Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Film: Choc Ice in Burning BlockReview by: Robert JohnstoneFortnight, No. 154 (Sep. 30 - Oct. 13, 1977), p. 16Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25546402 .

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16/Fortnight

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CHOC ICE IN BURNING BLOCK I'm very sad that the ABC and the Curzon

have been burnt out of business, not

because of any affection for the establish

ments themselves, but simply because there

will be fewer good films to see in Belfast for some time. (On the other hand, couldn't the

survivors show fewer bad films and keep the

good ones?) Now the ABC was where I saw my hero

Bob Dylan, the Curzon had a nicy cosy

atmosphere, the Classic ?remember it??

was where the mammy took me to see Bugs

Bunny, my da told me about the music hall in the Grand Opera House, the Grove . . . But

filmgoing isn't - an experience anymore,

beyond the seeing of the film.

Indian girls put op special jewelry to go to

the flicks, but us whities have forgotten the

social possibilities of the movies. There

doesn't even seem to be the same amount

of fornicating in the back rows these days. I suppose the decline, as everyone says,

must be due to television, which offers three

cheaper, closer, more reliable but much

smaller substitutes. But I think I'm normal in

suffering moral qualms about sitting in front

of the box all evening. I know I feel morally

superior if I've chosen to go to the pictures, even if I don't speak to a soul. The

communal aspect of film is something telly doesn't have and which along with the

difference in size and picture/sound quality, is quite important.

But those of us old fashioned enough to

seek escape from the beastly box will often

find ourselves marooned in a sea of empty seats between high gloomy walls stripped of all decoration, watching a screen that's had

things thrown at it or through it, trying to

dodge our eyes round the beehive hairdo of

an ice cream girl who's standing in front of

James Bond's nose and selling stuff that's

bad for the figure, gooey, or noisy. If the auditoria were more intimate and

the ambience more suited to pleasure than to Calvinist rallies, going to the pictures could easily become fun once more. I hear

that the ABC is to be rebuilt as a multi. I

wish them the best of luck, and hope they're able to pay a bit more attention to the inci dental things. I went to a multi in England

where you could buy coffee and take your

cup (not plastic beaker) into the film. They also had a bar at night, and if you fancied a choc ice the kiosk was near enough for you to nip out during the interval. If the theatre is

small enough, this sort of relaxed

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atmosphere should be more possible, but it

takes a bit of effort by the management. The Avenue, which still stands, has been

showing Picnic at Hanging Rock, widely hailed as the first respectable Australian

film. {Barry Mackenzie and Alvin Purple don't qualify). It's directed by Peter Weir, who previously did The Cars That Ate Paris, which you might have seen at QFT. That's an equally quirky, intermittently brilliant and

mysterious fantasy that, like its successor, starts superbly and ends up a bit silly. In fact

you could say of these two Peter Weir

movies that they start off pretty weird but

then they peter out.

In a sense Hanging Rock promises more

than it delivers. The first hour or so is

superb, a haunting, restrained, perfectly

judged evocation of the girls' boarding school, seen as it were with an adolescent

frisson, and developing into mystery as the

innocent daughters of an incongruous alien

decadence encounter the ancient enigma of

the new continent. When the camera's point of view changes

from the girls to the men who become obsessed with the search on the rock, and

finally the exposure of the school's guilty secrets, the lightness of touch of the female

half of the film becomes a cruder and less

convincing male insistence. Clearly Weir

knows what he is doing, but such changes of style in the middle of a film or play are

usually disastrous. It's a tribute to the

strength of the first part of Hanging Rock

that its impact isn't totally undermined by what follows, and that the suspension of disbelief keeps hanging on (notice that

one?) to very near the end.

Well worth a visit.

Robert Johnstone

LETTERS Dear Sir,

The seats in the Riverside Theatre are perfectly comfortable. It's just that Colm Cavanagh is a restless kind of

Derry man and his legs are too long. Yours, etc.

HARRY BARTON Limavady.

OL

Family Favourites

THE WHITEHEADED BOY By Lennox Robinson

Lyric Theatre, Sept. 6-Oct. 1

The trials and tribulations of an Irish family afflicted with a spoiled youngest son form

the main subject of The Whiteheaded Boy, but the play is a great deal better than a

cosily indulgent portrait of Irish family life. Robinson condescends neither to his

subject nor his audience, and is not content

with indulgence. The play is mined with

ironies which explode round most of the

characters and periodically rebound off the

audience too.

Members of the family tend to bring dis

aster on their own heads. Dennis is pamper ed and selfish, but made so by a doting

mother and consenting family; if the other

brothers and sisters are thwarted, they have

made a rod for their own backs. It is

doubtful even if Dennis is a winner?he

might, after all, simply have exchanged one

cosy trap for another. I don't mean to

suggest that the play is 'a powerful indictment of Irish bourgeois society' or any

thing of that ilk. But it does seem to me to

be a well-constructed, amusing and

thoughtful comedy, which adequately

justifies Lennox Robinson's place among the early writers for the Abbey. One has

reasonable confidence in the intelligence of

his view and in his management of the play as it unfolds.

The same cannot truthfully be said of the

production, at least the night I saw it, when

producer and actors seemed thoroughly uncomfortable. The handling of the narra

tor's part was clumsy (are so many entrances and exits really necessary?) and

the timing obtrusively poor. Conventional

Irishisms of dialogue?most noticeably "at

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