The Observer du lieu suivant : London, Greater London, England • 33

33 THE OBSERVER REVIEW, '2 SEPTEMBER 1973 Lorca from Budapest A festival without fizz ment is a Chinaman of the old school even one who strips down as eloquently as Viktor Fulop. Perhaps Bartok, like Prokofiev at about the same time, was- really writing about oranges. Awav from the ODera house. by George Melly Pat Garrett (James Coburn) and friends in Pat Garrett and Billy the mm Stephen Walsh Of! Hungarian opera in Edinburgh, Anne Howells, Scottish Opera's Melisande. the average British operatic production is painful td consider.

With Bluebeard's Castle arrived recently in the Coliseum it's of some interest to see it in a native performance. Few Operas depend more on the peculiar stresses of the originallanguage, and 'few stand in such need of unapologetic vocal delivery. Gyorgy Melis and Katalin Kasza sang it here as though it were the operatic masterpiece Bartok sadly, never got round to composing, and they were matched later in the evening by Laszlo Seregi's superbly explicit and provocative choreography for The Miraculous Mandarin. Unfortunately neither production went far towards lightening the darkness of. Bart6k's symbolism.

In Andras Miko's production of the opera, metaphor is finally by-passed in favour of signification, and Bluebeard loses a castle but gains a brain the ultimate blood wedding, perhaps. However, nothing is gained in point of clarity. The spectator's mind still races to comprehend each image as it is offered 1 wheel torture chamber, shield. I scribbled earnestly on my programme, then gave up); and- the symbolism, lacking the surface coherence of a parable, barely holds up on the intuitive level. The Mandarin is not such a difficult drama and is certainly the better score.

The unquenchable life-force finds its equivalent in music of unforgettable energy and thrust. But please don't ask me why its embodi- cz was interesting, sometimes funny, but the qualities it defended seemed to verge on the limp. Joseph Strick's Janice, on the other hand, while at times a little heavy, was quite sure or what it had to say. It's about two truck drivers who become disastrously involved with a pathetic, psychopathic road floosie. Authoritatively scripted by Judith Rasco, and with a potential Academy Award-winning performance from Regina Baff, I hope its public release will not be long delayed.

work, while the sympathetic official explained that, in terms of life, he was already Two feature films also dealt with the difficulty of adjusting to an increasingly dehumanised society. Alex in Vonderland (directed by Paul Mazursky) was about a middle-aged hippy-ish director searching desperately for something he wanted to film and being simultaneously destroyed by mortgages and material maimed by marriage and family, and eh route for loss of identity. It ency to exhibit its own sores was demonstrated in The Jail, a documentary about a large penal institution outside San Francisco. One man, an official, was caring and realistic, but for the rest it was hard to know whether the staff or the prisoners were- the most disturbed. What came out clearly was that here, as in all jails, there is this unresolved and destructive clash between rehabilitation and punishment.

The queens ruled the roost, the punishment cell was usually occupied, and a remarkable yOung black poet recited his The last days of Billy some of the best music making Lantorum under Ulytus L.ott wald. This is the group for which Boulez wrote cum-mings ist der and the work duly turned up in Boulez's Usher. Hall concert last Siindav. The next morning, this small and wonderfully versatile choir gave a programme on their own in the Freemason's Hall, ranging from Josquin to Holliger and Cage. Though some of the music might have strained one's interest in pure vocal experiment, everything was done so sensitively and persuasively that the strain was never felt.

It's perhaps worth pointing out that Britain currently boasts no choir of this exact size, function and excellence. While the Scots (and their guests) have been enjoying the Hungarian visit, London has played host for the first time to Scottish Opera. The visit needs no excuse, though it is apparently against the company's gen-- era! policy to tour so far south. It's certainly to be hoped they will come If they do, they should vary their repertory niore than on this occasion. Tristan may have seemed an obvious choice, and it certainly justified- itself at the box office.

But Michael Geliot's production is inert besides the (also fairly new) one at Covent Garden, and mature Wagner doesn't sound well in the rather, dry acoustics of Sadler's Wells. Two individual performances shone out from a disappointing evening Helga Der-nesch was in glorious voice as Isolde, and David Ward was. the personification of gentle as King Mark. There was promise, too, in David Fiel'd-send's singing as the Shepherd. The company's 1 1 a chosen no doubt with half an eye to its historical and artistic connections with really deserved a more definite contrast Mozart, perhaps.

