The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 10

Thursrhv July 15 1971 I ARTS GUARDIAN Mechanics illustrated MICHAEL McNAY reviews the week's new films "-V 10 I Ilrooks (Dick van Dyke) whips the town into an all-American evangelical fervour. The (diluted) word of God, the word of Time magazine, the word of John Birch all that middle America holds most dear takes a pretty severe mauling. Dick van Dyke is unctuously exact a the self-righteous minister who never doubts himself (or Himself, since he clearly annexes the benefit of the capital letter). And Tom Poston plays the local alcoholic who leaves town rather than give up smoking, thus depriving the film too early of its funniest comic cameo. Still, it survives (with screenplay and direction by Norman Lear).

July 13. By Clapton Omnibus today to Leicester Square, where a preview of a most curiously wrought screenplay bv Master Robert Wynne-Simmons and directed by Master Piers Haggard entitled Bland on Satan's Claw (New Victoria). My lord does bespeak himself that in this year of grace. 1070. sorcery and divers other quaint superstition are long gone, hut I near spent in my breeches for gazing on the full-frontal of Mistress Linda Ilavden, a comely a wench as ever took the devil's service.

No such luck in Tiir Beast in the Cellar, which shares tht double bill and which has the sad atght of Flora Robson wasting her talents in a film which will probably finish up in somebody's collection of the greatest kitsch of all time. The Adventurci af Prince Achate! is the 65-minute animated film by Lotte Reininger about the Prince winning the hand of a princess from foreign parts and holding fast to her through all sorts of strange dangers. It was made in 1923-24. and all prints but one were destroyed during the Second World War. It is an exquisite fantasy, too sweet for modern tastes, perhaps, but in its control of line and edge and soft washes of grey anticipating a lot of the so-called post painterly abstraction of American art nf the sixties.

It shares the bill at the ICA Children's Cinema on Saturdays with Ken Russell's second film. Amelia and the Angel (made in 1958), a half-hour story fbsut a small girl in London who looks for a pair of angel's wings that she needs for a school of dancing stayp performance because her brother has ruined the ones she had. It's The Rel Balloon" plus saccharine, fairly imaginative, faintly minister, overly Russell's predilections in ininiature. ua'. rd in dnd out of the juts without causing accidents In these broad areas and in establishing a wary camcradene between the drivers, the film is a 'rcat success in the interstices a few unlooked-for crumbs have been caught.

The countdown to the start of the race with the crowd noise shut out and only Ihe amplified sound of a heartbeat does not work as well as whin si v.as first used, in Ichikava's film of the Tokyo Olympics (only then it was the nervous breathing of sprinters). All eccentricities of character are ironed out. so that you are left with a group of men who do what they must because they must, which, for all that the hero is Steve McQueen, isn't very different from the Audie Murphy cliche or the Kenneth More cliche. A pity really that this could not have been avoided, because in essentials the downbeat approach works beautifully. There is a sub-theme about a widow (the aforementioned watchable Elga Andersen) at Le Mans to exorcise the spell of the crash the previous year that killed her husband and in which Michael Delaney (McQueen) wa also involved but the mam struggle is mechanical, between Porsche and Ferrari the issue is decided by crashes, engine failure and Ijic failure and the nailbiting excitement is between cars racing for second and third place.

After the race, the winning co-drivers are feted with garlands and champagne, and the real gladiators arc neglected in the wash of the crowd, eyeing each other, wordlessly and cheer. ully signalling "up ou." Cold Turkey (London Pavilion) starts as a pleasantly detailed comedy modern American manners and ends as a wild toir de orce. On the wav it loses quality but provides plenty of belly laugh. It starts with a smooth Madison Avenue operator persuading a tobacco manufacturer to offer 25 million dallars to the first town in which every inhabitant gives up smoking for a specified period the idea is that no town will rise to the challenge, but the tobacco manufacturer will offload any odium he bears and maybe even become known as a great benefactor In a supprb flight of hvperbole. the Pit man tells- ihe manufacturer that hp and Air (Alf Nobel) have a lot in common 13 trillion cigarettes and the manufacture of armaments qualify both In become saviours of mankind and in the case of the tobacco baron, at no cost His plan miscarries the local minister, the Rev Clayton I'lXKJIA CENTER FILMS spent unit-thing like eight million dollar-, on getting the verisimilitude r' Le Mans (Odeon.

