The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 12

ARTS GUARDIAN Friday May 28 1982 Chris Auty meets the Turkish director, Yilmaz Gnney, whose latest film won the coveted Golden Palm OTn SrogSttfiv (Samaimes flnamfleofl ais a flnei? must declare myself on a side which is not just blindly Muslim, on the side of Reh-javi and Bani Sadr, not on the side of Khomeini," he Mick Jogger reviving the Sixties Robin Denselow reviews the new Rolling Stones album and other rock releases Rebel rousers VILMAZ GUNEY, co-winner of the Cannes Golden Palm for his film Yol (The Way), is a fugitive from his country. This past week the Turkish authorities have requested his extradition from both France (when he turned up for the Cannes screening of his film) and, more recently, from Greece where he was embraced by Papandreou and Molina Mercouri at a conference of intellectuals. His prize at Cannes, shared with Costa-Gavras's Missing, was seen by several commentators as reflecting the new spirit of France's Socialist Government. Yilmaz Guney, now 51, was horn into a landless Turkish peasant family, worked his way through high school and completed two years of an economics degree in Istanbul before his political activities earned him his first gaol sentence. He became a star of Turkish cinema, playing action roles, despite a second sentence in the early Seventies for harbouring revolutionary students, and a third in 1976 for the alleged killing of a public prosecutor.

Nine months ago he left his semi-open prison and escaped to Europe, where he worked in secret dfi the editing of Yol. At Cannes both the film and its maker were given a rapturous reception. Yol was filmed from Guney's script by a collaborator, Serif Gonen. Its story relates closely to Guney's own recent activity and concerns five political detainees who are given a week's leave. Tracing their journeys in an apparently haphazard way, the film in fact constructs an extraordinary panorama of Turkish society, concentrating on the position of the A still from Guney's prize-winning film, Yol viewed in a carefully protected apartment in Cannes.

He is a strikingly handsome man and it is easy to see the charismatic, star under the rather hawk-like intensity he projects as a director. As a star I reached six million people, 80 per cent of the cinema-going public, and although those films had positive aspects they didn't really urge popular revolt. Then towards 1966, as an actor-producer, I began to choose directors and scripts which did get people to look directly at their political and social situation. Finally I became a director. Now, though I am in exile, my films are being secretly screened in Turkey.

Kurds as a national minority and on the tragic sexual tensions within Turkish society, in which female submission and patriarchal pride maintain a tyranny of repression, only Guney's Kurdish protagonist emerges relatively un-scathed, determined to take part in the struggle against the Turkish military against hopeless odds. Guney himself is a quite traditional Marxist, his statements peppered with "anti-imperialism and historical necessity." But on the evidence of Yol and The Herd, which is now being shown at the ICA, he is no simple didact. "You must distinguish propaganda cinema from the cinema of head and heart," he said, when inter taking his case against the Home Office to European justice. In another strand of the programme, there is an autobiography of isolation, smuggled from the prison and yielding the means of recreating the minute detail of passing life without time. And.

not only were civil rights campaigners ready to speak out, the prison governor was frank and to the point he would wish something to be done, but it was a matter of resources and priorities. Yet the outcome, for all this range of material, was a rather flat mixture in which no one part seems to have its full force realised. The recreation was limited, the commentary markedly reticent about the histories of the men involved, and, in the end, the stance so fair, I feared too many might find it possible to greet a failure of society with another shrug. TRICYCLE Michael Billington Queen Christina WE FIRST saw Pam Gems's Queen Christina five summers ago at Stratford's Other Place. It now emerges in a new, better, swifter production by Pam Brighton at the Tricycle.

Kilburn and boasting a fine performance by Chrissie Cotterill. But it still suffers from the basic defect of nearly all chronicle drama too much ground to cover in too little time. In the first superior half we see the young Christina, reared as a man, nervously occupying the seventeenth-century Swedish throne. She eschews diplomatic marriages, takes female lovers, subscribes to Descartes' doctrine saia. I personally am an ath eist.

But that does not mean that after the revolution in Turkey I would want to pre vent people attending the mosque. In any case, at the moment, it's of the utmost importance that all the opposition groups and they are fragmented should form a common platform to topple the fascist military junta which currently rules Tuncey, wnicn noids tens of thousands of political pri soners, uses torture. "I am not in danger from Muslim groups in Turkey, because they too are oppressed. But it is quite likely that the regime or, more importantly, fascist groups, wiu try to kill me. The success of mv films is playing an increasingly im portant roie in tne struggle.

