The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 37

11 Ul .1.. Hello Columbo i Everybody's favorite I detective is returning to A television this year on ABC. Pago D-8 I Soul Queen American Masters salutes -H Aretha Franklin on I -4 ETV-33 at 9 p.m., Friday. VJ P2S8D-11 Faith alone George Michael is hack with Faith, his first solo album. Page D-12 i I "I T()c 3mette MUK.li! mP .1 1 1 If IW1 111 WWW 1 ilu 3T1 -1 i 4 Hi "'7 -ji 'id Mi Backbiting and cash woes have put Canada's costliest film in jeopardy.

But cameras are expected to roll again in October PonoPresseMontreal are reported to be spectacular. 1 Mfwm mm 1 fc, I HO (right) as Bethune. Scenes Last night, the Sunday Gazette learned that at the 11th hour, Bethune has apparently been saved from its spectacular paralysis. "Things have started again," says producer Nicolas Clermont. "We are in pre-production now." But astonishingly, the star and the director of the movie seem under a different impression from the producers and the writer as to who will be in control.

"Making a movie," Borsos says cryptically, "is the most difficult thing in the world to do let alone under the circumstances that exist in this production. In the cool, hard light of morning one day everything will become clear." As of last night, all parties in Bethune's tangled web were in agreement that in late October, the cameras would roll again. After four weeks of shooting in Montreal, the action must shift to Spain. If Bethune isn't wrapped up by the end of the year, it's likely to die in a flurry of lawsuits. Dec.

31 is the deadline for the tax breaks which have attracted many of the project's private investors. Advance word suggests that a failure to complete Bethune would be a shame artistically, as well as commercially. For whereas many ornate Canadian movies turn out to be portly disappointments, Bethune may just live up to its potential. "Those who have seen the age from China say that it's remarkable," observes Peter Pearson, the former executive director of Telefilm Canada. "Donald Sutherland has succeeded in creating a character of immense fascination." For his part, Sutherland gives full credit to Phillip Borsos.

a banshee" about the writing. But there are others who praise the screenplay as a classic, in the tradition of Lawrence of Arabia, and who see Ted Allan as a scapegoat for problems not of his own making. In the words of respected Toronto producer Pat Ferns, who has hired Allan to write a TV mini-series about Lord Beaver-brook, "Ted Allan is one of the impressive writers in Canada. The version of Bethune I read, I found compelling." It's no secret that Sutherland, Borsos and some members of Betoune's crew have been unhappy with the work of their pro- 1 ducers. But here too, there's no con- sensus.

As Allan points out, "Whatever anyone may say, they're the only bloody producers who've been able to get the picture off the ground!" In the end, the embarrassments involved in making Bethune may be outweighed by the huge embarrassment of not ing it. Both the Chinese and Canadian governments want the movie finished. And after a good deal of wran- gling, Telefilm Canada and the Chinese co-producers have now provided $2.5 million to shooting to resume. Telefilm's new executive director, Pierre DesRoches, played a crucial role in revitalizing Bethune. Its hero is, after all, the man of whom Mao Tse-tung wrote: "We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him." Maybe, just maybe, despite the traumas of filming in rural China and the added traumas of not filming at home, enough of that spirit has worn off on all concerned for Bethune to lurch oil to the screen.

l-'-f ana Writer Ted Allan. i jcs "The rushes from China look and smell great," Sutherland says, "and it's thanks to Borsos. He's a great director, an absolutely wonderful filmmaker and he could be making millions of dollars in California. Instead, he's sacrificing everything to makeBeMune." Beyond doubt, Sutherland is obsessed by Norman Bethune and devoted to his memory. The same is true of Ted Allan, a young protege of Bethune's in the 1930s.

Yet in two important ways, Allan's vision is said to clash with Sutherland's. The writer wants Bethune's alcohol abuse, as well as the sad fate of his wife Frances, to be central to the movie; the star dislikes the idea. It's still uncertain whose view of Bethune will take precedence in the final version. But as Bob McKeown points out, "The way the movie business works, the guy who usually ends up having his way is the star." Last March, Ted Allan criticized Donald Sutherland on CBC-TV's TJlie Journal Now, however, Allan is at pains to emphasize Sutherland's superb acting and to thank him for his constructive amendments to the script. "Many of my scenes," Allan confesses, "were motivated not by Bethune but by the character of the film's narrator.

Sutherland correctly objected that each scene should be driven by Bethune." Versions of Allan's screenplay have been floating around for decades. He's rewritten it at least 40 times. More than any other single element in Bethune, the script seems to arouse completely opposite reactions. One high-placed source recalls "howling like a 0 China: Donald Sutherland as well have been poured into the Yangtse River. Anatomy of a Fiasco, an article by Toronto journalist Martin Knelman in the current issue of Saturday Night magazine, defines Bethune as "an epic we may never get to see." The film's director, Phillip Borsos, has called the experience of making Bethune a The nightmare is tantalizingly close to being over.

About 60 per cent of the filming took place a year ago, much of it in remote and mountainous areas of China. The working conditions of the crew and the technical prowess of the Chinese partners were often appalling. Yet since August 1987, the entire project has languished at the mercy of a complex feud about power, money and personalities. Amid rampant backbiting, no one has seemed able to take charge. Because of the year-long delay, a feature-length documentary about the making of BetAune is now ready to be seen long before Bethune itself is finished.

Strangers in a Strange Land, by CBC broadcaster Bob McKeown, will receive its premiere next month at Toronto's Festival of Festivals. At various times over the past -year, Betaune's director (Phillip Borsos), its writer (Ted Allan), and its producers (Nicolas Clermont and Pieter Kroonenburg of the Montreal company Filmline International) have all been rumored to be on the way out. Only the position of the star (Donald Sutherland) seemed secure. "I feel these people all deserve one another," says McKeown. "It was important to each of them to make the film but they all went to China thinking they would have their own way." in the late '30s; right, actor -t Hm wiii On location in By MARK ABLEY of The Gazette "Bethune is that rare human being who inspires all of us to lead better lives.

He proves that not everyone is concerned with power, money, greed, and selfishness." Ted Allan ut that's what the movie business is all about. The power to stir the hearts of millions. The selfishness to impose your vision on a crew of hundreds. The money that makes it all possible, and the greed for glory at the end. No Canadian movie has ever gone for glory like Bethune: The Making of a Hero.

It's the tough saga of the brilliant, radical surgeon who organized free clinics for Montreal's poor, then left Canada to care for wounded Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and wounded Communists in the Chinese Revolution. Norman Bethune died in China almost half a century ago. In life he was a hard-drinking, hard-living Marxist; in death, thanks to his friendship with Chairman Mao and his beatification by the People's Republic, he's become probably the best-known Canadian of all time. Bethune lived on a grand scale; a modest movie about him would be a contradiction in terms. But it's ironic, given the doctor's devout communism, that the movie of his life should end up as the most expensive film ever produced in this country.

Costs of the movie and an associated TV mini-series are now estimated at about $18 million. And until a week or two ago, it looked as though that $18 million might Bethune at work in China mm Director Phillip Borsos. Chronology of the Bethune movie saga. Page D-13. Left, Dr.

Norman tL ,.1 PonoPresseMontreal Donald Sutherland as Bethune during shooting of movie..