Marble Arch) absolutely right. And what a glossy package it mukes. It -cms churiish to have doubts about the contents: and yet superfluous un he part of the makers to have credited a script writer. ur this is a film that functions on long slow looks, significant pauses, xpresive impassivity, and enough decibels of car noise to make up for the shortage on dialogue No, but seriouslv, though it does not dn any positive' harm to watch Elga Andersen do one slow burn after another, not evprvmip is so rewarding in their eye-bill-to-lens confrontations with their Mukcr These reservations apart. Le Mans is an achievement.

The normal excesses of sports films have been pared away like the film about ski-ing. Downhill Racer," Le Mans avoids melodrama and goes Tor the feel of the thins, ihe mechanics in the pits, the exchange lips as one driver takes over from another, the iiuick meals stooped up in the self-service restaurant, the spectators gamping nut, the lo-ik of a cavalcade of cars hurtling into a bend, Ihe Minute organisation cars are Uric McQueen in Le Hans' PAID OFF on television by Nancy Banks-Smith 0v3s6JfTfT3 mil, ggXyjTF Vine watched the whirlpool in his coffee (the unemployed drink endless cups of tea or coffee) as if he had not heard. Then, "just terrible." And. as if he had pulled a plug, a tale of real or imaginary rejection by an old friend poured out like bathwater. The Social Security tomes out of the two programmes very badly indeed.

Wallington "It's the degradation. Even if a man was completely down and didn't know it. that place would prove it. The furniture is screwed to the floor, simply. 1 imagine to prevent peonlo picking it up and throwing it at the little Hitlers behind the desk." While making every allowance for the fact that the unemployed are flaved men.

raw with re.iect'on, the indictment of the reception they get at thp Social Securitv was so total that it could stand some investigation. It's easy enough to point out where thev have gone wrong. But there is reallv no shame in throwing vour wife into the battle of life. But there is no reason a shouldn't cry if he wants ti. Even if you feel the south is sodden, vou must go where the jobs are going.

Rut this is nothin? compared to the wrong done theni The loss of health or home or hope The marriage breakup, the mental break-down. It is appallingly unjust and unnecessary. Parliament, who must carry the reproach and resDonsibility for it. should remember that redundancy is the occupational ritk nf an MP. And that even a man who has Inst His job.

his savings, his self respect still had his vote. ONE OF THE finest, mosl timely things the BBC has done recently is their three-part commentary on unemployment, "Paid Off" (BBC-1). The third programme is to be shown tomorrow. Unemployment is like cancer everyone knows someone who has it and, quite often, someone who's died of it. I can think of two, though dead-of-redundancy didn't appear on the death certificate.

You could say of almost every out ot work person interviewed in the first and second parts of Paid Off that they were showing some signs of mental illness. The cracking and crazing, the curdling and corroding symptoms of stress. The first programme was about the out-of-work executive, the second man non-working worker. To mention this man or that distresses me. knowing how unable the unemployed art to bear yet another rejection.

However you. you. and you. Aubrey Yme, ex-rag trade tycoon If there is one thins Worse than being 43, unemployed and bald, it is being 45. unemployed and Jewish." Every day he haunts the rag-trade acre in London to be seen.

And we saw the sort of reception which can make a man begin to shake with rage until he shakes to pieces. A receptionist, the brightest thing about her, her hair There's a Mr Aubrey down here to sep you." Mr Vine." What Oh. he says he's Mr Vine (pause). He's got some people with him at the moment. Can you call back What sort of day-have you had asked James Burke.

BEVERLY SILLS at the Festival Hall by Philip Hope-Wallace Greetings from Bttnforih and Co. The Romans had virgins being raped by jackasses why is Bernard Delfont so ROBIN THOKNBER samples packaged fun in Lancashire's biggest playground. sentimental ferentiated account of Moart's lullaby loud, unloving, not at all musical. Constan.e's defiance aria from The Seraglio" was efficient but not for a moment the supreme expression of the Moartian heroic spirit which should be its sole justification. After the interval we fared better: thete was blithe "Una voce" with real Kossmian verve and exactly the sort of hopping embellishments which made Gallicurci a household name in 1H18 (unsurpassed still).

Bellini's Juliet in elegaie mood produced some very lovely sustained mezoforle tone, all the more welcome for being in short supply hitherto. Donizetti's Swiss Mis? "Linda" also went with great gusto and aplomb even though not all the notes were sweetly tuned, the lively upward runs sent the airlirnce into ecstacics. Since we are accused (or I am) of sitting mi the fence let me jump down for once and sav I wouldn't nut this in thp bellest eatp-rv nf bel canto. But us glad I went along. JOHN PRITCHARD got a delightful happy performance of Mozart's Symphony No.

