The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 13

MOVIE GUARDIAN THE GUARDIAN Thursday October 8 MB1 LJL uu ULWJJJU V.1 -JU-i r- r- nVnVW rf i i I i i i i i rl William Hurt in The Janitor Lightning Three Brothers Mel Brooks in History of the Worlds-Part I Derek Malcolm reviews Rosi's Three Brothers, Mel Brooks's latest outrage, and other new releases Over Water in History the World Part I packaged with ribbons and turned into a clean-cut product that people will spot and say, 'Yes. I'll buy "I've always though I could play basic leading roles." Why not Some very funny men. like Matthau, Lemmon. Segal, Hoffman, even Chevy Chase, have played non-comic parts. Comedy is inherent in a lot of so-called straight roles," she insists.

However, she says: "I don't think the idea is going over too big with the studios. People just assume I'm a clown. When my agent proposes me for something different, they say, 'Are you crazy Directors won't even meet and discuss. There's nothing I can do. My; attitude has always been thi; work will always come along.

That's the way it's always i happened up to now. Maybe one of those parts that call for tenderness and sincerity will come along aria all the other girls will be: busy and they'll call there's always Mel Brooks. Madeline Kahn as the Empress Nympho film hence her absence from Silent Movie in 1975. Also, people told her, "You can't get anywhere with that voice." Kahn's voice is high, piercing, not unpleasant but definitely attention-getting. Kahn's versatility has also stood an her way, she feels.

As a singer, she has starred on Broadway in On the Twentieth Century and at the Lincoln Center subsidised theatre in The Boom Boom Room. She sang a memorable Marlene Dietrich take-off in Blazing Saddles and she spoofed Verdi in Marty Feld-man's Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother though her only out-and-out film musical was Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love. Movie people have never known what to make of me. I couldn't pretend to be an ingenue or whatever the flavour is this month. They asked me, 'Whadda ya wanna do Sing, act Where ya wanna work Stage, movies Which one Who are you According to them, I have to be tied up and interestingly filmed, but the doubt remains.

William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Plummer are the chief participants and they are good enough to deserve better than the routine thrills and spills which end the film. Particularly Hurt, whom we first saw in Altered States and who is, clearly Going Places. The perennial complaint about lousy shorts going out with main features will probably always be with us, unless the short film is dropped altogether from programmes. There are just not enough good ones to go, round. What is worse, there is very little incentive to make them since everything ultimately depends on the long movie such films support.

If that is successful, the short makes money, good or bad. If it isn't, the short goes with it towards disaster. That's why they put on sponsored chea-pies. If The Janitor does well, though, Bob Bentley's Recluse, made under a scheme backed by The Association of Independent Producers and the National Film Finance Corporation, ought to get its money back. And I hope it does, because this little story about an old farmer selling up his land against the wishes of his eccentric brother is full of character and atmosphere.

Based apparently on a true story which ended tragically with the violent death of the farmer, his wife and the brother, The Recluse has excellent acting from Maurice Denham, Ann Tirard and Derek Smith. I hope Bentley can one day make a feature. On the strength of this, he certainly deserves to. Wim Wenders has recut Lightning Over Water (Gate, Bloomsbury, now twinned, AA) since its somewhat controversial presentation at Cannes last year. And this tribute to Nicholas Ray, now said to be directed by both Wenders and Ray, does look better.

But I still found it difficult to watch with equanimity the disappointed old Hollywood director dying of cancer, with his young German admirer guiltily feeding on the last morsels of the master through a vaguely fictionalised docu-drama devised by both of them. Though I believe Wenders when he says that Ray somehow needed the attention to help him die, the film's self-absorbed ramblings do not do much of a service either to Ray's memory or Wenders's talent. It leaves a very strange taste in the mouth. Walesa and co are fighting against. Violent Streets (Classic, Hay-market, Michael Mann's stylish if slightly hollow tracing of the downfall of master thief James Caan, out of favour with the Mob.

Tangerine Dream score. Moscow Distrusts Tears (Cinecenta). Awarded this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar, Menshov's saga of three girls on the loose in Moscow (and what happens to them with men) has crackling ensemble playing and a style akin to the Capra days of Hollywood. Not exactly for feminists, though. Films on TV Jaws (Tonight, ITV networked 7.30).

The film that made the movie world realise it was still in business, and Robert Shaw a star. 1975 seems a long way off, but has Steven Spielberg done any better? Slight intimations of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People may give eggheads an excuse to enjoy it too. OOIIifiSD and the forces which threaten them." There is not much more to say, save that he has, at least in part, succeeded. Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part 1 (ABC, Shaftesbury Avenue, AA) hasn't a thought in its corporate head, except to be of good cheer. And if that means telling bad jokes as well as good ones, so be it.

