The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 8

ARTS GUARDIAN Thursday April 9 1981 8 CINEMA liams, and Shelley Duryall is a more or less perfect Olive Oyl. But you never get quite what you might expect the spinach comes late and the slam-bang denouements of the Segar strip are kept to a bare minimum. Instead, we get a kind of rumbustious parable, with the marvellously-imaged Sweethaven much like a frontier harbour town into which an innocent strays, an "orphink" from the stormy seas searching for his father and eventually finding his manhood. What he also finds is greed, exploitation, and perfidy which his simple faith and gladiatorial prowess manages to put to rout. The film seems very much a microcosm of the real world, parodied perhaps but recognisable.

And it is this which in a way keeps better faith with Segar than the greater orthodoxy others might have brought to it. Popeye may be uneven and at times wilful, like many Altman films. But it is still very much the enjoyable fable it should be. The version shown here, by the way. has been shorn of four of the Nilsson songs and is 20 minutes shorter than the original.

The cuts were made by Altman himself. Rock Show (Classic, Oxford Street, U) is 100 minutes or so of the final concert given by Paul McCartney's Wings after a hard year of touring in 1976. There were 70,000 at the King Dome, Seattle, for the occasion and the amplification system was capable of an output of J5.000 watts. The sound is so-so at the Classic and Jack Priestley's photography rather repetitive, like the music of Wings themselves. But when they are good, they are very, very good and the driving last few numbers prove they can sometimes rock as well as roll.

Natassia Kinsky and Peter Firth in Tess Christopher Reeve in Superman II Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall in Popeye Derek Malcolm reviews Polanski's Tess, Dick Lester's Superman II, and Robert Sim Altaian's Popeye 2 aim anatom? design by Peter Murton. And the special effects are quite as spectacular as before. Robert Altman's Popeye (Odeon, Lecester Sq, U) has already made its money back at the box-office, which amazes me, not because it is a bad film but because it inhabits a different and seemingly more fragile world than such epics as Superman. It is as much McCabe and Mrs Miller Part II as a carbon copy of the comic strip. It creates its own world, puts Popeye in it and then tries for some logical comedy.

"I yam what I yam," sings Robin Williams's Popeye. It's the director's cry too, and very much his film. Popeye is excellently played by the energetic Wil IF, as I suggested last week. Chariots of Fire will Americans cry, Polanski's Tess (Empire, Leicester. Square, A) has been making them drool.

That has nothing to do with the prescence in it of Nastassia Kinski as Tess, though Polanski does spend an inordinate time during a very long movie caressing her with the camera. What Americans like most is the fact that it is such a high, wide and handsome version of the Thomas Hardy novel. Could the days of the lavish costume drama be returning One comes out of Tess, in fact, wondering how anybody could think it incapable of getting its money back (as a number of people did. hence its delay in reaching us) and amazed at the timidity of the British Film industry in not making the film itself. Since Polanski's signature is not everywhere apparent it must be his least personal movie to date there seems no reason whatever why half a dozen British directors could not have made it, in England rather than Brittany and with an English cast and technicians.

As it is. someone else has, using a lot of our. talent to do so. The result is curious, a very beautiful and watchable film which falls short, where it does, because of an over-reverential rather than too grandiose approach. Hardly, according to an oft-quoted scholar, made goodness interesting with Tess.

Polanski, one might reply makes it sexy which isn't quite the same thing. As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to protect oneself back into the mores of Hardy's time and thus not to wonder why the girl allowed so much to happen to her. Three pages of Hardy's prose persuade you better that she was the FIRST NIGHT COTTESLOE Michael Billington Don Juan Nigel Terry as the Don DEFEATED by Turgenev. Peter Gill triumphs with Moliere. His second production for the National, Moliere's Don Juan at the Cottesloe in a new translation by John Fowles, combines breakneck speed, total clarity, ritualistic atmosphere and a lively awareness of the play's ambiguity of the fact that, however much we deplore the hero's moral code, we admire his defiant courage and over-reaching single-mindedness.

Gill has also recognised one basic truth that the play constantly switches between low comedy and high seriousness. Thus from the start Nigel Terry's Don Juan and Ron Pember's Sganarelle establish themselves as a TELEVISION Nancy Banks-Smith backs a losing team Down and under mary Martin (her mother) outstanding. But it is the production detail which really counts. The late Geoffrey Unsworth created the luminous style of the imagery which Ghislain Cloquet continued, Pierre Guffroy's production design is impeccable, and Jack Stephens (art director) and Anthony Powell (costumes) fully deserve the praise they have received. What we see is a great-looking film which somehow escapes greatness in other directions.

