The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • Page 12

12 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH FRIDAY JUNE 26 1967 in to nostalgia ART A Freudian slip-up at the National? FILMS Tuning THE JOY of Woody Radio Days is that there are no psychiatrists Nor conundrums about the meaning of life This is a rare film: Woody Allen is enjoying himself without hesitation deviation or interruption is a frolic through childhood fantasies powered by steam radio Those were the days when Mom Dad Aunt Bea Uncle Abe Aunt Ceil Ruthie and little Joe (little Woody incarnated in knickerbockers) alleviated their mundane existence in Rockway New York by listening to the wireless Strange how healthy and imaginatively stimulating it seems now compared with television as moving wallpaper Allen has made an affectionate family album of life centring around the 1939-45 War the Masked Avenger and Radio City Hall The vignettes are precise deliciously observed and as with and Her we get underneath the familial skin Bea (Dianne Wiest) is the unmarried aunt whose Prince Charmings sadly always have something wrong with them: married afraid of Martians or wear white socks with their tuxedos Grandma is the only woman in her 70s whose bosom is still growing Father is a failed entrepreneur with 6000 get well-cards in the closet because that many sick people in Uncle Abe doesn't take Aunt Ceil to nightclubs and drink champagne out of her slipper because he take that much liquid So Ceil listens to ventriloquists on the radio The stars they visualise Allen ephemeral it is also pure simple pleasure What could be more deliciously intelligent? GIVEN that there is now a cinema genre to which you have to take a sick bag Evil Dead is almost a respectable attempt at comic horror Director Sam Raimi who was raised on horror comics made Dead" which was the top rental video in 1983 earning $15 million and celebrity as a test case during the video-nasties crackdown from which the Department of Public Prosecutions was forced to step down Dead is too ludicrous to be subversive The plot is negligible typical deserted house taken over by common or garden (a girl is abducted by a tree) demons Nothing a man armed with a power drill cannot cope with The moral of the story is not to scream Mr Raimi has designated open mouths as ideal receptacles for flying eyeballs WOULD that there was something so provocative in The Secret of My Success a vehicle for Michael Fox which is sickly rather than sick-bag material The secret of Michael Fox's success has been that he looks young and is irrepressibly bumptious This is a yuppie farrago about corporate raids and corpulent businessmen in which Fox plays the puppy the kid from Kansas who wants to make it to the top in New York in a couple of weeks which is about how long the film lasts Since Fox seems a self-appointed boy who will never grow up one of least successful gambits is his romance with the doe-eyed Helen Slater as Radio Days (PG) Odeon Haymarket Evil Dead II (18) Cannons Haymarket Oxford Street Charing Cross Road Chelsea The Secret of My Success (PG) Empire Leicester Square The Boy Who Could Fly (PG) Plaza Piccadilly can materialise His invisible presence as narrator acts like a two-way mirror between the front-room audience in Rocka-way and the studio performers He makes the most of the tantalising only you could see teaser mixing a potent cocktail of glamour and venality Many of the vignettes which are really picture postcards Allen extracts from that kosher family album have no dramatic pay-off They are sustained by charm alone and it is yet another tribute to his skill that in this his 15th film such insubstantial stuff should be what dreams of entertainment are made Without quite being self-indulgent Allen shamelessly indulges himself in nostalgia was not intended as a Felliniesque indictment of radio although we are comically nudged about what gives pleasure There is no reason why Allen as the man most overloaded with talent in American cinema should have to act as a guru to the thinking cinema-goer is and guest Dianne Wiest (Aunt Bea) in Although I refuse to accept tbe idea that the series helps us in any small way to understand or appreciate the pictures in the National Gallery I do think we may learn something about Lucien Freud First his taste in paintings is almost flawless He obviously had a wonderful time making his selection and took his task very seriously Some of his choices are highly predictable: for a man who paints flesh as sensuously and obsessively as Freud was a natural as were Velazquez Toilet of (The Rokeby Venus) and and Two Rembrandts "An Old Man in an and de perhaps throw some light on portraits of his own mother I admit that I was surprised at the number of Constables and at the choice of beautiful Cicely Alexander: Harmony in Grey and Still what does it all prove? I do not at bottom believe that Freud does not like Italian paintings though there were none in the exhibition nor do I think that some future critic will be able to draw any conclusion from the fact that he left out Titian altogether to make room for a second-string Turner and Wormser and her On the basis of the present exhibition and of several in the past I think we have to ask why the National Gallery continues with the series It