Do I smell the scent of an Americanised Carry On Brooks himself works exceedingly hard throughout. He is Moses, Comicus, Tor-quemada, Jacques and Louis XVI at one time or another Comicus being a stand-up philosopher in Ancient Rome and Jacques, an 18th century garcon de pisse (he carries the pot, you piss in it). It stretches his talents somewhat if not his ideas as director, which include Hitler on Ice, Jews in Space and a musical number based on the Spanish Inquisition. The whole thing misses as much as it hits. But since the hits include Dom De-Luise as Nero, farting furiously, and Madeline Kahn as the Empress Nympho, salivating over well-hung centurions, one is inclined to be gentle about the fact that Pamela Stephenson is virtually thrown away and at least a dozen of the jokes should be dumped too.

Sic transit gloria "I didn't know Gloria was sick," is one example.) Yet, having watched The Producers again on the box over the weekend, one can't in all honesty say Mr Brooks has progressed. Part 2, if it ever comes, ought to have a little more thought and a little less of the scatter-gun effect behind it. Six out of 10 for this. Peter Yates and Steve Tesich, the director-writer team of Breaking Away, have come up with an oddity in The Janitor Classics, Oxford Street and Haymarket, AA). In it we are asked to believe that a lowly janitor, obsessed by a glamorous telly personality, could actually wean her half away from the rich diplomat who wants to marry her in such a class-conscious country as America.

The film, however, is not so much a love story as a thriller since the telly girl is assigned to investigate a murder in the janitor's building which turns out to have vast political repercussions. Or is it? One never quite knows what either director or script-writer are up to, since they tend to invest the minor detail of the movie with rather more loving care than the major. Everything is smoothly and Jaws 7.30, tonight, ITV The Constant Factor Bloomsbury) Zanussi's award-winning story of a Polish idealist pushed ever downwards in the days before Solidarity exactly explains the petty corruption and sclerotic bureaucracy IP DONLEAVYs WITH PASOLINI gone and BeKtolucci scarcely filling the bill, Francesco Rosi is becoming more and more the keeper of the Italian cinema's political and moral conscience. His Three Brothers (Camden Plaza, A) is freely adapted by himself and Tonino Guerra from Pla-tonov's The Third Son, a short story about a family death which reunites three brothers in the house they left to look for work. But it becomes, in Rosi's hands, not so much a family saga as a lyrical and thoughtful summation of how old values even the better ones of law, justice and democracy are threatened by the violence of present-day Italy.

This is not one of Rosi's urgent, angry films but the first that overtly recognises the root cause of violence as being the lack of contact between rulers and ruled. Being a hero, someone says, is a thing of the past. All we can do is survive with dignity. And the film has a regretful tone which proposes no solutions. In the end it is the ageing father (Charles Vanel) we most remember, not the three brothers.

The past looks clearer than the future, and perhaps rosier because of the power of nos'talgia. This is possibly because of Vanel's impeccable performance, his seamed face all of a piece with the ravishing countryside and beautiful villages of the Murgie where most of the film was shot. Somehow the fleeting images of his life with his dead wife and of his relationship with Ihis young grand-daughter are more powerful than the arguments, hopes and fears of his three sons a judge, threatened by assassination (Philippe Noiret), an idealist teacher (Vittorio Mezzo-giorno), and a political activist (Michele Placido). He is the core of the film, the symbol of a betrayed country. The rest is filmed with Rosi's usual elegant eloquence, relating the judge's fearful determination to carry on with the idealist's fervour to succeed in his work at a boys' reform school and the activist's efforts to participate in the struggle for change.

But this is a film stronger on atmosphere and feeling than on arguments. And it is at i'ts very considerable best when the camera rather than the script holds sway, disturbing and enlightening at the same time. "I have tried to speak for all of us," Rosi says, our life, death, loneliness, the old and eternal values that we all carry within ourselves New films Heaven's Gate (Odeon, Hay-market). It doesn't look as if Michael Cimino's hugely expensive summation of the Johnson County Wars will be around long. Bui, despite its basic flaws, it is worth catching, so hurry.

Man of Iron (Academy), Wadja's sequel to Man of Marble is the docu-drama of the moment and engenders more excitement than 99 out of a hundred orthodox fictions. Out of the Blue (Gate, Camden) Dennis Hopper's first film as director since the ill-starred Last Movie may not do as well as Easy -Rider but remains an accomplished dissection of fractured redneck family life. Stunning performance from Linda Manz as messed-up daughter. City of Women (Classic, Tottenham Court Road, Screen on the Hill). Fellini's attempt to come to terms with feminism, and a right cods-up.

But entertaining and provocative all the same. mm Kahn's humour is dry, spare, much milder than her material might suggest. "A lot of Mel's jokes are coarse, but if you play them that way they aren't funny. You can't hit things on the head. I enjoy discovering the ordinariness in characters who are outlandish.

That's funny the contrast, the kernel of familiarity and truth in an outlandish situation, playing Empress Nympho like someone living in Apartment 4-D." Kahn, a New Yorker for 30 of her 34 years, studied drama at a local college, Hof-stra, but never considered a film career. "I planned to pursue a singing career on the stage. I'd signed to sing in the revival of Candide when What's Up Doc came up 10 years ago. I didn't even want to go to the interview with the director, Peter Bogdanovich. That might louse up all my plans." In films, she has always had an image problem.