It's one of the best things Scottish Opera have done. Colin Graham's production and the designs by John Fraser project Debussy's music drama exactly, with hardly a foreign element; Alexander Gibson conducts the music with the naturalness of speech, drawing the very best out of the Scottish National Orchestra; and the cast is a model one. led by Anne Howells. George Shirley and John Shirley-Quirk. WAT FOR IT Due to pressure of space, Bryan Robertson's survey of the English art scene has been unavoidably held over.

where Send the coupon now for details. new plan to drawn to i eW msn The film opens with the bold challenge of a title announcing that no one ever saw sunflowers the way Van Gogh did, implying that we are in for equally artistic visions. Unfortunately, only Arthur Penn seems to have taken up the challenge with his section on the pole vault an almost abstract mosaic of images, shot by Walter Lassally in slow motion and often blurred out of all recognition, in which the shapes, patterns and extraordinary time-lapses give one a new slant not on the sport but on the movements involved. Milos Forman tries bravely, and fails dismally, to poke 'fun at the whole thing by intercutting the decathlon with an assortment of weird Bavarian bands, yodellers and glockenspielers. John Schlesinger tries to extract some mileage out of marathon runner Ron Hill's statement that the Israeli tragedy affected him in that it's put my race a day.

Mai Zetterling does quite nicely with a quizzical pee.K at the mysterious world of weight-lifters. The rest, directed by Claude Lelouch, Juri Ozerov, Michael Pfleghar and Ichikawa himself, is routine-: the sort of thing one could see nightly on television. The black box-office bonanza limps along with Shaft in Africa (Empire 2, X), in which the Harlem private eye, now directed by John 3uUlermin and still nicely played by Richard Roundtree, is involved with wicked slave-traders and has become even more automated than James Bond. Blacula (Classic, Victoria, X) is the first black Dracula film. I hope, since it is composed exclusively of cliches, that it will be the' last.

Let the directors and cast rest in peace in unmarked graves. Tom Milne HUNGARIAN music was ever a serious matter, and the State Opera and Ballet from Budapest have done no more honour than is due to. their tradition in bringing to Edin- I r- .1 ii 1 -uurgn spme rainy uiuuu- thirsty essays in the -exotic aim xi i aLiuimi. vvuiib uai- tok's Bluebeard conducts us through his chamber of psychic horrors, the Miraculous Mandarin allows himself to be smothered, skewered and lynched in the lusty pursuit of the nubile Vera Szumrak, and the Moon glowers balefully down on the ritual calamities of Szokolay's Blood Wedding, we may congratulate ourselves if we have nothing more sombre to endure than a Scotch mist (sweet 'euphemism) and dinner at the North British Hotel. Szokolay's' opera, which has not been seen her before (its Budapest premiere was in.

1964). is a setting of the folk tragedy by LOrca. It's a work of indubitable talent, and if it fails in the end to render the central issue of Lorca's play the issue of fatalism and the pre-eminence of social morality over individual will this only goes to underline the difficulty of writing, from outside a convention as peculiar as that of Spanish rustic honour or cavalleria rusticana. Broadly speaking, Szokolay's Blood Wedding is two acts of expressionist melodrama and a final act of somewhat murky Nature symbolism. In Lorca, of course, the two things merge.

But Szokolay, the outsider, cannot quite make them do The heart of his music lies in the passionate, desperate, pitiful behaviour of a grdup of people torn by impossible emotions. Naturally, when the last act asks us to understand that the significance of this behaviour lies in its offence against an objective or at best socially materialist code, the music father loses heart, and so the final tragedy of the story is missed on both possible counts. All the same, the opera doesn't deserve the gibe Hungarian verismo without the which was levelled at it in one quarter. For a start, there is nothing crude about Szokolay's dramatic technique. He proves a master of the difficult art of transition, switching locale swiftly and easily and without the abruptness one might normally expect in a first opera.

Blood Wedding is not built along Wagnerian symphonic lines, but as a series of episodes or tableaux, not unlike And Szokolay is indebted to Berg stylistically as well as formally. A tortured expressionism gives place here and' there to simple melody a lullaby in the first act, a wedding dance (d Vespagnol) in the second. Szokolay may not be an ironist in the Viennese tradition. But he dramatises these contrasted elements well enough. Only in the last act, which offers nO scope for such does his short-winded ness as a symphonic composer pine and simple begin to find him out.

