Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 44

C8 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Friday, December 26, 1980 Actresses Rescue 'Nine to Five' Hints For Photographers When Frosty Climate Hits i CM? ihiiUorexoijiofyandKifber tures here do get down to several degrees below zero and photographers will be making pictures on cold days and nights. Cameras left in cars during cold weather for any length of time suffer considerably. Shutters stick, film transport mechanisms sometime refuse to work, and compur shutters (between the lens) have a habit of opening and staying open. But the meanest trick old Jack has up his sleeve concerns lenses. A photographer, when coming inside on a bitter cold day, has forgotten to check the lens and started making pictures right away.

Lenses, like eyeglasses, fog over when they are bought inside on a cold day or night and pictures made with lenses in this condition appear to have been taken through a waterfall. It's a good idea to check the lens (both front and back if you have an in-terchangable lens system) but for added insurance, wait several minutes for the camera body and lens to warm up, thus clearing up the steam or fog. Lens tissue is a must in every gadget bag and it will come in handy at this time. Photographers have been known to put their equipment in ovens and on stove tops to help the clearing process along. This works very well; just be careful not to damage the camera body or scratch its finish.

By MAURICE MURRAY Jack Frost, that wily old New England wintertime wizard, has been accused of many things, and I'm sure with good reason in every case. When the old buzzard gets himself turned on he can raise cain with cameras, lenses, tripods and other photographic equipment. Of course the only foolproof way to prevent photographic equipment from suffering the effects of severe cold is to keep it warm at all times, but this is quite impossible during winter. Not too many years ago, a National Geographic photographer went on assignment in Siberia during the dead of winter, with temperatures getting down to 50 and 60 degrees below zero. His most critical problem was film freezing.

It became so brittle he could not advance the film; he was only able to make one shot one exposure per roll of film. He would emerge from a heated building or vehicle all bundled up with his camera ready just under the first heavy layer of clothing, proceed immediately to where he was to take a picture, make his exposure and return indoors right away to remove film from the camera. Within a matter of minutes his film would become so brittle he could not advance it to another frame without it breaking! One can hope it will never get that cold here in New England, but tempera OOOGOOOOOOOOOOOOOGOOOOOOOOOO TUMHWim mm ami nil intr mm PDDY- Dec. By MALCOLM L. JOHNSON A Hollywood princess who is probably the American film's most outspoken activist, a comedienne whose characters are perhaps even more famous than their creator and country music's 'most formidable sex symbol might seem an odd conjunction of stars.

But playing an innocent neophyte file clerk, a bitter but capable section supervisor and an easy-going, but not easy executive secretary respectively, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton make "Nine to Five" work. Sometimes it isn't easy. The script by Colin Higgins and Patricia Resnick seesaws unpredictably from cliche to insight and Higgins' direction generally pushes things along without much consistency of tone or style. Even the idea of the film the vengeance three fe- male office workers wreak upon their male chauvinist boss is not worked out with what might be called dazzling originality. At the outset, in fact, "Nine to Five" is so heavy-handed in its depiction of a classically insensitive, uncrea-tive and patronizing boss that it threatens to become a more gratuitous bore than he is.

But then, just when the film has hit bottom, as the three "girls" turn on and fantasize about having their oppressor at their mercy, "Nine to Five" suddenly begins to fly. And from this moment on, Fonda, Tomlin and, Parton emerge as three of the most entertaining corporate conspirators ever. What undermines the early part of the film is the poorly conceived exposition centering on Fonda's Judy Bernly, a newly divorced ex-housewife who has wandered into her first job ever at Consolidated Companies, about whose actual business mission little information is given. After a lively montage of commuting workers bustling or dragging their way to work, accompanied by an uptempo title song by Parton, the camera zeroes in on Bernly, who is dressed as if she were headed for a day of shopping at some fashionable Bel Aire mall, rather than eight hours of copying papers and answering telephones in Con-solidated's bright, bland offices in a faceless Los Angeles skyscraper. Once she arrives at Consolidated, she is placed in the charge of Violet New-stead, the cynical, efficient section supervisor played by Tomlin, who gives her a not-unjaundiced tour of the premises, introducing her to the vice president's pneumatic, perky secretary, Doralee Rhodes, as played by Parton, In no time we learn why Newstead and Rhodes have it in for Franklin Hart although Newstead herself trained him, he continually passes her over when promotions come along, and instead, uses her as a backup secretary for fetching coffee and the like; as for Rhodes, she constantly has to fend off his rather clumsy attempts at sexual bribery and blackmail.