And if that happened, my death itself would be a con siderable blow against the junta, simply by exposing tneir propaganda as lies. As Yilmaz Guney stood in the circle of the Cannes Palais du Festival to take his bow last week, the audience in the stalls rose to their feet, cheering and chanting Guney Guney Many of them wept, saciiy will not be able to give the exiled director a similarly emotional welcome this week end at a scheduled Guardian lecture. He will not be com-ine to London, despite a peti tion signed by British critics in Cannes, because tne Home Office has refused to let him enter the country. For the moment, audiences will have to content tnemseives wiui seeing The Herd. to find Sinopoli's other great speciality is early Verdi.

Another vital element in his view of the work was an ironic elegance, an aping of the eighteenth century, in such passages as the reprise of the woodwind chorale in the first movement or the slow minuet episode in the scherzo. As for the Andante mod erate, Sinopoli saw that as the counterpart of the Adaeietto of the Fifth Sym phony, amplified, with bigger contrasts but fundamentally reflecting a similar inner re- snonse. It was sweet, perhaps too sweet, but no one could doubt that here as in all four movements was an unusually positive conductor, already 36 and now promising to be an outstanding figure in nis generation. HAMMERSMITH Robin Denselow Ry Cooder FAME changes everyone, even Ry Cooder, or the 12 years that he has been making solo albums, he's been a cult hero in Britain, where his all-American blend of brilliant guitar work, novelty songs, gospel and Rhythm an? Blues have al ways wen him an even more dedicated following than he has enjoyed back home. It's a rare tribute to British good taste that Cooder is now treated as a superstar here last night he was at Hammer smith for the first of no fewer than eight sold-out con certs, and tickets have been more sougnt-atter than those tor the Stones.

Cooder has naturally been affected, by it all. He came on wearing not his customary cuddly Hawaiian snirt, but an all-black outfit complete with black bandanna. He looked leaner and hungrier than be fore, like a not-quite-so- wasted Keith Richards, and now obviously aware of his always-latent sex appeal. This move towards a more obviously commercial approach was reflected in the music, though I am happy to report that Cooder has certainly not "sold out." His five-piece band had two keyboard players and two percussionists, and they were backed by Bobby King's wonderful gospel trio, capable of dressing up any song with rich harmonies, joyous falsetto and growling bass. Cooder has been moving towards his own special treatment of the and mainstream for the past few years, and much of the material had a solid and Bgospel approach, rather than the light blues and acoustic folk styles of his early recordings.

Even so, he plundered a full decade's worth of his repertoire during the two hour set, and if he sometimes sounded a little brasher and louder than before, or like a brilliant technician rather than the sensitive player of old, I hope that can be put down to first night nerves. He started with Presley's Little Sister, ended by letting his gospel trio loose on Sam Cooke's Chain Gang, and along the way managed to cover everything from gospel to Carl Perkins with some subtle and scorching displays of bottleneck guitar thrown in. TOMORROW Alan Parker talks to Mick Brown about his new films, Shoot the Moon, which opens next week, and Pink Floyd The Wall TELEVISION Peter Fiddick Brass Tacks EVEN-HANDEDNESS is certainly a considerable virtue but, as we have lately, seen in the matter of the Falkland Islands, it tends to bring other problems in its wake. Failing to be told what they want to hear, even people who usually abhor being given a message now turn round and berate the messenger. I would not wish to berate Brass Tacks Reports (BBC-2) for iits film about the use of long-term solitary confinement in British prisons, but it was curiously frustrating, and the cool style underscored that.

The very idea of locking someone up for four years, with virtually no company apart from the officers, should appall us. So, of course, should the facts of why such a man is in such a state multiple murder ds not to be shrugged off, and other inmates have a right to protection. And so should the failure of society outside to will the means to carry out its penal policy with decency. One of the depressing things about this report was simply that so much of the argument was so familiar the subject of a steady drip of TV programmes, newspaper investigations, even official and political concern, for years. Brass Tacks Reports had the material to justify another try, if justification were needed.