This production is apparently the original, and it serves quite well if without great distinction. Szokolay might perhaps have risked de-hispanicising the play, but since he hasn't done so the production is forced to follow suit. Mantillas are therefore the order of the day, and everyone goes about in perpetual mourning, even (or perhaps especially) to the wedding. A feature of this, as of the Bart6k production, is the use it makes of the whole stage area without noticeably diluting the sense of oppression in the air. The mother whose husband and elder son have been killed in a family vendetta sits at her table in the middle of a huge, empty room an obvious but telling image of why she is so afraid for her younger son.

The contrast with the bric-a-bac of score makes total sense. This is dance-drama at its most dramatic. Spartacus belongs to the same melodramatic genre, as we know from Grigorevitch's version, which stunned London audiences in 1968 with its sheer block-busting attack. The story based on history is genuinely tragic. Spartacus was a revolutionary slave-leader, whose ideals foundered through endemic human weaknesses.

This ballet begins and ends, with its defeated hero hanging from a cross. But recognition of the dignity of failure is about the only -merit of the piece, which is simply pasteboard Roman bombast, complete with gladiators, orgies, slave girls and multiple flashbacks. It is hopelessly handicapped by the score which, in this original version, consists of palm-court histrionics interspersed with waltzes and echoes from half-a-dozen other scores. The action is painfully predictable and the numbers as artless as an old Empire Theatre entertain-' ment (Spartacus breaks off his summons to revolutionary arms to take a charmingly smiling call). There are one or two dances which made their effect an 'orgy' pas-de-cinq for instance and some of the frequent duels.

Viktor Rona makes a modestly sympathetic hero and Adel Orosz danced strongly as his wife. But fire and feeling were in as short supply as posturing and cliche were abundant. These Romans belong not to 1973 still less to 73 bc but to 1873. It is hard to believe that this ballet is by the same team as the At The Place in London, Richard Alston's new work. Lay Out, is a short, slight and inconclusive suite of abstract callisthenics in a rather anonymous style, with lots of jumping and running, vaguely accompanied by dings and dongs from Anna Lockwood.

Disappointing. Alexander Bland THE WHOLE concept of the film festival has been increasingly under fire during the last few years. The chauvinist jostling for prizes, the wheeling and dealing, the posturing of stars and directors have all been charged as irrelevant at a time when the cinema is commercially in decline. The cineaste, despite his sometimes absurd reverence for the run-of-the-mill Hollywood products of the golden age, has turned- puritan. The slipped mink top is an historical object.

For a variety of reasons, not least among them the tiny budget from the Scottish Film Council, and the parsimonious City Corporation, the Edinburgh Film Festival avoids these pitfalls. Its director, Lynda Myles, faced with the near-impossibility of attracting many major feature films, relies the main on a series of retrospectives and, in the contemporary cinema, on the experimental, the avant-garde and the politically committed. The result is nourishing and serious but, given my own pre-' dilection for a bit of frivolity now and again, a shade daunting. Nobody would want or expect a reconstruction of the Carlton Lobby at Cannes in the austere entrance hall of the North British Hotel, but a little bubble and fizz wouldn't hurt. Theire are, it's true, the retro- spectives.

This year they included Frank Tashlin who, Jerry Lewis's early comedies aside, made the outrageously enjoyable 'The Girl Can't Help the best monument to the early raucous days of rock 'n' roll; but even here the approach is reverent and accusatory. Paul Willemen's introduction in the Festival programme is an almost ludicrous example of solemn hagiography and, Tashlin apart, there has been little excuse for a bit of a laugh. Even Up the the latest film from Irwin Kershner, another subject for admirable retrospection, is described as concerned with the problem of So it may be, but it's also a Barbra Streisand comedy. This admittedly subjective plea for some relief from Victorian High Seriousness apart, it would be ungrateful not to salute Ms Myles and her collaborators for having conducted us on a remarkable survey of the less well-charted shores of-today's cinema, and in particular there was an impressive number of documentaries largely on the theme of alienation, perhaps the principal obsession of our times. In its widest aspect there was Lutz Becker's The Double Headed Eagle, the Festival's own contribution to the Hitler industry but the most serious analysis of how and why the great monster rose to power that have yet seen.

