The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 23

() PAGES 23 32 ENTERTAINMENT WOMEN'S 11, 1973 Fine performances dignify Papillon wmmm JWL 111 11 JWy '-X' By JAY NEWQUIST of The Gazette "Ycu might get killed," laments Devil's Island psycho Dustin Hoffman as freedom-crazed Steve McQueen prepares to execute a half-gainer from the cliffs into the choppy sea. "Does it matter?" answers McQueen, and soon he floats into the Technicolor horizon on a coconut-filled raft. Dustin bids a final adieu and resumes work in his vegetable garden. So much for the tender interludes in Papillon (at the Palace and Dorval), a disappointing mismash from the. Henri Charriere bestseller about the fun and games of incarceration at a penal colony in French Guiana.

This isn't The Great Escape or even Riot in Cell Block 11, but more like two and one half hours of intense boredom never relieved by the spark cf adventure. Papillon (McQueen), a convicted pimp-mur-dever (he claims innccence), is enroute to the trcpical skmmer and meets up with forger Louis Dega (Hoffman), a wiley type who apparently sank the Paris middleclass by issuing fake National Defense bonds. The two strike one of those male friendship bonds (Butch Cas-sidy, Scarecrow) which are dynamite at the box office, but the brotherly camaradeship angle is just a come-on. Director Franklin Schaffner has other interests. His camera takes more than passing interest in the 24-hour rites of torture with lurid close-ups of self-mutilation, beheading and the casual body counts after a typical day in the swamps.

The gore and physical deterioration propel Papillon over the unconvincingly McQueen-Hoffman bond and the shamelessly static script. eventually tears away from soli-taryand the pace quickens, but nothing faster han a slow ooze through the backwaters for a less-than-exciting odyssey. The snail's pace and cheap outdoor thrills simply aren't enough to carry this unimaginative heist from the Charriere biography. There is a sojourn at a leper colony (something about the mutual suffering of outcasts) 'Sleeper' Peter Ustinov is the voice of Prince John and Terry-Thomas is Sir Hiss in Disney's Robin Hood. Sir Hiss is the show-stealer in Walt Disney's Robin Hood Woody Allen is very funny in 2173 Sheriff a wolf and Little John is a bear played by Phil Harris.

In fact, this marks the second time that Phil Harris, one of Hollywood's most underused talents even when he was Jack Benny's band leader, has played a Disney bear with great success. The last time was in Jungle Book when he teamed up with Louis Prima in a memorable song and dance duet. The remaining character who must not be ignored is Lady Kluck, a chicken who is Maid Marian's nurse. The voice is Carole Shelley sporting a Scottish accent and obviously having a great time as a voice-over artist a far cry from her taxing roles with the Stratford Festival a year ago. Robin Hood and Marian are both foxes, but in line with most Disney films, they are less important than the sub-characters.

The graphics are interesting in that they are much softer in both line and color than some of the earlier films. No one could accuse Disney of going abstract but the detail drawing is less detailed than in the past. And perhaps it's a sign of the times that that wonderfully wicked streak of malevolent evil is missing here. Oh, the sheriff is nasty enough, and the rhino army which pursues Robin is menacing, but nothing like those great cruel eyes of the woman of 'Dalmatians' who wanted to make a coat of the puppy skins, or the witch in Snow White. Perhaps the Disney people feel that kids today have become inured from fear by what they can see on their TV screens.

But those evil ladies were once a Disney trademark and it's rather a shame to see them go. The nice thing about Disney cartoon films, however, is that, when they are good, they are very good and they can warm even the coldest heart. There are not many films around these days which an entire family can attend and enjoy. Robin Hood is one of them, but the admission price is revolting $2.75 for adults. By DAVE BILLINGTON of The Gazette Ever since Peggy Lee warbled her love duet with a dog named Tramp in Lady and The Tramp, the voice characters in Disney cartoon epics have become more and more popular.

In the early films the voices were usually supplied by anonymous Hollywood character actors. But from Tramp through to the latest film, Robin Hood (at the Claremont and Fair-view cinemas), the voice characterizations must share top billing with the cartoon animals. Heading the list are Peter Ustinov and Terry-Thomas as Prince John and Sir Hiss respectively. Prince John is a cowardly lion who, though evil, is comically bungling and inept. Terry-Thomas is, well, Terry-Thomas and his cartoon manifestation as a snake is another triumph for the Disney studio.

