The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 39

THE SUN SECTION Comics Movies Television FRIDAY JANUARV 16, 1987 MOVIES Baltimore scenes 'BEDROOM WINDOW FADES TO NOIR By Stephen Hunter Sun Film Critic he Bedroom Window might be likened to a double travelogue. It's a trip, first of all, through this city, and it does a wonderful iob of making Baltimore look allur- 5 I I ing and dramaUc, although the occasional suspension ii of the laws of geography and traffic may have some viewers giggling. Second and more importantly. It's a trip through the film nolr tradition, through old-fashioned '40s style melodrama, as it unfolds a complicated story of a semi-Innocent do-gooder suddenly swept up In a densely neurotic situation In which, for all his efforts, he ends up pursued with equal vigor by the police and a psychotic killer as the corpses around him mount. The plot may be a little ornate for llteral-Ists, but part of the pleasure of the genre Is the inherent absurdity of Its Byzantine complexity and the sureness of grip with which writer-director Curtis Hanson works all this out until almost the end.

Hanson has certainly studied his film nolr. He, and cameraman Gilbert Taylor, turn Baltimore into a gleaming, wet-streeted city of shadows. It's like he's Just finished reading Raymond Dugnat's influential Film Comment article The Family Tree of Film Nolr," which lays out 17 key nolr themes. Hanson goes about 10 for 17: Psycho killer, wronged Innocent, femme fatale and so forth. He hits the See WINDOW, 6D, Col.

4 CI 4 rTt Here's a rundown on Baltimore sites included in "The Bedroom Window." The film opens with a close-up rendering of the statue at the top of the Washington Monument, then travels down the pedestal, under the credits, to deposit us at the central venue of the movie, Mount Vernon Square East. There, from the third-story vantage point on Mount Vernon Place East and through the opening described In the title, Isabella Huppert watches as a mugger attacks and beats a young woman played by Elizabeth McGovern. Mount Vernon Square Park is a recurring motif in the film as, later, all three of the principals cross paths on its sidewalks, although two apartment buildings said to be in the vicinity of the park and examined with some detail actually are in Wilmington, N.C. Moreover, one of the addresses for the apartment is given as 7346 Monument A South Baltimore row house, mantled in Formstone, is featured as the home of the killer, although in some close-ups it appears to have lost its Formstone and is now green brick (obviously signifying a switch to a North Carolina location). The Cone Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art is used as the exterior for the Tremont Theater," the home of a ballet company, although subsequent interiors were shot in North Carolina.

There's a wonderful shot of the city courthouse on North Calvert Street, but note that the traffic runs the wrong way down Calvert. When Steve Guttenberg is in a pensive mood, he wanders down to the Inner Harbor and there's a nice shot of him with the National Aquarium In the background. Later, there's a spooky two-shot of Huppert and Guttenberg inside the aquarium. Many of the driving scenes take us through familiar Baltimore neighborhoods, including Fells Point, although an institution called The Fells Point Saloon" is a fictionalization. Baltimore city police headquarters on East Fayette Street also figures in the story.

Other exteriors including a shipyard and a rundown bar appear to be in Wilmington. Stephen Hunter HANSON'S ODE TO THE CITY By Stephen Hunter Sun Film Critic tt I I think locale Is important," says Curtis Hanson, the 4 5 Baltlmoreans will tend to agree with him, since the locale in question happens to be Baltimore. The movie Is consciously set in the recognlzeable New Baltimore, the post-Harborplace city of swank and glitter and upward mobility, although this sense of place Is a careful manipulation. Most of the exteriors In the new Steve Guttenberg-Ellzabeth McGovern thriller were filmed here in a two-week location shoot last April, with the interiors being filmed at the Dlno De Laurentiis film facility in Wilmington, N.C. The result, although convincing, also boasts occasional moment when the actors step from Mount Vernon Square onto a nondescript Wilmington street corner without mussing their hair or missing a beat in the dialogue.