Even so, I had reservations. Of course, Cinemas Continued from paEc 32 ODEON LEICESTER SQUARE 930 6111). Rocer Moore is James Bond. LIVE AND LET DIE (A) Cont. Pross 3.10.

5.45. 8.25. Feature 3.35. 6.10. 8.55.

Royal Circle scats Bookable. ODEON MARBLE ARCH (723 20112) Laurence Olivier. Michael Cainc in lovmi Mankica-id'3 film of SLEUTH I A) Sept. Pross. 4.00.

8.00. ODEON Si Martin's Lane (836 06911811) Barbra Streisand UP THE SANDBOX (AA) Cont. Pross. 3.45. 6.00.

8.20. Feature 4.20, 6.35. 8.55. PARAMOUNT Lower Resent St. 839 6194 THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (A) Proes.

2.15 5.15 8.15. Sep. otrfs. All seats bookable. PARIS PULLMAN Sth.

Ken. 373 5898 16tn Great Week. Borowcyzk's BLANCHE (AA) 4.30 6.35 8.40 PRCVCE CHARLES Lcic. So. 437 8181.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS (X) Sep. perfs. dly. (inc Sim) 2.45, 6.15. 9.00, 11.45: Bo OBlce OPEN DAILY.

All seats Bookable. Art Galleries Continued from page 26 MALL ART GALLERIES, The Mall, SWI. THE PASTEL SOCIETY Se THE UNITED SOCIETY OF ARTISTS. Annual Exhibitions. Daily 10-5.

Sat. 10-1. Adm. 20p. Until Sept.

11. MARBLE HILL HOUSE (GX.O Rkta- mond Road. Twickenham PETER HIDE JOHN FOSTER Open Air Sculpture from well Depot -July 7-September 30. Open daily 10-5 (includir.2 Sundays): closed on Fridays. MARLBOROUGH 39 Old Bond Street and 6 Albemarle W.l Selected European Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries including important works by BACON, BONNARD, BRAQVE, GRfS, HEPWORTH, KOKOSCHKA, MOORE, NICHOLSON, PICASSO, ROUAULT, SUTHERLAND, UTRILLO and others.

Catalo2Ue. tully illustrated in colour 3.50 post free Daily 10-5 30. Sals. Adm. free.

MARLBOROUGH GRAPHICS 17-18 Old Bond W.l. SIDNEY NOLAN GRAPHICS 1965 1973. Daily 10.00 5.30 Sals 10.00- 1.00 Admission Free. NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY exhibition RICHARD III a panorama of late 15th' century England. Mon-Fri 10-5 Sat 10-6; Sun 2-6.

NEW ART CENTRE, 41. Sloane Street. London SWI. 01-235 5844. Daily 10.6 Saturdays KM MIXED SUMMER EXHIBITION.

O'HANA GALLERY, 13 Carlos Place. Wi. .499 1 562. French paintings and sculptures of the 1 9th and 20th Centuries. OMELL GALLERIES, 40 Albemarle Street.

Piccadilly. Wl Modern British Euro-Dean Tainting, ol Charm fc Distinction and lohn Clipper Ships and Sta Battles -ind 11 22 Bury St. James's. 5.W.I. Large selection of Fine Victorian Paintings PHOTOGRAPHERS' GALLERY.

8 Gt Newpor; Si. C2. 240 19o9 EVERYDAY FINLAND toy CAJ BREMER also K. ITOH. a young Japanese photographer Until 8 September.

Closed Monday. PORTAL GALLERY, neft images of reconciliation Paintings by ANDREW MURRAY, 16a Grafton Bond W.l. 629 3506. ROWAN GALLERY. 31 A.

Bruton Place. Pcrkeiey Square, London, W.I. 01-493 3727 JOHN EDWARDS recent painl-Inas. Until Sepl 27. Daily 10-6.

Sals 10-1. SERPENTINE GALLERY (Arts Council) Kensington Gdns. Bank Holiday Bonus continuous programme of spectator parttcinatoTv art events. 25 Aug-2 Sept. 11-7 daily adm free.