One of the modest steps forward in recent times is that cameras may now be permitted within walls where once the Official Secrets Act maintained convenient silence, and here was an extensive conversation with a man who is in process of are segued together with no break, and add up to one long, drifting, slightly sleepy mood piece, from the clever vocal acrobatics of More Than This through to an instrumental, India, on which Ferry plays guitar synthesizer and keyboards. The second side is just a little more lively, thanks to songs like the light, rhythmic The Main Thing, but again it sounds like music designed for the early hours. It's very good, as far as it goes, but it sounds just a little as if Ferry is now sticking to a safe, highly successful formula. Duran Duran: Rio (EMI). Melodic, disposable pop to a best-selling formula, from Bruin's own New Romantics.

A light funkdisco rhythm is overlaid with tinkling synthesisers, and the occasional saxophone break, to provide lightweight, currently fashionable background music. At its best, the album is slightly reminiscent of Roxy Music, in the days before Ferry became quite so languid, for Duran Duran do at least have style, and can at least write a strong melody. The lyrics, though, are best ignored (why do bands with no lyrical skill insist on printing their ghastly efforts on inside record sleeves Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand," is good going for this outfit. How they dare call a song New Religion (A Dialogue Between The Ego and Alter Ego) beats me. The Gang Of Four Songs of The Free (EMI).

With excellent newcomer Sara Lee on bass, The Gang are now far better form than on their last offering Solid Gold, but they still have their problems. They write excellent, often highly political lyrics, and they have a tremendous rhythm section, capable of churning out highly unusual funk riffs. What they lack are melodies to stick over the top of it all. Even so, tracks like I Love A Man In Uniform still work because the loping, pounding rhythms and the lyrics are so good, though the melodies are often so unmemorable they must be difficult to sing. This week there were reports that the Gang are now looking for a fifth member, a new girl singer.

If they can sort but their vocal problems, they will be excellent. John Hiatt; All Of A Sudden (Geffen). John Hiatt is a very good American rock balladeer who is not quite sure what to do with himself. He was part of Ry Cooder's band when Cooder was here last (he's not with him this time round), and enlivened his show with some strong solos. He's now got Tony Vis-conti (who recently worked with the Boomtown Rats) to produce his new album, which sounds both schizophrenic and pseudo-English.

The opening. I Look For Love, has swirling synthesisers and keyboards, which seem a little twee for Hiatt's gutsy voice. Elsewhere, he sounds more like Graham Parker, but lost in overproduction. Scritti Politti Faithless (Rough Trade). An extended 12-inch version of their latest single shows off the charm and sophistication of singer-composer Green's English soul style.

A gentle, melodic ballad gradually develops towards jazz and then funk, with brass section improvising against a slick rhythmic backing. It makes an intriguing trailer for their debut album, Songs To Remember, which is released later this summer. AN blmSzatri wMHi mcrmaivm tfkMAMM FDH All CMEMAS-UTE NIGHTS SEEDA1LYPRESSANDLISTINGS Chris Petits ff AN UNSUITABLE JOB 8 WOMAN a I LOUIS MALLCS I MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. 1 VoOwrScNondorllf CIRCLE OF DECEIT MONTH for rebels, old and new, predictable and unpredictable. Standing cheerfully in the former category are the Rolling Stones, who prepare the way for their return next month for their first concerts here in six years, with a new album, the self-consciously titled Still Life (EMIRolling Stones, released early next week).

It is, of course, a live album, recorded during their money-spinning swing round America last year, and it's an honest record of the way they now sound no fancy over-dubs to iron out any mistakes. The album starts just like the Stones shows I saw in Florida a burst of Ellington over the PA, and then Jagger reviving the Sixties with Under My Thumb and Let's Spend The Night Together. He tries hard enough, but the sound drifting out across the stadium ds pleasant, with little sense of attack. "I hone you're drinking a few beers and smoking a few joints," says the artist, perfectly judging the mood of an American Stones' audience. There are few surprises.

but the album is no disgrace. Shattered is lost against a muddy growl of guitars, but two non-JaggerRichards pieces help settle the score. There's a rousing version of Eddie Cochran's 20 Flight Rock (with good piano from Ian Stewart), and a straightforward, driving version of the Smokey Robinson classic Going To A Go-Go (with good sax from Ernie Watts). On the second side, the best tracks are the ballads well-sung, even soulful versions of Time Is On My Side and Imagination, leading up to audience squeals for an over-fast finale of Satisfac tion. If the weather's good, it will make pleasant listening at wembley.