Perhaps it is because the essence of Hardy lies in his rather than his sensitivity and the film's structure, which asks you to piece a period together bit by bit, COLISEUM Edward Greenfield Mary Clarke Bartok triple bill THE IDEA of presenting in a triple bill Bartok's three works for the stage the opera Bluebeard's Castle as well as the ballets, The Wooden Prince and the Miraculous Mandarin was tried many years ago in Budapest and has been copied elsewhere. But for Bartok centenary year it makes an apt and provoking offering from the English National Opera in collaboration with the Festival Ballet, particularly when The Wooden Prince has never been given on stage in this country before. The wonder is that the three works, written between 1911 and 1919, can present such a formidable contrast musically. Straussian echoes still hover over the dark textures of Bluebeard's Castle, not to mention flavours of Debussy, but for all the influences the result is Bartok unalloyed. Curiously, in The Wooden Prince the lighter fairy-tale manner the aim not really successful of writing a cross between Firebird and Petrushka, results in a less characteristic score, for all the extra maturity.

Balancing the gloom-laden concentration of the one and the relative lightness, of the other, the sheer violence of plaything of fate and true, after her fashion, to what would be expected of the time. That said, the- only way this film could have been done better would be to have taken more risks, like William Wyler did with Wuther-ing Heights. And Polanski should at least be praised for lavishing so much care and technical skill on the project. Kinski's Tess is more like the young Ingrid Bergman than I would have thought possible, Peter Firth is a good Angel, and Leigh Lawson a very credible Alec d'Urbcr-ville. What is more, every last character part is excellently played with Carolyn Pickles (Marian), John Collin (Tess's father), and Rose classic double-act: the insolently amoral master is a round-dance it's whole point is a change of and tie pur-iently censorious servant.

And full justice is done to Moliere's bedrock humour the Don commutes between two potential mistresses like an amorous Truffaldino, Sganarelle does lightning switches from stab-in-the-back attacks on his master to glowing commendations and there is even a good deal of Round-the-Juan innuendo with the word "heart" becoming a euphemism for the Don's more vital organs. But under the comedy, this is also a subversive play about a God-defying, Marlo-vian hero What Gill has done, through highly inventive staging, is to make the point that the play constantly shifts between two levels a ground-floor of farce and an upper-story of tragedy with the Don standing for intransigent, fist-brandishing selfhood. It works superbly thanks to the driving pace, to Alison Chitty's set with its four overhanging panels onto which grainy, old masterpiece images are projected and to some fine performances. Mr Terry's Don, full of un-flustered belligerence as of David Niven essaying Tam-burlaine, is a lovely piece of acting Ron Pember's servant is a cunning mixture of moral indignation and quiet envy and there is good support from Elizabeth Estensen as a Modigliani-necked peasant and from Michael Gough as the hero's appalled father, angry in crushed velvet. In short, this is Moliere in all his moral complexity.

3 In the dressing room the coach exhorted hugely unconvinced faces Tek 'cm on Give 'em some stick From the directors' box came cries of encouragement: "You flaming clown E's bleeding useless On the field the ref was incisive Come 'ere you the accused ascend-ingly innocent Me They lost 31 nil. In their mobile boardroom, the directors were desperate men. I'm gonna propose we give them 60. Win only. The ball is in their court (I do feel a lot of Doncaster's difficulty may stem from some confusion over which game they are playing).

The only irresistible object in the team. Big Tony Banham was in disgrace. A place he has spent much of his life don't think me father was ever mentioned. White family. Black baby.

Big disgrace." Another bloody Sunday and Huyton to play. The coach knew no fear There only one thing for it. You've got to go in like a lunatic and knock 'em down." Nor did the ref I don't care if 'e was pulling your hair or not. I'll decide." I don't know how they dare. The directors burst into tuneful cry of which the only identifiable word was Twit Half-time in the dressing-room and it's do or die.

This is it. If it's motivation for money, there's another 200. There I felt the chairman should appeal to their finer feelings and not lower the tone with two hundred quid. I was wrong. Tony Banham.

who had been sitting on the sidelines, like a slag heap steaming, burst onto the field, near 19 stone of him. Go on you black bastard howled the chairman ecstatically, reckless of the Race Relations Board. "Get a penalty. Any-thing'll do. We're not particular." They won, they won.

Wait while I wring out my soaking typewriter. Oh the cham-p'agne of it. The kisses and the cheers of it. And, oh, the surprise. is too loose for the whole to seem quite the sum of its parts.

Dick Lester's Superman II (Warner. West End) makes a groaningly slow start but finally ends up a better movie than Superman I. Of course, it has to be because more of the same would look a bit second-hand another time round. Lester has said that he learned a lot making the film, principally about what you can do with technical dodges not only to amaze but actually to cut costs. He also has the grace to add that Abel Gance could have told him it all at breakfast.