(The snake even has a gap between his front teeth). Every Disney cartoon film, even the which don't quite live up to the incredibly high standards of the studio, has one of these characters (The owl in The Once and Future King, Sheep Dog in 1,001 Dalmations, the two mice in Cinderella, etc.) and Sir Hiss the show-stealer in Robin Hood. As a film, Robin Hood marks a come-back of sorts for the Disney people. Ever since the maestro died, the cartoon features have shown distressing signs of a drop in quality, both in art work and in comic characterization. But the blending of appealing cartoon animals with perfect voices for the parts make Robin Hood an excellent evening out for all the family.

Indeed, on the dreary afternoon when I saw the film, the loudest laughs came from one elderly man who was unaccompanied by a child. Andy Devine plays Friar Tuck and Pat But-tram (of Green Acres and Gene Autry fame) plays the Sherriff. Tuck is a badger, the in a tough spot in Papillon. again he achieves total submersion in a role. Together they have a funny exchange while corraling a wounded crocodile which is refreshing in otherwise dull surroundings.

The buddies eventually reach Devil's Island after years of confinement and bungled escapes man surviving the hostile elements, Hollywood style. But like McQueen's last desperate leap, Papillon is tired and overburdened, dispassionate and routine. The late Henri Charriere is fortunate he won't see his stylish wanderings reduced to the stuff of Grade 4 primers for adolescents of all ages. haphazard, but if one joke drops dead as an android, another rises from the bolts and tubing to win the day. There is hardly method in this madness but there are some hilarious barbs which are more than casual.

Woody meets up with the underground after being brainwashed by the nasties. Diane Keaton and the militants decide to reprogram him with vignettes from his past so they set up a dining room table scene in the forest and act out the Jewish parents versus my son-the-weakling. Unfortunately Woody picks up vibes from Tennessee Williams and turns into Blanche du Bois. "i have always depended upon the kindness of strangers," simpers Woody. What does it mean? Nothing, although Woody admits to a certain omnipotent force in the world "except in New Jersey." Allen, of course, is no mere mortal and shouldn't be restricted by sanity.

He joins that rare group of individuals making movies (Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Kubrick) who have the guts to experiment, take chances, offend a few people, be outrageous, and in Allen's case, to have the good sense not to take things seriously. Allen is more than a comic he's a national institution. Sleeper is by far the funniest movie of the year, but that kudo is almost too casual. Woody is a daily orange juice fix, the brownies you hid in the closet, the last beer in the fridge a treat, yet somehow vital. Not bad for a neighborhood nebbish.

Seagull ''Lonely-looking sky, lonely sky. Lonely -looking sky, lonely-looking sky Makes you wonder why, Lonely-looking sky The best thing to do. and you can do it for a surprisingly long time, is to block out the audio and tune into the visuals. They are great. The gulls used and judging from changing markings and eye-colors, Jonathan was played by a series of birds are great stunt artists.

They do loop-the-loops and nose-dives and fly upside-down and other tricks which, one must assume, gulls don't do. if left on their own. And all the time, they are doing these numbers against cliffs and breakers and deserts and pine forests, and it requires very little effort to enjoy these views. (By the way, anyone who saw that recent, and rxtraordinary, documentary on The Nature of Things about seagulls and puffins might have been turned off a movie about gulls. The gist of that film was that gulls have greatly benefitted from Earth's burgeoning population (read garbage and sewage) to the point where there are now so many gulls that their numbers are ruining things for their weaker breeding-ground neighbors like puf-.

fins (those of the bright colors and big beaks). This movie offers no defense; in fact, the scenes of gulls at garbage dumps will re-in-force the notion that Man has mcssed-up another little corner of Nature's Steve McQueen finds himself and a deadly-dull stopover at an Indian viUage in Columbia (the chief requests a butterfly tatoo on his chest). Couldn't they have commandeered a motorcycle so McQueen could relieve the tedium with some stunts? Fortunately McQueen triumphs over these heavy odds. His Charriere actually approaches a legitimate portrayal and reaffirms the conclusion that his superb job in The Reivers was no fluke. McQueen is called upon to deterio-iate like so much maggot-covered dog meat, whittled down to raw nerve endings in pursuit of juicy bugs on his cell floor.

Hoffman is complicated by mannerisms but place next to the hospital." His rent is 200 years overdue and the good doctors of 2173 want him to join he underground to fight the governing totalitarians (led by a guy who looks strangely like TV nature-lover Ewell Gibbons). Woody is less than pleased at the venture. "I get beaten up by Quakers." Under friendly interrogation, they ask him to identify various artifacts from 1973. A picture of Billy Graham. "Oh, yes, he was romantically linked to God." A filmed clip of Howard Cosell? "People were forced to watch him when they committed crimes against the State." And a snapshot of Richard Nixon.