Last Day. TATE GALLERY. WILLIAM 1URN- BULL Sculpture and Painting, 15 Aug-7 Oct Weekdays 10 6 Tues Thurs ICM; Suns 2-6 Adm 30d School children Students and OAP I'p. Adm Free Tues rhurs 6-8 Lecture ihursaays b.15 REDFERN GALLERY 1923 1973 50TH ANNIVERSARY SUMMER EXHIBITION 20TH CENTURY PAIHTIHGS, DRAWINGS. SCULPTURE H0 GRAPHICS July-Seplember 20 Cork Street London Wl.

734 1732 it's fascinating tb watch how ii was Goebbels who inevitably made the poisonous ideological points, then faded into the back ground to allow Hitler's charis matic ranting to charge them with emotional weight. The contrast between the starving and defeated German masses of the twenties and the decadent excesses of the rich and vicious was brilliantly evoked through the tightly edited use of contemporary documentary and fictional film footage. The rise of Nazism was seen, in this collage of events, to have been the inevitable outcome of a punitive post-war policy, the crippling of national pride and total economic collapse. But where the film became suspect was. in failing to emphasise the fruit of this particular "historical inevitability.

A quote from Heine, however relevant, was insufficient. A short visual epilogue, perhaps some Belsen images, would have defused the powerful myth more effectively. More Germanic mysticism in a curious feature film called Ludwig Requiem for a Virgin King, a Brechtian-style. fantasy on the life and times of Wagner's patron and Bavaria's financial ruin, Ludwig II. Directed by Hans-Jurgen Syeberg on a remarkably slender shoestring and set against tuppence-coloured backcloths, the impact was of a sardonic high camp intelligence concealing a certain moral confusion.

Ludwig's romantic spirit and practical ineffectuality were contrasted with the new industrial Germany. Alas, 50 years later, Hitler was to fuse the worst of both. Less aristocratic alienation was the theme of Asylum, a documentary about a London community for the mentally disturbed run according to the gospel of R. D. Laing and using group therapy as its principal method.

Interesting throughout, occasionally impressive, frequently very upsetting, the film made its point but also begged some questions. Are halluci-genic drugs used, for example Some of the inmates, especially one girl who swung between adulthood and the womb, appeared to suggest that they were, and yet there was no overt statement. What, if any, are the successes of the method and on what terms The compassion was manifest, the aims and results left vague, and it was difficult not to suspect deliberately so. America's well-known tend- 4 FIST OF FI'RY (M. Proc N-iday .1 40 51 H'.

SC ENE 4. SWISS CKNTRlT LctcV 439 4470. THE CANTERBURY TALES (X) Sept. perfs. dly.

(inc. Sun). 12.30. 3.00. 6.15.

9.10. 12.00. Bkblc. STUDIO ONE. Oxford Circus.

43 3300. NOv btE JAN-MICH A C.L VINCENT in Walt Disney's THE WORLD'S GREATEST ATHLETE li. Progs, today: 2.45 5.25 8.00 p.m. STUDIO TWO. Oxford Circus.

437 3300. THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (AA) Pros Today 3.50 6.05 8.25. UNIVERSAL Lower Rejent Street 930 8944 JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (A) Proas. 2.00 4.15 6.30 8.45 Sep. Perfs.

All seats bookable. WARNER RENDEZVOUS, Lcics. Sq. 439 0791. MALCOLM McDOWELL in Lindsay Anderson's LUCKY MAN! (X).

Sep perfs Suns 3.30 7.30 Wkdya 2.00 5.05 8.10. Late.Fri Sat 11.25 p.m. AJI bkble. WARNER WEST END. Lcics Sa.

439 0791 Jane Fonda. Donald Sutherland STEELYARD BLUES (X). Pross today 3.30, .5.40. 8.00 p.m. LESLIE WADDINGTON PRINTS 34 Cork Street.

London W.l. EXHIBITION OF ORIGINAL GRAPHICS Braque Chagall Glacomettl Leger Marlni Matisse Miro Picasso Sutherland From 7 August to 8 September Daily p.m. Sals. 10-1. THE IVEAGH BEQUEST.

Kenwood (GLC) Hampstead Lane NW3 7JR CHARLOTTE MAYER and BERENICE SYDNEY Sculptures. Paintings and Graphics September 1-October 1. Open daily 10-7 (including Sundays). Admission Free. WAPPING GROUP 27ih Annual Spirit of London River Exhibition.