34 from the excellent LSO hut that, to be frank, was not what the Festival Hall had packed itself to relish. We were there to root for Beverlv Sills seeded number one favourite in the leggiero stakes and a "Lucia" we liked and admired. Her fame is great also on gramophone records. Her singing is fresh, frank, and lively. But I couldn't forget Uncle Matt in Nancv Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate (if that's the title), who played Gallicurci till the needle wore out.

went to hear her at the Albert Hall in the flesh and then never played the record again. Miss Sills has a verv winsome personality and she can sing Bellini with sweet, swoonin; langour. She wore ivhite. and was topped with golden hair The idiotic Festival Hall lighting kent her face which is pleasant in a pool nf dusk throughout. The actual sinring had its sweet but aNn Its sour moments.

She hecan ith an undif Escaping to the Tower BUTLEY at the Criterion by Robert Watcrhouse situation. He is the classic who can see nothing but the ironic and olten unperceived comedy of others' useless lives, not to mention his own. All of whiih provides a number one r61c for Alan Bates. Bates plays the part as a sort of supercharged Everyman scruffier than the tramps at Charing Cross, quicker in rep.Ttee than Ken Dodd (whose style he often pmulatps), more overtly homosexual than the pon-cir-t queer and above all more hearten-in 'lv honest thin John Bull In Harold Pinter's nroduction he perhaps begins on a level slightly too anv and difficult to apnri'ciate. but the pine's flat and shcklv wn'kcd out ending amoly iusi fies the style set by the early fireworks.

Ending apart. Simon Crav'c writing f-il'ers in its merciless pxnosure nf character and lack of it Academies, sneeia'lv those unnaturally inclined, clc'r. THERE'S ONLY ONE part, and as far as I could make out only one point, but Simon Gray has built a pretty play out of an unpromising subject. The subject, or object, is one Ben Butley, lecturer in English at a London college, separated from his wife and. more relevantly, from his homosexual roommate from whom he had in turn been separated during his year of marrie I hlisc.

To bp concise (something which Butley. for all his honesty, isn't) he is a persecuted nun. the only genuine article in an array of nseudos and frauds, and so of course tated to lose out. as well attempt to do a lot of danui'C in every personal relationship. In the drab tutorial rooms which Ben and friend share the whole horror nf his and other lives (all lives?) plays itself out against a backdroi or botc'd scholarship, bitching, and boredom.

Not that that i-- in itself rteprsin-; Puv lrv cvidentlv laves it, drawing the deepest his'fonics fiom the most banal because they're on rollers. The tableau ends when the audience bursts into applause I'm told the RSPCA has inspected and approved the hor-es" comfort 1 suppose they enjoy galloping on a stage as much as a racecourse. But 1 don't like what it does to the audience. The Romans had virgins being raped bv why is Bernard Delfo'it so sentimental But the "horses' treadmills by Hall Stage Equipment. Ltd at least provide an imago Blackpool is not dn escape, but a change of treadmill.

The doublp-ondof' plying up and down the promenade. the leopard pacing from side to side of its cage in the Tower 700. the fi-h in the aquarium, the donkeys 0n the beaih. the pro.es-sional be.mtv queens on the catwalk in the baths, the performers with their thank you for hping the most wonder-lu! audieiue in the word" twice nightly: the relenfles. tule of tourists that eh'K and flows eaili weekend, all on a tenpernv lug dipper trip on a An erturnina whee'." Ken I) dd sings, Round and rotin I again, round and i mind again The bitterest irony is thai Hair the one show that might have suggested Unit lucre could be more to lur than putting two precious pounds a week into a tar on the mantelpiece to iwu weeks being, flecked on different trcidmiil has ociome prt the treadimil Admittedly it's th" only tatty s10u town, admitted'y it's the onlv show where they un manage just 4- well ithout "mikes because you can't hrar the sound -ystcm anyway admittedly t'nev take off their clothes 3iid stand in the half-hglu t'What 3ic you doing here?" Tarbuck asks.

