostalgia was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, a doggedly individualistic black sheep of Soviet cinema until his defection to the West last summer after this drama was completed. He's a visionary all over, as you can see in every frame of this strange tale about a Russian writer who meets an Italian madman obsessed with world harmony.

The plot moves by slow inches and the climax is melodramatic, but the themes are resonant and the imagery is as transfixing as anything I've seen. Amadeus is big, imposing, and at its best moments, quite beautiful. I know it takes great liberties with Mozart's life and character. I know its four-letter language jars many view a movie that adds a new dialect to film language while staying funny and likable enough to please a popular audience. The characters are two dopey young men and a teen-age girl from Hungary who visits them.

The plot is a simple trip from New York to Cleveland and Florida, which all look alike to a trio that rarely notices anything beyond the nearest TV screen. The Bostonians beats A Passage to India and Under the Volcano as the year's best literary film. Though the screenplay is topheavy with exposition, it's more lucid than A Passage and less bombastic than Volcano, which wilts in the homestretch after many fine scenes. Henry James could tell a mighty good story when he wanted to, and director James Ivory keeps The Bostonians plot fairly intact. While the attitudes toward feminism aren't exactly enlightened the heroine is an activist tempted by a male chauvinist they reflect the failings of a former time with insight and compassion.

It's a literate entertainment. The Brother from Another Planet can't talk as earthlings do, so he must be a mute witness to the miseries of Harlem, where he lands while running from outer-space slaveholders. At a time when Hollywood is mostly mute on black issues, maverick filmmaker John Sayles has tackled them head-on, giving us a biting By DAVID STERRITT Christian Science Monitor Newt Service What a poor year for movies! The past 12 months have been even more stingy than 1983, which managed to offer a dozen very good pictures. I'm not alone in this opinion my fellow critics have been grumbling plenty around the screening rooms. What went wrong? A couple of things.

Hollywood lost its way in a thicket of "safe" sequels and launched too many projects based on clever ideas instead of solid scripts. Meanwhile, the film centers of Europe and Asia settled into a conservative period, exploring familiar themes instead of seeking out fresh inspirations. So it's not an ideal time for celebrating the celluloid muse. While there's nothing wrong with a year-end summing up, I won't strain for the traditional "10 best." And if some of the titles I've chosen are less than familiar, it's not because I give extra points for obscurity, it's because what little excitement there was in American films came largely from the independent scene, which lacks Hollywood's busy promotion and exhibition machinery. Herewith eight favorites, in no particular order: Stranger Than Paradise Is a rare find: te M-F Jan.

IJ, 18J The Times.