The other thing people will want to know is whether Superman II looks and feels like a Lester movie. And the The Miraculous Mandarin sets a seal on the trilogy, particularly when the three works are performed, as here, in chronological order. Contrasted as they are, all three have a basic theme in common, allegorically analysing the nature of love, or more specifically sexual attraction. Having them together makes all three seem less symbolic and more revealing of the composer's subconscious, a composite portrait of a figure more than usually withdrawn. Bluebeard's Castle was in the repertory of the old Sadler's Wells Company, but the new production gets away from specific representation of doors to be opened.

Ingeniously in the sets of Ralph Koltai with undistracting production from Glen Byam Shaw, the. ritual between Bluebeard and Judith is presented against a seven-pointed star, formed with canted mirrors in a kaleidoscope triangle. In Freda Blackwood's costume Bluebeard appears as a Frankenstein figure in a surrealist Transylvania. And with superb diction from John Tomlinson as a sonorous Bluebeard, as well as from Elizabeth Connell as a powerful if querulous Judith, the piece emerges with surprising urgency. Janos Furst conductor for all three pieces favours speeds faster than usual in Bluebeard, without losing the necessary hypnotic pulse.

If he finds less sharp a focus in The Wooden Prince, that is mainly Bartok's fault, while The Miraculous Mandarin rightly emerges as the work which most closely relates music to drama. E.G. ClMlMiiMiHJMthlibmMr ntm great competence and occasional flair. This happens as soon as Superman (Christopher Reeve again) gets down to the business of defeating a triumphant Zod (Terence Stamp) who has the President himself (E. G.

Marshall) down on his knees. Thereafter we have all the fun and fury one has come to associate with the Bond movies. And it is only necessary to add that there's more of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor (a better written part too), less of Valerie Perrine's Eve than one would like, and as much of Margot Kidder's Lois as one can take. Once again Unsworth's quality cinematography is well added to by Bob Paynter, as is the late John Barry's production the old version And what is gained by transplanting the action to the West Coast of Ireland at the end of the last century For, in a nutshell, I found the ceaseless paraphrasing of the original obtrusively self-conscious; but when Chekhov was allowed to take over (as in the long encounter between the visiting novelist and the aspiring actress) then the play exerted its traditional grip. You certainly know Kilroy was here.

Thus Constantine's play becomes a piece of obscure Celtic myth. His mother, Isobel Desmond, is an actress before whom you can't mention Madge Kendal or Ellen Terry. And a clear division is made between the Anglo Irish landowners, whose tenants are not paying their rents and who feel the threat of Parnell, and the Irish doctor and teacher who spring from the native soil. What is more Aston, the Tri-gorin-figure, is made doubly a spectator by virtue of being both a writer and English. The problem with all this is twofold.

References to the Saturday Review, the Shel-bourne and Victoria draw attention to Mr Kilroy's own ingenuity. And the characters' behaviour often seems unrelated to the geography: one can understand, for instance, why Madame Arka-dina loathes the boredom of provincial Russia but less easily why Isobel Desmond feels hopelessly trapped in Galway- But when the Irish setting recedes and Chekhov dominates Max Stafford-Clark's production takes wing. I shall not quickly forget, for instance, the devouring pre-datoriness with which Anna Massey's Isobel Desmond clings to her young lover or indeed the stark apprehension with which she gazes at her son in the fourth act homecoming. It is a fine performance superbly backed by Alan Hickman's Aston, a best-selling writer racked by his urge to reduce everything to language, by Veronica Duffy's Mary (Masha) haggard in her unrequited love, and by T. P.

McKenna's serenely omniscient Irish doctor. I just wish this strong cast could have been let loose on the matchless original. "Stunning piece of film-making GUARDIAN of powerful, unforgettable images magnijicenlperjormances. SUNDAY TIMES Tarkovsky conjures images like you 're never seen before. TIME OUT ANDREI TARKOVSKY'S STflliKER tubulin A dazzling cinema.

ll has to be seen. II is unique." NOW LjMVwif.il-J Tickets 2.00 Day M'ship 40p Tub' Sun 5.00 9 April -6 May All seats Bookable answer to that has to be equivocal. His quickfire Sixties' style might have been useful here but is eschewed his vitality and. irony tend to get lost in little parodifc bits and pieces, like Superman's "Your floor, I think" as he saves his girl from the Eiffel Tower's careering lift. Perhaps Lester was drowned in all the production values.

If so, it will have been a profitable way to go. If this film doesn't make money, nothing will despite all the previous footage he had to use up and despite the fact that a lot of it doesn't quite match the colour of the new because it has already faded. After its initial three-quarters of an hour, it becomes itself with LONDON Festival Ballet's two new productions in what had looked to be a lean year are unlikely to live in the repertory beyond the Bartok celebrations, although Flemming Flindt's The Miraculous Mandarin could form the central work in a triple bill between two lighter, more easily digestible ballets. For Geoffrey Cauley's version of The Wooden Prince I have less hope. The ballet has never been produced by a British dance company, although the Hungarian State Ballet brought a version based on Gyula Harangozb's Budapest staging to the Edinburgh Festival in 1963.

