[Redbook1:172-173][19700916:0000b]{Film
Review}[16th September 1970]
16th September 1970 [continued]
There are
some things which cannot be said, only understood, because speech in our
context robs them of all meaning.
And there
are some matters which cannot be rationalised or reduced to speech or even to
thought. Like the sideways star, they
vanish if you look straight at them.
‘Eyewitness’,
on the other hand, is just a bore. I
don’t object to the close-ups and angles of which critics complained, possibly
because there were so many, I hardly noticed them: they lost all their impact. The opening was interesting, but the rest
might just as well have been on T.V..
For some reason I couldn’t understand a lot of what people said, e.g.
the police chief; perhaps he was talking in Maltese? However, that could have been due to faults
in reproduction. But a film which
engineers hairsbreadth escapes by means of obviously illogical decisions and
unlikely chances creates a yawning credibility gap. The people were film-beautiful but bad* as
characters. Too many corpses spoil the
impact.
‘Kes’ was a
different matter altogether. I still do
not know how to describe it except to say that its (purposely) unsatisfactory
ending was in an odd way the most satisfactory part of it. From [Uncle]
Q’s reports from [the secondary school
where he worked], I doubt whether the school was much overplayed. My main impression on leaving the cinema was
of hopelessness. One cannot pick any
particular part; the whole film combines to leave this impression.
The creation
of laughter and sadness at the same time indicates a sure and skilled touch.
It appears
to be easier to get laughs from the screen than from the page.
With the
advent of taped films in the home the novel’s influence may shrink still
further, but I doubt whether the film director will occupy quite the same
position as the author has.
*[i.e. poor]
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