"I tried to get as much of Baltimore into the film as possible," says Hanson. "I'm tired of movies that are set In anonymous southern California suburbs. I picked the city deliberately." Hanson originally had set the film In Seattle. Loosely based on an See HANSON, 6D, Col. 1 Steve Guttenberg and Isabelle Huppert look through "The Bedroom Window." 'Platoon' treads familiar warpath 'Native Son': Anger's away f.

r-j mis i sl. By Stephen Hunter Sun Film Critic The accolades for "Platoon" have been piling up like bodies In front of a machine-gun position. And there's much to praise: -The movie has to it the certitude of utter conviction. It's like a long year In hell, a harsh and convincing evocation of war at the grunt level, as fought by the reluctant troops of the 25th Infantry Division in 1967. As a portrait of bad soldiers in a bad unit led by bad officers in a bad war, it's a scorching examination of what went wrong in Vietnam.

(Its answer Is, everything.) As a vision of the human capacity for evil, it's terrifying. As an orchestration of sensations, it's brilliant. As a work of small-group sociology, it's illuminating. As a piece of archaeology, it's first class: It's got the details all right, from the slouchy Insouci-- ance of the teen-agers festooned with weapons "to the constant staticky crackle of the radio By Stephen Hunter Sun Film Critic The nicest thing that can be said about "Native Son." the new film version of the angry Richard Wright novel of 1940, Isn't very nice: The movie is painfully earnest and well acted. Its problem Is the degree to which it has been compromised for the screen and made toothless; It feels like an artifact of the days when Hollywood routinely subverted the meanings of the books It bought for looting.

"Native Son" was radical because It broke through the pious stereotype of the suffering black martyr and presented an image of a youth so corrupted by racism that violence was his only outlet, and who only came to feel selfhood after the crimes he committed. "I didn't know I was really alive In this world," cried Bigger Thomas, self-confessed murderer on death row to his communist lawyer, "until I felt things hard enough to kill for em!" See SON, 1 2D, 4 Victor Love and Akosua Busia in "Native Son." See PLATOON, 7D, Col. 1 Charlie Sheen is a recruit in "Platoon." ART TELEVISION Maryland's rotating the pounds away Two sculptors, in depth at MAP By Isaac Rehert he big Maryland meltdown Is about to begin. Today and tomorrow, thou By John Dorsey Sun Art Critic sands of overweight people around the state are expected to register and weigh in for a popular reducing program called the Rotation Diet, which its hp Paul fthnw aa MarvlanH Art Ti Place calls Its exhibit of the works of Paul Daniel and Joyce J. Scott, Is.

silly title sponsors maintain will melt at least a NBC's recent moves get low ratings from Tinker By Bill Carter Sun TV Critic Los Angeles Grant Tinker was out of the television spotlight only about six months. He now has resurfaced, ready to start up a new production company, promising the kind of quality series for network television produced by the MTM company he headed In the early 1970s. Tinker left, of course, to become chairman of NBC, where he presided over the astonishing comeback by that network, which now is the unquestioned leader In the Industry. Tinker left NBC last year, saying he wanted to go back into the production end of the business. His departure could not have been on better terms.

And Tinker himself is a well-tempered and well-measured See CARTER, 1 4D. Col. 4 illion unwanted pounds off their bod ies over a nine-week period. That breaks down to 100.000 losing a pound a week, or 50.000 i losing two pounds. And for each of those pounds, the Maryland Food Com aside, the best show I've ever seen at MAP.

Too often, MAP has mounted shows with too many artists in them, which tended to be out of focus and simply sprawling. This show, however, presents the work of two people in depth, and indeed each artist is given a retrospective of sorts with the inclusion of works going back more than a decade. Moreover, the show presents them at a time when both artists, who are in their 30s, are achieving maturity. The title "The Paul Joyce Show" makes these See ART, 6D. Col.

6 mittee will receive a penny up to $10,000 from the Pepsi-Cola Co. The Rotation Diet Is the brainchild Martin Katahn, a psychologist at SUN ILLUSTRATION ANN FEILO Vanderbllt University In Nashville. See DIET, 3D, Col. 1 THE SUNPATRtCK SANDOH "AG nr (1986), a sculpture by Paul Daniel Liz Smith jpn Katharine Hburn. 2D The Msion' reviewed.

8D Dar Abby on where charity ends. Comics 6-JD..