The Clash: Combat Rock (CBS) This more recent bunch of rebels are proving even more difficult to see. though last weekend's cancelled Brixton dates have now been re-scheduled for July, by when it is hoped that the disappearing Joe Strummer will have returned to the band. But even with out live concerts as promotion, the new album is already a best-seller. It's only a single album, after the double-set London Calling and triple-set Sandinista, but still manages to contain a typically Clash jumble of the near-chaotic ana tne near- brilliant. Some of the tracks on the first side, like Car Jamming or Rock The Casbah, sound like semi-dmprovised, almost throw-away pieces, but on the second side the band become far more adventurous, thanks to help from Futura 2000, and Allen Ginsberg.

The former add a burst of rapping to the thumping Overpowered By Funk, while Ginsberg appears on Ghetto Defendant. This shows the Clash at their most experimental, with bizarre, furious lyrics that dart from Rimbaud and the Paris Commune to Poland, the evils of drugs or the Hundred Years War, as uins- bere intone against a light Strummer ballad. There are more musical experiments on Sean Flynn, with its mixture of unexpected rhythms and lieht woodwind and brass, or the final two tracks, that range from sturdy melodies and angry lyrics to light, tin kling nightclub piano, nay the second side first, for it's by far the more interesting. Roxy Music Avalon (EGPolydor). Released today, this is Roxy's first new album since flesh ana Blood, two years ago, and will doubtless Drove an equally massive best-seller.

Once again, the album is immacu lately recorded, and once again Bryan Jerry is in excellent voice, as he sinks further into his languid, gentle, exquisitely world-weary ballads. The songs on the first side mm t3lktlQW winder Radio interviews from their 1964 tour of Australasia Available on record IGP 5001 land cassellelGMC 5001 Ion the Goughsound label Distributed to the trade by Spar tan 'And that creates militancy. Simply because people get used to the idea that they must see these films in secret. My duty isn't just to make militant cinema, but also to create militant If anything, Yol seems to draw on the poetic and symbolic resources of early Russian revolutionary cinema, in which carefully composed lyricism joins hands with urgent editing and an overwhelming emotional appeal. Stylistically, the film doesn't seem too concerned by its rough edges.

"Though my friends had filmed everything that was in the scenario I had written in prison, I changed it consider Elizabeth Spender, Chrissie Cotterill Tricycle (picture by Douglas Jeffery). and virtuouso handling of the violin solo in No. 4. Blend was least satisfactory in the strings-only concertos, where the brighter and richer sounds of modern instruments confused some issues. Balance was inevitably weighted against the harpsichord, too often inaudible in the fifth concerto, though Ledger's flexible handling of his famous solo and some nice extemporary work in the polacca of No 1 and the adagio of No 6 could be properly appreciated.

Balance between soloists was excellent, particularly in the problematic No. 2, where trumpet, flute, oboe and violin conversed on equal terms. Michael Laird's immaculate trumpet playing and Averil William's cool and steady flute were particularly enjoyable, while the differing characters of the three violin soloists added interest to the performances. Ledger's speeds were well adapted to the hall and to the music and it was only occasionally in quicker movements that a sort of pedestrianism creeps into the music, as though the players were conscious of the length of the road they were travelling. OLD RED LION David Roper Halliwell double bill ANOTHER of the long-silent award winners of the' Sixties, David Halliwell, who resurfaced at the Old Red Lion recently with Creatures of Another Kind, returns to the same venue with a double bill that manages to plumb uncharted depths of banality.

Both pieces play around with his doubts about the nature, of reality, but the ably in the editing to save it from a kind of ponder-ousness that was creeping in. In any case, life at the moment doesn't leave me much time to think, and the film has much the same effect on its spectators it doesn't really give them time to draw breath. It races them along." Guney's politics, despite the Marxist vocabulary, seem flexible his driving concern for the position of women in society is unorthodox; and on the question of Islamic revolution he is candid about a certain sense of loss. "The Iranian revolution really was a revolution, against American the USSR, the Shah. It was, in its origins, progressive.

But now I only relationship the speculative deliberations have with drama is one of infective somnolence. Was It Here is an incessantly questioning monologue, intercut with surreal encounters in one man's quest for a girl he no longer wants to be witn anywav. Like a documentary filmmaker training his camera on himself, the imaginary adven turer sets oft mapping out the same area of London that preoccupied Pinter in No Man's Land, and borrows its styles from a mixture of B. S. Johnson and old Hancock scripts.