Let's get over But when you talk to the company you find them torn between believing in what Hair has to say and realising that Mr Grade and Mr Delfont wouldn't have put it on in Blackpool if there was any danger of it being taken seriously. Tony Wood hastily denies that they identify ith their characters We're actors playing hippies." Kicky Peebles wants to make it big in pop or films. Only one of them saw any inconsistency in treating the show as just a show, had any qualms about moving on into the sterility of straight show business, or worried about the evaporation 0' its idealism. Of course "Hair" is stale and tawdry and phoney: it's stall the onlv refreshing experience in kpool spart from the air. They're hiving a nnndenii" time, hut I wish it as ir blushed ves "I thmiglit so.

ive iminl hear yuii out hcic" 1 1 also has that nice Kenneth MiKellar who has a degree in music jud looks as ou could let jour daughter go into the iiingle with ti i in. Mchcllars television shows are some of the most populai programmes ever transmitted. Which shows how the promoters think. And I on't raise any canards about Big Brother entertainment, because poor old KM I have already been made 1 1 sell their share ol London Weekend television. Anyway they're right people seem to want their favourite television shows to lollovv them to the coast.

Take two the non-KMl shows The Good Old Buys" with Clinton ford and Duggie Clark at the Central Pier, and Harry II. t'orbett and K.t!hv K.r.iv at the South Pier l'lieil at the Gund KMl have llvlda Baker Iroiu Granada's appjlling Nearest and IV.uest.'' They did a stage version of her "elev senes List vear. so t'ns time they've had to set the programme's i Tom Biviiiiand and Uo llottomley. on a new comedy based on the same character. So "Not On Your Nelly is written to the same formula sto.k Uun ashire i naliire (Nelly runs black pudding stall instead of working in pickle f.ictty) and innuendo th.it is lamed having on one entendre Mavhp it got better after the interval I wondering whether th Bishop of Biackhiirn.

who denounced "Hair' as unsuitable fpi family audiences. preferred loia.ly unambiguous lines about an oi-l nun looking for pills in his nightgown there's always the rower Circus, with Charlie Cairoli exactly as I remember 20 years ago (he's his thirty-first season) and the ring stiil dropping magically away to flood with water for the cascades at the end. Reassuring familiarity, not exotic novelty. A family show, in every sense. (Klcph.ints trained by Ivor Rosairc, trained by Joan Kosaire, dogs trained by Leigh Marsh, bu' don't worry'.

she's married to David Bosflire.1 Tarbuck's Holiday Star-time" and the Ken Dodd show are both directed by nick Ilurran. with decor by Tod Kingman, costumes by R. St John Rapcr. choreography by-Pamela Pevis. It' not surprising thov're a hit short on imagination.

The onlv startling innovation comps a a climax a IVrhv Pay dame t'v Ken Dodd show Tbe ha.kdron goes up to reval tun live I gallop, gct'm; nowhere cutlets; the same f.ne you're used to at home, but gilt-wrapped and sprinkled with secmins. The names that pull them in at Blackpool arc our little grey friends from the television screen, blown up to lile size in mil colour and three amazing dimensions. Most ol I hem are Lancastrians Ken Dodd and Jimmy Tarbuck from Liverpool Jimmy Clithcrou. Dora Bryan, Hylda Baker. Uoddy's "Laughter Spectacular" at the Opera House is just that the most expensive, the most hilarious, the one with a real live waterlall on the stage at the end of the tlrt half.

Dodd himself is Blackpool at its best it's his ninth season here since lSiflo an aristocrat of true vulgarity, he knows exactly what people want ami gives them a little lul more, lie does it hy taking the corny old gags that the rest ol them use. but teasing out the logic to its zany limit and out the olhci side it's the only act Blackpool that stretches the imagination or strikes true chords. The tickle stuk's still there, but now it's yards long, a great Scarfean phallus nodding over the stalls. Are there any honeymoon couples here he asks. Good morning In one way the tia.lc is canning op with Doddv the duty jokes becoming more openly pci missive and less adolescent snickerm Knickers." hr shouts it one point and the house how.s with glee.

It's you can th.it now. misi Jimmy Tarbuck. at the ABC. lu. a inline in candidlv blue jokes, even they are reassuringly familiar.

That one about extending transplant operations I iope 1 don't gel Jimmy Glitheroe's was used by Ted Rogers at the same theatre in 136S. But Tarbuck relics more on personality than his scripted material. He's the smart young lad from down the road who's done we.l out selling second-hand ears, insurance, himself and drinks in the lounge bar but still calls hello to the old women on their doorsteps. As part of his one of us up there" bit. he's refreshms honest about phoney shnvv-hi conv editions like the crefully rehearsed surprise encore with little regard fir the group of Latin-look waiters vv'io play guitars in his show and have to shout More themselves.