Royal Exchange 3rd to 20th September. Weekdays 10-4. Saturdays 10-12. Not Sundays. Admission Free.

TR AFFORD GALLERY, 119 Mount Street. W.l. SEPTEMBER SELECTION. Opening on Tuesday. WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY.

High e.l lAldgate East Tube). INSIDE WHITECHAPEL. photographs by Leonard Freed, Charles Marriott. Ron McCormick Chris Schwartz and the people of Whilechapel themselves. Director of photography.

Jurgen Schadcbcrg. DAN JONES paintings nil 16 11-6. cl. Mon. PEGGY LARSON GERDA HENNINQ ULF VON ZWEIGBERGK until September 15 WOODSTOCK GALLERY lb Woodstock Street Wl 01-629 4419 Daily 10-6 Sal 10-1 Exhibitions INTERCRAFI noi only manufacture desks, systems, cabinets, chairs, but deal ir.

unified ideas for office reorganisation. See for yourself at our exhibition 1st floor. Berkeley So House. Berkeley 1 01-493 1725. INTERNATIONAL ART TREASURES EXHIBITION.

Assembly Rooms. Bath 10. 30-6, Including Sundays. Late closing Thurs 10.30-8 p.m. Open until 8th September.

KODAK PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY. The Creation, a maior exhibition of photographs by Ernst Haas, on view at the Kodak Photographic Gallery. 246 High Holborn. London WC1 (near Holbora tube station). From 31 August to 5 October 9 am-5 pm Admission Free.

THE LONDON MUSEUM Kcnsinaion Palace. LONDON IN THE THIRTIES tixhiuion 'Pen until 23 Sepiemhet Di.ily 10-6. Sundays 2-6 duli Hip Children Student-. tjAP ni-oi 08 If, ROY Kl. PAVILION BRIGHTON, The Seaside Palace ol Hit.

I'KlN(-E UEGbNl lain KING GEORGE IV The fantastic mrmniriivt a o( the in'criot unequalled in Euinpc. Rf.GENCY EXHIBITION. Dni' IOU-vii mJudiiiB Sundavs Rt-ducfd rates (or children and Dirties Booktnai. and reservations Tel Biujnton bi005. I DON'T think I am giving away any secrets by saying that on the night of 13 July 1881 Sherriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid.

The conclusion is inevitable in any retelling of the tale, and the question is not what happened, but how it happened and why. Appropriately, therefore, Sam Peckinpah's magnificent Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Empire, X) does not so much tell a story as establish a mood through a series of whose meaning is codified in the final sequence. Knowing that his days are numbered. Billy returns to Fort Sumner, collects his girl Maria, and asks an old man sitting in solitary state in his shack if they can use his spare bed. Gladly the old man agrees, and as.

he launches into a reminiscence of long ago. the couple slip away to the bedroom. Overhearing them, Garrett hesitates, then sits down on the porch to wait. Memories, tenderness, and death. Cikc the chickens we see at the beginning of the film, buried up to their necks in a row to serve for target practice, Garrett and Billy are hemmed in, unable.

to find any way out of the impasse between their past friendship and the present enmity that has been forced on them. And hovering over their duel, an unseen evil genius, is John Chisum. the cattle baron (recently accorded movie canonisation by of course John Wayne) who was the prime mover behind the bloody ange wars of the 1870s which made the big landowners even bigger, and who has hired Pat Garrett to kill Billy as the foremost rebel against his law. Although Billy is by no means whitewashed at one point he deliberately uses a wounded friend as decoy for the bullets-intended for him he is allowed a full measure of the historically authenticated charm (very well captured in Kris Kristofferson's finely enigmatic performance) which emerges as a sort of Robin Hood attraction. It is not so much that he champions the underdog, as that he will have no truck with the people who make underdogs.

as Bob Dylan's admirable title song puts it, they don't like you to be so The times, as in all Peckinpah's films, are changing; and the clash arises because Garrett 2 Parents who As a parent of course you care about your chfld'8 education. But h6wtptnakesurcyouknow what's goinoa in schools? New classroom subjects. Different teaching methods. Reorganised schools. The integrated day.

Learning through discovery. It's all changed since you were at school. Then there are the little problems your own child faces. Learning difficulties in maths or reading. Behavioural problems due to bullying at school, rivalry at home, school phobia, a disliked teacher.