Had it not been so slight as to seem the product of a very wayward mind, Was It Her? might even bear comparison with Koest-ler's Roots of Coincidence. Meriel the Ghost Girl makes even keener demands on our resistance to hearing the same groups of words of phrases reiterated in a sequence of descriptive soliliquies. Much the same thing probably serves as a gentle entertainment at many a Psychic Society wine and cheese party, but running for 90 minutes in a theatre, it raises considerably less than our expectations. Why did the world's greatest debunker of paranormal phenomena get taken in by a cheap trick of spiritual manifestation Widely different answers are offered by a number of amateur sleuths. Each of them is plausible in itself until a supposed member of the audience interrupts with his own destructive equation.

The ornate writing gets an unhelpfully bland presentation, some messy direction, and some half decent performances. Nigel Anthony, though, has a talent for mimicrv that could provide him with more laughs, more money and more satisfaction bv working for the Muppet Show. RFH Edward Greenfield SinopoliLSO MAHLER red in tooth and claw, hardly spiritual at all but a revealer of inner tensions, ever skirting vulgarity that was the revelation we had from the latest virtuoso wonder-conductor from Italy, Giuseppe Sinopoli, in this his triumphant first Festival Hall appearance conducting the Sixth Symphony. I can imagine many a committed Mahlerian resisting the aggression for Sinopoli, in the line from Toscanini, is a conductor who presents music at the keenest tension all the time. He is not a comfortable man to watch with his short jabbing beat and exaggerated choreography, but the sound is what matters, and the extremes of bite and beauty here revealed the orchestra at its very finest.

Sinopoli's way with Mahler has thought behind it not just thrust. Having trained as a psychiatrist, having written a thesis on Mahler, he presents the composer very much as the Austrian counterpart of Rachmaninov, Puccini or maybe Elgar. In the first movement he emphasised the forced conflict between closely structured sonata form and deeply emotional content by observing the exposition repeat, often ignored. Unashamedly he chose a fast Allegro, ignoring the warning "ma non troppo," but underlined the contrast between the goose-stepping theme of Fate and the Alma love theme, which was presented with the fullest richest warmth. It is not surprising of free will, forswears her Lutheran background and finally abdicates.

In clipped, modern, un-romantic dialogue Ms Gems gives us quite a sharp picture of a confused, intelligent woman for whom power has become a substitute for the satisfaction of personal feeling. But in the slacker, second half the action shifts to Italy where Christina socks it to the Pope You abstract yourself from the world and condemn queens it once more in Naples, falls for a Cardinal and ultimately realises that, by being bred as a man, she has been denied her female heritage. Originally, I took the play to be a wholehearted endorsement of Christina's bid for individual freedom. Now it emerges, quite differently, as a forceful attack on the cruel trick played by the Swedish court in suppressing her womanhood. I've been denied my birthright I've been denied the very centre of myself," she shrieks to the unresponsive Cardinal.

But although it makes more sense for Christina to be treated as a victim than a heroine, the play still suffers from the need to whip through 60 years of history and from the absence of Christina emerges as tragically ill-used. But you long for her to meet another character of comparable weight. Even in her theological dis putations with the Pope, she wins game, set and match and one begins to wish Ms Gems had followed the classic Shavian tactic of always giving the best arguments to the opposition. One is left with a character-study rather than a drama. But at least this gives Chrissie Cotterill, a stubbily unsentimental figure with wire-brush hair, the chance to run the emotional gamut from brick-red choler at emotional betrayal to lonely tearfulness at her lack of children.

It is a wonderful portrayal of sexual confusion. The other figures are no more than paper cut-outs but James Wynn as an itchless Cardinal and Elizabeth Spender as one of Christina's sumptuous bedmates make their mark in a play flawed by the fact that the central part is infinitely bigger than the whole. BARBICAN Hugo Cole Brandenburgs SIX Brandenburgs in a row provided a good test for the Barbican acoustics as well as for the players of the orchestra, with every thought of size of ensemble and textures ranging from the clear Handelian of No. 4 to the riotous assemblies of independent parts in the first movements of Numbers 1 and 3. The Barbican came well out of the test.

Solo parts had a bloom on them at all dynamic levels yet most of the detail came through clearly. In this big hall it seemed as if the players could hardly believe how quietly they could safely play. And this was not. I think, because anyone had decided that extreme pianissimos were not authentic. These interpretations directed by Philip Ledger were not at all pedantic, though the performance had adopted some baroque conventions notably in allowing plenty of air into legato phrases.

The performances were also firmly based on 20th century techniques, most of all in Perry Hart's fiery fi fir if 00.