"We have a suspicion," a doctor confides, "that he was once President of the United States, but there are no records of MAILER And Woody also does a job on Norman Mailer. "He donated his ego to Harvard Business School." Woody escapes a raid, on The Lab by government poiice he dresses like a robot-butler and is assigned to the home of Diane Keaton, a pop poet whose passes an "orb" around to her guests who become pleasantly stoned. It seems everyone is sterile in the future, hence the need for orbs and the orgasmitron. As usual this Allen romp is a feast of one-liners: some merely frantic, others simply questionable wouldn't force myself on a blind person," The pace is schizoid and Death Valley and wintertime pine forests. This is all rather neat.

But after a while he dies, and goes to gull heaven, and hangs out with celestial gulls, and occasionally sails back a gull as a Christ figure? to tell the old flock that garbage and fish-heads are not all there is. This tedium is matched by Neil Diamond music. There are some who think Diamond is the cat's meow, but I've always found the ersatz drama of his songs grating. And his words, well, how does this rest with out? like this. The birds and views are great in Jonathan Livingston By JAY NEWQUIST of The Gazette Miles Monroe, the mild-mannered owner of the Happy Carrot Health Food Store in Greenwich Village circa 1973, checks into the hospital with a peptic ulcer and falls into a deep coma.

The good doctors freeze his body, and lo, he wakes up 200 years later covered with Reynolds Wrap. A scenario about 2173 A.D. and dueling-to-the-death with a giant pudding could only refer to Woody Allen, a peculiar individual who admits to be arrested for taking a white fish across state lines for immoral purposes. The prince of neurotics, a guy who has made millions frqm his sex hang ups and millions more from his strawberry blintz humor, is back on the movie-couch in Sleeper (at the Cinema Place Ville Marie), a gagging fit of futuristic madness from the softer extremities of Allen's grey matter. Fault Woody on one count.

He should have been a Marx brother, but he's doing the next best thing. Woody (as Miles) is a case of walking phobias clenched hair, acute hangnails and an odd fancy for consuming surgical gloves. And why not. He's been thawed out after the big sleep and finds he's the victim of "cosmic screwing." His health food tastes must bend to new trends in nourishment cream pies, hot fudge and something called an orgasmitron. "I knew something was wrong when I found a parking Quite early in the film the spell cast by the great visuals is broken by the words.

They tell something of a story, albeit a ridiculous one. It seems there's this one seagull, J. L. himself, who is not content to hang around fishing boats and garbage dumps with the rest of the gull flock, but prefers to drift out to sea and see how fast he can fly. This goes aginst the grain of the flock, and the elders tell him he is gulla non grata, and so off he goes, alone but not-so-lonely to discover the wide world.

He discovers sea lions, horses, otters, a whale (a great shot of a magnificent animal), Livingston Seagull' is full of picturesque shots By DANE LANKEN of The Gazette Anyone who's ever brought a camera to the seashore has taken pictures' of seagulls. There's something about their grace in the air, or their habit of perching on wharfposts, or something that convinces shutterbugs that here, at last, is the picture they've always wanted to take. Friends, leave your cameras at home. The ultimate height in seagull-snapping has been reached. There is no seagull, or combination of seagulls, or shot of seagulls against picturesque background that is not covered in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the movie version of the best-selling 'seaside Kahlil The movie arrives Christmas Day at the Cinema in Westmount Square.

The words in the film the original Richard Bach words are hard to take. And the music, by Neil Diamond, runs the gamut from pretentious to ridiculous. But the pictures are great. The movie opens with a couple of scene-setting views, of waves breaking on Big Sur as waves can break only on the cliffs and sentinel rocks of that rugged California coast. These scenes are, bar none, the best, the most spectacular wave scenes since the invention of the foamy brine.

There is one wave in particular, a huge one that starts early and rolls in a gigantic swell on to the beach. A helicopter-set camera follows it in, and the effect is tremendous. It is beautiful. These early scenes establish the mood for the movie: scenes of striking natural beauty photographed with flair and imagination. Unfortunately, even great natural beauty can get tiresome, and most Seagull-watchers will reach a point somewhere in the film's 100 minutes when he'll say, enough, enough.

But very likely, several of the shots will remain in the viewer's mind for some time after the movie ends. And that first big wave is likely to be one of them. Jonathan.