How can you do your best without better information and advice on all these questions? read Hungarian duo Wvft thousands of parents tie is to read Where the monthly magazine on education, tzriiten for you, the parent, whenfil offers sost that tegylar source of information about our rapidly changing educational system and a flow of advice on the questions that allfonuHes worry about-atsometsme. You can read for three months starting with the September issue which includes articles an Discipline in the family. What is a 'had' school? Aptitude tests. Choosing the right 'O levels. if you start your tar's subscription with the December issue.

You wBl also receive absolutely free a valuable reference handbook, Parents and Law. (James Coburn, another splendid performance), acknowledging this fact, is also aware that he himself has changed from outlaw to lawman only because he is growing older, and he cannot rid himself or an uneasy feeling that Billy's intransigence in the pursuit of freedom may be the better way. Yet he has made his choice. The old way must die, and die it does in a series of gunfights which gradually darken the air like an eclipse of the sun. Darkest of all, at the very heart of the film, is the end of old Sheriff Baker (Slim Pickens).

Happily pottering in his back yard with the half-built boat he plans to sail on the Pecos River, resentful like all the old friends Garrett dragoons into his war, he reluctantly agrees to go out against Billy, and he gets shot. Lumbering away from the camera, watched with proud resignation by his wife, he heads blindly down to the river an old bull elephant seeking his place to die. Like so much in the film, the scene has the naked emotional simplicity of the best of John Ford. And when Garrett finally turns away after killing Billy, one notes, his movements and the landscape are like an echo of Sheriff Baker's; but this time there is no river in the background, no hint of the Ceace of still waters, only the leak desert. To my mind, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid' is Peckinpah's best film to date, packed for good measure with old friends Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Katy Jurado, Emilio Fernandez, Jason Robards.

R. G. Armstrong and a welcome new one in Bob Dylan. Perhaps I should add for the benefit of those who blenched at Straw Dogs or was that only critics reacting with girlish modesty that there is remarkably little blood. Faced with the formidable standards set by Leni Riefens-tahl and Kon Ichikawa, two past champions who have between them said Just about everything there is to be said about the Olympics, Visions of Eight (ABC 1, Shaftesbury Avenue, U) has gambled on quantity as a safeguard to quality by letting eight directors loose on Munich, each doing his own thing.

The idea is sound, fhe result distinctly fragile. 2.00pni.540pm and 8.35pm Twj could be an important opportunity. Tot ACE, 52 Trumplngton Stmt, Caxabrldt CB31BJW i wun to receive immediately full deuil of yew introductory offer to new tubscribet of where the on education. Biar.dM.imnEmiBiHiiia I if cfoool TrOOsiC IT IS 10 years since the Hungarian State Ballet visited Scotland for the Festival. Much has happened in Budapest since then, and a return visit to the King's Theatre in Edinburgh last week aroused real curiosity especially as the programme consisted of a re-make of one of the ballets it had presented in 1963.

Bartpk's The Miraculous Mandarin (with, unbelievably, the same dancer in the title role) and an alternative version of a work which had provoked an explosively mixed reception when mounted by the Bolshbi on its last visit to Britain, Khatchaturian's Spartacus. The two ballets shared the same costume designed, Tivadar Mark, both had sets by Gabor Forray and both were choreographed by Laszl6 Seregi. Yet the results were wildly uneven. The Mandarin was as strong as the Spartacus was feeble. have always found The Miraculous Mandarin a phoney and rather repulsive piece a crude translation of love into sex which reduces the romantic myth of the Liebestod to a story about a randy maniac who, even after a fatal mugging, won't lie down until he is laid.

So far no staging has overcome my dislike. But Seregi's new version effortlessly breaks through all resistance. From the moment the curtain rises on Forray's strikingly ingenious set the Expressionist drama grips like a vice, and the tension is held by stroke after theatrical stroke until the final curtain (almost the only false note, as it happens, with an inept Pieta reference). The scene is subtly up-dated, with suggestions of neon lights and hippy hoodlums the two-tiered set with its skeletal stairs a studio furnished solely by a cane rocker, a dartboard and a frousty bed is a sordid arena stained with sex and blood. The costumes and lighting are exactly right and the performances are riveting, dominated bv Vik tor Fiilop's massive and mono lithic Mandarin and Vera Szumrak with her figure like a long jewelled knife, as the tart he obsessively pursues.

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