belittles the pictures chosen by treating them like bubblegum cards that can be shuffled and rearranged at whim it leaves the permanent galleries looking dreadful with gaping holes where the pictures should be hanging and as an exercise in public relations it is unnecessary The National Gallery should not need to attract visitors for any reason other than to see the permanent collections hanging in well-maintained well-lit well-labelled galleries After leaving the Eye" I had a stroll through those galleries but that is another story one that I had better not commence here Richard Dorment appears to think he is an aeroplane Milly (Lucy Deakins) moves in next door with her brother Louis (Fred Savage) an eight-year-old already in training as a GI and her mother (Bonnie Bedelia) in training on the computer in order to get back to work in the Eighties Father has committed suicide THEATRE eases the pain WITH this Eye exhibition the education department of National Gallery of Art really has achieved something quite new both in the fields of museum display and of education: it has contrived to render some of the greatest paintings in the National Gallery invisible and at the same time to tell us nothing whatsoever about them At the invitation Mr Lucien Freud has been allowed to remove 27 masterpieces from the galleries and to hang them in semi-darkness jammed so closely together that each individual picture is actually diminished as a work of art Not only that the room in which they hang does not look rich as it is meant to but plain awful It is understandable that Freud wished to see the tures hung in natural light but the reality of the high skylights at the National Gallery and the accident of our black June weather means that half the pictures particularly those in corners are lost to sight on any but the sunniest of days One may sympathise with his idealistic decision to exhibit the paintings without labels but when I visited the show a frustrated public kept rushing backwards and forwards between the paintings and the introductory wall label where a list of artists and titles could be found The only point I can see in the series is to discover the reasons for the invited artist's choice of paintings At best these might illuminate something about the works of art at the very least they will tell us something about the artist no fool he will speak neither about his choice of pictures nor about his installation of them: have been asked to give reasons for my he writes but paintings themselves are the In other words like most of us he picked what he liked When this is understood whatever educational benefits the exercise may be supposed to confer seem to me considerably reduced There is no particular reason for hanging next to Cezanne's And anyway we just as well discover which old masters Lucien Freud likes in a pamphlet? Or an interview? Or a lecture with good colour slides? CONCERT Four of THE BERLIN Philharmonic is widely acknowleged to be the foremost orchestra Four of its leading string players have now formed the Philharmonia Quartet Berlin and may well soon be considered the most eminent group in this field if one is to judge by their superb playing at the Wigmore Hall on Wednesday Their programme culminated in a performance of Beethoven's Opus 127 Quartet that showed both the warm euphonious sound the four players make and also their deep understanding of the needs of late Beethoven I seldom recall hearing an account of this work that attended so closely to the many dynamic markings distinguishing quite clearly between forte and double forte piano and double piano or one that was so exact in obeying note values In consequence the extraordinary nature and originality of the work was even more evident than usual most noticeably in the many and abrupt changes of tempo and mood Most arrestingly one felt the improvisatory nature of the middle movements and was BCCaari ltmy Mnrthur for AIM Presenter Tony Roberts distasteful as Peter Pan petting with Wendy THE MODERN Peter Pan is handicapped he can fly but not speak In The Boy Who Could fly director and writer Nick Castle has tackled the problem of children who are quite bravely (Jay Underwood) parents were killed in an air crash since when he day turns into a kind of stroke He collapses but recovers sufficiently to have the match-seller's tray thrust into his arms by Flora as she leads the old tramp off for lunch The sense of unease and lurking unexplained danger which Harold Pinter evokes in such masterly fashion in his finest plays is so palpable and gripping that one is given no opportunity to ask questions In Slight however despite Barry impeccable performance as Edward the tension is intermittent and the ending seems uncharacteristically glib is a much more interesting piece about a youngish married couple and their sexual game-playing Richard appears not to mind that lover visits her on most afternoons while he Richard is toiling away at his city office But we the audience are disconcerted when the lover first arrives (and delighted by the splendid joke shortly before the lover's appearance) and Sarah is dismayed by his unexpected callousness To say more would be as unfair as to give away the identity of an Agatha Christie murderer for is in its way a whodunit as well as FIVERS CELEBRATE