The movement, alas, is almost incredibly boring from a choreographer of Cauley's known ability. Patricia Ruanne as the Fairy is so loaded under her costume and mask-like make-up that she can do nothing but make- imperious gestures. What dancing there is goes to Matz Skoog as the Prince and he not only performs brilliantly but succeeds, even, in giving the character a personality. The Miraculous Mandarin is the version Flindt made for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1967 when he was its director. It has been danced by the Danes at Covent Garden and seen on television.

It does now look very 1960s and Festival can not field mime artists of Danish calibre. Ben van Cauwen-bergh was strong and moving as the Mandarin, but Caroline Humpston is no substitute for lucious Vivi Gelker Flindt as the girl. M.C. ROYAL COURT Michael Billington The Seagull THOMAS KILROY'S new version of Chekhov's The Seagull at the Royal Court raises two important questions. What exactly was wrong with is superb urge you to see it is one of the outstanding 'prospects in London at the moment." GUARDIAN is magnificent" F.

TIMES a persuasively truthful picture of tije ine ota west. THE TIMES HEARTLAND GRAND PRIX: BERLIN 80 "Concha fa Terrell is marvellous as the heroine." DAILY MAIL Ma NATIONAL FILM THEATRE South Bank, London SE1 Dos Office 01928 32323 April Programmes include JOHN CASSAVETES JESSIE MATTHEWS ROBERTO R0SSELLINI Tickets 1.40 1.80 Membership from 50p YOU MAY talk of the mating rites of the hippopotamus of the Nile though not, I trust, in front of the children but until you have seen Doncaster Rugby League, mud in slow motion, you have not seen majesty. There is a sort of magnificence in absolute disaster. Doncaster are not a bad team. They are, arguabiy, the worst team in the worid.

A Doncaster supporter, a man pickled in the vinegar of failure, isn't arguing I think this is the worst team I have ever seen," he said sourly. It takes character to follow Doncaster. Is this the supporters club asked Barry Cockcroft, producer director of Another Bloody Sunday (Yorkshire) trying to keep the squeak out of his voice at the sight of a dozen disconsolate faces and a dog, who was trying not to get involved. We encountered Doncaster at a crucial moment of their consistent career. Nineteen matches played.

Nineteen lost. Their chairman had resigned and they'd lost their coach, so I suppose they'd had to walk home too. Their general manager, Tom Morton, has that lugubrious sense of humour peculiar to Yorkshiremen in general and managers of Doncaster in particular. A good result for us is to get 15 players out nn the field. I've 'ad to borrow a scrum 'alf.

Every SeDt amber I can't wait till May when the cricket starts. Someone," he added morosely, gave me a Guinness Book of Records for Christmas." Doncaster is in it for their unbeaten beaten record 40 defeats on the trot. Outside the wire a pale bespectacled Alan Bennett face, understandably grudging the price of admission, peered. Inside it was like One Million Years BC. Mud erupted into men.

One player picked up a dinosaur egg and ran before being driven into the ground like a tent peg, his ears wrenched off to make a finer point of his head. Ewra The Musical I JLA. ISTORW 9 April -3 May at 1.00 and 9 AmCcil THE MALL-SSaaSP COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS A ROMAN POLANSKI FILM TESS" STARRING NASTASSIA KINSKI PETER FIRTH LEIGH LAWSON I J--- screenpiaybyGERAROBRACH ROMAN POLANSKI JOHN BROWNJOHN BASED THOMAS HARDY riioTocnAPHEDBY GEOFFREY UNSWORTH bso GHISLAIN CLOQUET (asci production DESIGNER PIERRE GUFFROY COSTUMES DESIGNED by ANTHONY POWELL music PHILIPPE SARDE executive producer PIERRE GRUNSTEIN co-producer TIMOTHY BURRILL associate producer JEAN-PIERRE RASSAM produced by CLAUDE BERRI directed by ROMAN POLANSKI PanavisioQw RletwJ by CntumbU'EMl'WamrrDlntribalan EXCLUSIVE 70mm PRESENTATION SEPARATE PROGRAMMES DAILY, INCLUDING SUNDAY. AT 12.30. 4 00.

7.30 om NOW! LATE SHOW FRIDAY AND SATURDAY 1115 pm Seats bookablefor the last evening performance only. Advance box office open from 11.00am to 7.00pm, excluding Sundays. Credit card bookings ringTeledata 01-200 0200. THC MALI SWr 830 3647.