But except for a rather cutting encounter when a sophisticated copying machine goes berserk while Bernly is supposed to be tending it, Fonda's character has no real motive i for revenge. TViic ic mofa nlnor ilurinrr tha ca- quence in which each woman dreams of getting even. Bernly's stoned revery, which turns her into some kind of great white hunter for whom Hart is the crawling, terrified prey, is totally irrel- evant. But when Parton conjures with role reversal, in which she paws ana finally hogties the delicately protest-) ing Franklin the turning of tables is risible, if not all that fine irony. And 1 when Newstead sees herself as a Snow White, complete with girlish soprano trills and little Disney-ish birds and ani- mals fluttering and hopping, who deliv-t ers a poisoned coffee to the boss, the movie hits one of its high points, as well as the turning point in its pacing and plot Without giving the story away, it can I be said that the fantasies turn to seem- ing realities, setting off some frantic physical comedy and opening up the film so that all three of these first-class performers hit their strides individual- ly and together.

Fonda, who helped de- velop the film with producer Bruce Gil- bert for her IPC Films, has the least 1 promising of the three parts, but she builds her characterization as the catalyst in the office revolt with a reserved harm and a light comic style. She also some nice fleeting moments, as Jwhen she glances down and deprecat- vr 31, 1980 7822 Pumpernickel Pub of Manchester New Year's Eve Party Large Hot Cold Buffet Noise Makers Hats OPEN BAR ALL NIGHT Continental Breakfast Served at Closing DOOR PRIZES Dancing to the Fabulous "Stryder" and Doors OPEN at 9:00 P.M. 3:00 A.M. 8U Jpt RESERVATIONS ONLY $75.00 Per Couple Tax Tip Included Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda commiserate after work. ingly brushes her chest after her first encounter with Doralee.

In a way, she has subordinated her own stardom to support of her two comrades in arms, and Tomlin and Parton take full advantage of this to deliver two wonderfully funny and likeable performances. Parton, who seems to have the finesse of an actress who has been doing this sort of thing for years without ever losing her zest for it, emerges in her movie debut as a comic leading woman to reckon with, a kind of downhome Joan Blondell. Her southern drawl is at once appealing and amusing, and both her vocal and physical timing prove once again that the best singers are also actors. She also brings a very winsome quality to the screen that is entirely un-self -conscious; her Doralee is certainly aware of her ample physical appeal but it is obviously as much of a burden as a blessing. It is Tomlin, however, who brings the film its passages of sustained comedy.

The "Snow White" routine is one of those slices of film that one could watch over and over, and the sequence in which she steals a corpse from the hospital, making abrupt adjustments to her predicament and her pose, demonstrates that she is fully capable of doing kinetic comedy with the best of them. She has the moves: the screeching stops, the seconds when her brain slips into a high idle, churning, and then sudden clutch-slipping peel outs. But, of course, Tomlin is also a sharp woman with words, who makes her politeness drip with the poison she would like to slip in her boss' coffee. The women also have an ideal foil in Dabney Coleman, who makes Frank Hart Jr. an amusingly contemptible organization man for whom an office with a carpet and female staff means he has lots of things on which to wipe his feet in his anointment as lord and master of ail he surveys.

Whether he is in as-' cent, outlining the office rules for the recruit, or abject, prissily recoiling i from Parton's dreamed abuses, or halfway between, swaying like some Thirties spaceman from a Peter Pan bondage, he is ever the silly, uncomprehending male. There are also some nice touches in his support, from his office snoop, played by Elizabeth Wilson in a way that physically and personally resembles Moliere's cloying hypocrite Tartuffe, and from his daffy wife, rendered as a fluffy, yet still shrewd showy suburban matron by Marian Mercer. It is also nice to see Henry Jones, who plays Hart's boss Hinkle, back in the executive suite, however briefly. Naturally, with Fonda involved, "9 to 5" slips in politics along with its comedy. In fact, the film's producer has made a point of acknowledging "the help and encouragement of working women, the National Association of Office Workers, in the making of this film." Thus, some points are made somewhat didactically as the film nears its conclusion, showing how such things as flexible hours, shared jobs, office day care centers and the like increase productivity.

While there may be those who will bristle at the very idea of such things, they hardly seem revolutionary. But if a few Franklin Hart get some ideas along with a few laughs, the National Association of Office Workers will be almost as happy as the producers of what may well be the season's most successful comedy. Rated PG, this film contains some sexual innuendoes, but nothing especially harmful to older kids who will probably enjoy its comedy while benefitting from an introductory look into office politics. "Nine to Five" is playing at Showcase Cinemas, East Hartford. Dinner Package in our dining rooms I 643 t'sevetv B.Eartford Enfield: Rocky Hill Springfield, Ha.

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