He's as good as Poddy explo ing late arrivals. When my wife cam's hack from the le.i msf after started his h- icpcated it a'! for her 3U.1 thn askd Cou'd von he?" mr out Iticic She Ill-IB MUSI AliDENT inkle in prospci ily. have forsaken spool's plastic escapism for packaged escape they've abandoned Blackpool Spanish waiters and flamenco artists lor bingo and chips on the Costa Those who still make the I'lUnmage to this Mecca of bad taste arc not too poor but too unimaginative to go elsewhere. They're not looking for exotic novelty but reassuring lamtlianty. What people want now.

apparently, is cabaret. They want to be able to eat jnd drink and dance and be entci-tamed, just like ou can in the clubs th.it have been mushrooming in all but the smallest industrial towns of the North. But in Blackpool you do it on a grander scale ami with a glossier linish. And the grandest anil the glossiest is the Stardust Garden the ballroom the Winter Gardens (and otT-scasoti pnlitii.il conference lul.) converted by a 130.000 cinema set into a Las Yogas style night club. From 7 H0 to 12 30 it alternates; a slick flnorshow of upmarket variety acts cabaret singers, nnicyclisls, jugglers, dancing girls, but no s'lrip wilh dancing to Loss his orchestra Nothing i It u.is heic flut I-teddy Blown, the r.l.iikpno born puhlMty nun for EMI n.H.

s.nce they bought the Blackpool Tower Company, own this and every show that was open when 1 was there, except for th lie Parade) explained that they were now caterinj (r the evening and short-stay visitors the people who come to Blackpool for i second holiday before or after their trip abroad. That arco intcd for them being willing and able to spend the P0; per he.id admission to the Stardust Garden Mr Brown panted out that this was ovuy I0p more than the best seats for most shows where you can come out after the first house with two hours to kill before closing time. He arpted that you could sit in the Stardust Garden for five hours and ou didn't have to spend another penny. Well, it seems to me that if you find yourself in this sort of ambiance, designed to make you feel expensively expansive, sooner or Inter you're going to order from the constantly passing trolleys of food and service are "excellent and never neglected). When yon succumb, a small salmon roll costs 4p a small s.Mad on a plastic airline plate.

62p. Kninv ourself, vou'ie on vour Ann when vou're on what viiii want is i hops dressed up a MOSCOW STATE CIRCl in Manchester by Merete Bates put it miliJ.y. sometimes breath-'" takingly niagmficient. The tone shows in details. No master cracking his whip, but a itaUly in plum velvet who, after the first--lurfclight for her friendly bit.

receded decorously Into shadows. Then polite smiles performers as if wondering what please the other next There watf-m thought such as the rowanberrtea and honey -pot for the bears. There -was, economy such as no dragging. gapr-while shifting scenery but a wholes-. different, act in another part.

It shows in the imperious, fleet i BEIT dynamics of the Cossacks thtwder-i--ing like a black and red cattNrffl -c wheel, faster and faster, round tbe ring. And dominated, first by a flowtas white princess on a pearl grey then by the same as a tight, little spitfire craelc-shbt But Popov, the clown is the heart of it. Blunt. Llatant. tongue-in-cheek, hut above all.

masterly and successful, in concise, explicit acts as doctor, or snake-charmer, he has the vbip-tmd over us. not the reverse. THE LAST circus at Be'le uc. Msn-ihester. in which sides of bacon were whacked live round the nnj.

for all the world as if the sawdust were a board, was enough to put anyone off for life. It says something for the Moscow State Circus, its successor, that it not onlv restores faith in circuses but shows them in the light that is rare, if not entirely absent in this country. For us. often as not. circus h3s sunk to a sordid, shameful business in which mucking about with animals is reflected only too closely by the antics of the beaten, clowns.

We go, admit it or not, as much to rub our noses In the salt of unhappi-ness as to exult in any higher emotions. Somehow the Russians differ. For them it is like ballet, a paeon to the bodv, moving and exultant, nowhere beitial. It concentrates on acrobats, whirling, swinging, flying, uses animals barely at all and then in the open, not caged and in the peak of condition. Sustained by such unexpected qualities as taste, balance, gentility even a touch of hijh romance, it to.