OUR 200 STORE Simon Williams and Judy Buxton in Milly befriends Eric and what is likeable about this film is that it extols children being kind to each other The ones who like the neighbours who have a Dobermann called Hitler and are auditioning for bit parts in Dead get their come-uppance Victoria Mather into the smelly old matchseller of Slight contributes an engaging portrait of John Both plays are smoothly directed by Kevin Billington in an adaptable and attractively designed set by John Halle Charles Osborne the future But not every part of British society suffers from this evidence like it or not of a strong and widespread sense of purpose and identity David clear argument was badly served by cutaways to stills and film clips which only distracted The item might as well have been a radio talk Contrariwise the London street item which might have seemed short on the usual ingredients for a film made of some still black and white photographs and a few talking heads a really memorable portrait of a Notting Hill community in the 1950s I was confused by Eight Thousand Six Hundred and Twenty Battery Hens the first of the new drama series Boogie Outlaws (BBC-2) The plot about a rock group on the run was a bit bumpy and the mood seemed uncertain Opening with a Blade Runner-style shot of a futuristic cityscape it offered a touch of art movie a touch of Monty Python a touch of sitcom and a touch of social comment Despite its professionalism I think this series has found its own idiom Minette Marrin ing frenzy of the introduction subsides is the quality of the reporting It takes time and per-serverance contacts and tact to unearth the raw material To go on to construct a documentary feature which will propose and support a particular argument and one which may well be at variance with the official version takes editorial skill and good judgment These are not scare stories The Capital investigation into the death of a social worker a couple of years back uncovered a whole trail of hazard and ineptitude from which anyone listening would learn This special report on drugs in the City of London was there to remind us that drugs are not only the concern of dropouts derelicts They are a part of the new mercantile and entrepreneurial story an amazing expensive habit for people who make vast sums of money Gillian Reynolds TELEVISION 100 years of education THE VIENNA English theatre a company which has been producing plays in English in Vienna for nearly 25 years has brought its double-bill of early Harold Pinter plays to the Young Vic A Slight Ache written for radio in 1959 is preceded by The Lover which was first seen on TV in 1963 If Slight seems less effective than its partner this is probably because it remains very firmly a play for voices gaining little from its transfer to a visual medium Edward and Flora a middle-aged middle-class couple in their elegant country house are disturbed by the presence of an old tramp who stands at the bottom of the lane with a tray of matches for sale But there are virtually no passers-by in this remote spot so why is he there? Who or what is he? Edward who has exhibited a manic ferocity in his method of trapping and killing a wasp at the breakfast table insists that Flora summon the tramp to his study to be questioned But his interview with the tramp who remains passive and silent throughout does not go as expected Nor for that matter does behaviour The slight ache behind the eyes with which Edward had begun his IN Times of Change (BBC 2) Timewatch offered three interesting short films all investigating ways in which the past and the present are related The subjects were extremely educational standards inner city life and our perception of history However (perhaps because these subjects are so there was something tendentious about the first and last Suggesting an obvious parallel with current proposals the education film looked at the mid 19th-century attempt to raise minimum standards of reading writing and arithmetic through a Revised Code This was imposed by Robert Low Education Minister in 1862 who was presented as a sort of prole-hating albino Gradgrind Perhaps he was The evils of the code were insisted upon learning by rote the loss of most subjects except the 3 Rs anxious teachers paid only by fearsome inspectors There were lots of old photos of miserable children and some (rather weak) dramatised shots of children in costume duly reciting their tables but at least they knew their tables if one can say that without sounding like Gradgrind A ONE-MAN business with a turnover of half a million pounds a year sounds like success But the other half of the story is of a City of London broker turned cocaine dealer It was one of many which crammed a 20-minute special report on Capital Radio this week broadcast the day after the record £9 million cocaine haul in Harley Street There was an econo- mist and consultant of Third World economic issues He first encountered coke when a business meeting with a Wail Street banker ended and he was offered a cocktail or a line of cocaine They had both with the man from Wall Street taking out his little sachet from his waistcoat pocket and chopping the lines os his glass-topped table with a gold American Express card Over the next 10 years David was to spend cocaine justifying of £100 a outlay would make the best amazed by that startling stroke of genius when the rhythm switches to six-eight for the coda The Berlin group had been no less successful with Second Quartet They captured the elevated ecstatic feeling of the first movement very much in the vein of the opera written the year before this quartet the Bartok-like starkness of the Scherzo (contrasting with its Delius-like middle section) and the brilliance of the finale With Ravel also an influence it was obvious that the was affecting the composer in this late piece dating from 1927 The Berliners had mastered all its technical difficulties but here as in Opus 64 No 4 which opened the programme there was never a sense of technique being displayed for its own sake it was always at the service of the music and that is how it should be On this showing only the Borodin and perhaps the Takacs Quartets are in the same class as the Philharmonia We must hear them soon again Alan Blyth 11 JULY 8 pm TATI OALLMY MUlbank SW1 MARK ROTHKO Until SI Aim Adm £2 50 WINIFRED NICHOLSON Until 2 Au GEORGE PRICE BOYCE Until IS Aua- THK CLORK GALLERY FOR THE TURNER COLLECTION Adm IYm Wkday 10-650 Suna into 01-821 T1S6 THE JEWELLERY OF s-sgsr 10305 Adm £3 SOS RENE I PATTERSON 1 Albamarla Street London W1X 3HA Tel: 01 OS 4119 SUMMER EXHIBITION Recent Work by Members of the NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB Club 14th Juno-Mh July Mon-Frt 9 304 Sat JO-1 YOUNG ARTISTS from THE SOLOMON GALLERY 10 Dovar Street Wukdaya haosJO Sat 14 What was tendentious was the constant suggestion that insisting on minimum standards (and inspection) is of itself bad and necessarily something of an establishment plot It may have been in the 19th century but there were hints that present proposals are heading in a similar evil direction this seems to me anachronistic and unproven Of course we want our children to learn far more than they did under the Revised Code and to learn with pleasure But there is a crisis of basic literacy in this country and a need for desperate remedies if having the 3 Rs drummed into you is a desperate remedy The dreaded Revised Code did raise standards though the film insist upon the point: as one contributor said by the 1890s only 2 per cent of people getting married were unable to sign their names on the marriage DEAN MARTIN Musical Director KEN LANE STUTZ BEARCATS WAYNE DOBSON LONDON PALLADIUM TEL: 01 4377373 STALLS: £2500 £1500 £1000 ROYAL CIRCLE: £2500 £1500 UPPER CIRCLE £1000 £750 a beautifully and precisely written account of a loving relationship gone sour Simon Williams brings his polished technique to bear on many changes of mood and Judy Buxton is an affecting Sarah Malcolm Ward who later transforms himself register whereas 20 years previously 20 per cent could not in England today in a recent survey nearly 50 per cent of young people could not follow a simple bus timetable or fire safety instructions In the last item the historian David Cannadine developed various interesting points about the way our sense of history is formed by our own contemporary perceptions but managed to be very annoying He said that the lack of conviction and direction in Britain today is reflected in current history writing: is difficult for a nation with no sense of its own future to have a sense of its Felled by his own argument I would say: by the same token we each tend to view society from the perspective of our own corners Perhaps a lack in university history departments of conviction direction and a sense of stories of its patch well enough to bring on the air voices which disagree with official verdicts In the past their stories about racial harassment in Tower Hamlets suicides in Earls Court violence on the North Peckham housing estate to name but three have brought the inside of what is happening to the listener The style particularly for listeners who are used to the more measured tones of and on can be off putting It is bold dramatic terse (or brash melodramatic and reeking with the ominous for those who do not care for it) The aim is to grab attention as the nightly news magazine The Way It Is rolls on its way What consistently holds the attention once the drum-beat MOOTflY 6 JULY UNTIL SATURDAY CC accepted aho Keith PronreeOl 7418989 Akremad 015803141 lashmar 01 4934731 plus booking tee £5 DIY gift voucher every time you spend £50 in until 28th June ART GALLERI RADIO BMarapioydtoannouncMaliaM)utopinidoiff200liDIYSupaienlr6 1 MMmft ora gMng may a £5 DIY gift voucher waryftM you spend £50 at Ihfc oiler awiesaewry one ot our 200 DffSupenatftitouirii receive one voMdiertor every mtflpleol £50 you nd in anetmeocfaaH 19mand 28lri June 1987 Ask in don for tul detail Capital him more able to make more money There was who runs a construction company spends £15000 a year on bus habit and has his own bottle and spoon for a "quick before meetings There was sounding in acute nasal distress and talking of the "powder nickname for the lavatory in some City offices And there was the policeman who said there was no evidence of a drugs epidemic in tbe City The Capital story which also used quotations from a CB1 report Drugs at seemed to offer direct evidence in contradiction This is a local radio station with a well-earned and hard-won reputation for knowing bits Fm can do when yw.