At one time she thought she oughtn't to appear in absolutely every Mel Brooks The man who won' get out of bed! -yMikhalkov's award-winning I ill comedy Lblomov. SUBTITLES based on Goncharov's novel "memorable and heart-warming film" TELEGRAPH "attractive, nostalgic, charming, seductive, achingly romantic" OBSERVER "glowingly photographic, melancholic humour and nostalgia" SUNDAY EXPRESS "the comic triumph of an indolent man a great work of fiction, surpassing the original" SUNDAY TIMES Sun. 11 th.Oct.One Week say, I dunno. You figure it Despite her screen iTiage as a sex-crazed virago, Kahn is a thoughtful performer, well able to figure out how to bring something new to stock characters. Mel always has the same three female types in his films.

There's the innocent, virginal adoring one, which Pamela Stephenson plays in History of the World. There's the overbearing, controlling one me. Then there's the crazy, mentally ill one, which Cloris Leachman usually does." Kahn doesn't always play nymphos in Brooks's films, she points out. I'm not always over-sexed. In Young Frankenstein I was a prude and a virgin until the monster appeared to me then that quality emerged.

In High Anxiety I was a debutante type, though in odd moments that randy streak appeared;" But these are the scenes people remember, aren't they? She replies, "Of course they do savages fluencing people rather than arty movies Some of the movies will also be shown at the very enterprising i Cinema, where the Fourth Tyneside Festival starts today and continues until the 18th. The emphasis is on independent film-makers, particularly women, and the programme includes Connie Field's excellent Rosie the Rivetter, Pat Murphy and John Davies's Maeve (made for the BFI in Belfast) and Helke Sander's The Subjective Factor from West Germany. A dozen movies too from coloured directors, including Burning an Illusion and Sweet Chariot from Britain. An excellent season of neglected Film Classic opens today at the Chapter Cinema, Cardiff with John Boorman's hardly neglected Point Blank. At the ICA, Kluge's The Patriot continues with the same West German director's Strong Man Ferdinand and The Occasional Work of a Female Slave supxporting it tonight, and for two further evenings.

From Sunday to next Wednesday, there's the collaborative Germany in Autumn, From Sunday at the Electric, there's a Jonathan Demme double bill Melvin and Howard and The Last Embrace. Derek Malcolm magic CITY MARCELLO Fellini retains THE SCRIPT said that Madeline Kahn, playing the Roman Empress Nympho in Mel Brooks's latest outrage, History of the World Part 1, should inspect a long row of male hunks and choose the best for that night's regularly scheduled orgy. "We started to shoot the scene," she recalls. but it didn't feel funny. We couldn't figure out how to make it funny.

Mel depends on you to flesh out his fantasies. You can't just recite the lines from off the page. You have to live the situations." After a night's rest, Ms Kahn cracked it. I decided to do this jaded Nympho as a spoiled little girl. I had her pick out men' for the orgy as a demanding four-year-old would pick out toys.

Of course she'd want them all Kahn says Brooks is one of those comics who aren't consciously aware of what they've written. They don't necessarily know why it works. You can ask them how to play it and they'll Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Saturday, Midnight Movie, BBC-2) Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine in Fritz Lang's last American movie (1955) about newshound who implicates himself in unsolved murder by planting bogus clues to prove injustices of the system. Ingenious and gripping. Women in Love (Sunday, BBC-2, 10.25 p.m.).

Made in 1969 and often considered Ken Russell's best movie. Hothouse version of D. H. Lawrence perhaps, but it won Glenda Jackson her first Oscar Cabin in the Sky (Sunday, BBC-2, 3.10 pm). Vincente Minnelli all-black musical, made in 1943, with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, Ethel Waters, Lena Home and Louis Armstrong.

Vaguely Faustian content tempers slightly patronising approach. The Midnight Man (Tuesday, BBC-2, 9 pm). Burt Lancaster season continues with fair to moderate film he made himself with Roland Kibbee, in 1974. He plays paroled murderer, now a security guard, again involved in trouble the killing of a student. You know he didn't do it.

Special events The National Film Theatre's Cinema of Women season starts on Monday. Organised by COW Film Collective, it includes feminist films from all over the world. The Collective, given a BFI Award last year, is after in- Directed by and starring UAm Wanders and I tst lit well wottk ieeinj" Guardian CATfcSLtOMSMIT CIMAS 1 4 1 -RUSSELL SQUARE 837 8402 8371177 NASA'S IHEltS 1AUNCH RACE TO MAIS muMm OF WOMENx MASTROIANNI his command of tho camera as Science Digest is no ordinary magazine. It's where you'll meet the latest advances in science and technology head-on. And enjoy the encounter.

This month's issue looks at why people burst into flames for no apparent reason. IsaacAsimov questions established viewsof the Creation. And we analyse the potential problems of sex in space, Science Digest proves that fact is more exciting than fiction. Slatyour newsagent. SCIENCE DIGEST OCTOBER'S ISSU LIGHTS THE VW TO UNDERSTANDING effects box there are overwhelming inspired jokes.

SUNDAYTIMES WWSP Iff jX?.