Elizabeth Butler
Mu(Cl4M
(Continued from Page 4B)
arrowheads —”
“Does he?”
“Oh hell yes. He does them all
by hand and everything. He does
them the Indian way. If you’re buy
ing them from him he’ll tell you he
made them but by the time they
get around nobody knows they
were done by a white man.”
Robert returns, carrying three
boards of arrowheads and several
silver pieces. He says he is asking
$1,000 for the lot. Butler decides
that the arrowheads are local, and
expresses similar disinterest in
the silver. Robert leaves.
“Poor,” says Butler, “poorqual
ity. That one necklace was all
done by machine.”
The incident emphasized the
increasing difficulty in finding
good Indian art. Both Butler and
Ford say they will often go to
shows and find only a handful
worth considering. Much of the
work is commercial; other, dam
aged or poor craftsmanship.
Some of it is simply faked. With
Indian art ranging in value from
hundreds to thousands of dollars,
forgeries are a lucrative proposi
tion.
“There are people with no con
science who don’t mind that they
are perpetuating a crime,” Butler
says. “They’re looking at it from a
sheer standpoint of greed.”
'reed Combine it with
dying skills and a lack of under
standing by both the general pub
lic and Native Americans, and the
Indian art world begins to look
frantic and confused. •
But one thing seems oblivious
to it all — the art itself. Kwahu
Kachina stands posed in his case
with something no one else has —
the power of a mythology, the
chant of a craftrman. The world
lives a little longer because of his
existence.
Just incredible, the woman
says.
And again the Eagle Being leaps
for the sky.
The Butler Museum of Indian
Art, 1155 First Street, is open from
10a.m. to 5p.m. Tuesday through
Saturdays. Admission is $1.50 for
adults, 25 cents for children.
Story by Eric Maloney
Photos by Eric Boekelheide
The Choirboys
Comedy not funny as Aldrich’s films negate hero myths
Robert Aldrich may well be the
most underrated American direc
tor working in the seventies. On the
surface, this is puzzling, since
Aldrich’s work has some obvious
merits, not the least of which are a
vivid, aggressive visual style and
an exceptional consistency and
coherence of theme and charac
terization.
Further, Aldrich has, for at least
a decade apparently, retained al
most complete control over his
career, choosing his projects and
making his films without outside
interference. Even when, in the
late sixties and early seventies, a
series of financial disasters de
stroyed his production company,
he stubbornly struggled to retain
his independence, finally making
two moneymakers, The Longest
Yard (1974) and Hustle (1975), to
go with his earlier successes,
Whatever Happened to Baby
Jane? (1962), and The Dirty
Dozen (1967).
Despite this evidence of integ
rity and commitment to personal
film-making, Aldrich is ap
preciated as an artist only by a
handful of cult admirers. More
than once, a new Aldrich film has
been reviewed superficially as if it
were a piece of commercial hack
work.
Ironically, it is probably the force
and integrity with which Aldrich
renders his vision on the screen
that, more than anything else, en
courages his neglect; he is not a
likeable director, and his world is
an extraordinarily unpleasant
place.
Violence and treachery are not
uncommon in action films, but
most directors undercoat the
bleakness with sentimentality,
often in the form of a romanticized
central character. Aldrich, how
ever, sees a world where heroism
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can no longer exist (one of his
films is revealingly titled Too Late
the Hero). His characters often
have few choices; a man betrays
his friends in The Choirboys, and
most malevolent indifference.
The more sophisticated myths
of the seventies get the same Al
drich treatment. Perhaps the
director’s most telling refusal to
By DAVID COURSEN
a U.S. President conceals a major
scandal and connives in his own
assassination in “Twilight's Last
Gleaming. In Hustle, a man is
ludicrous and pathetic when he
tries to play the hero and avenge
his daughter’s death; the closest
thing to heroism in the film is a
cop’s effort to conceal the sordid
murder the would-be hero finally
commits.
If Aldrich often rejects and invar
iably undercuts traditional types of
heroism, he is no more receptive
to the heroes of the seventies.
American football-worship is the
subject of apparently good
natured satire in The Longest
Yard. In Hustle, however, when a
man is called away from a football
game to identify his daughter’s
body, the incessant sound of that
game, coming from a series of
nearby radios seems to mock the
tragedy the man must face; in the
process, the sound unforgettably
objectifies the world’s utter, al
r"—fc
romanticize is in his 1972 cavalry
western Ulzana's Raid. In typical
seventies fashion, the film fea
tures a callow officer who, acting
as a kind of liberal mouthpiece,
suggests that Indians have been
systematically brutalized and op
pressed; hence their violence
must be understood. But Aldrich is
not debunking one mythic hero,
the noble cavalryman, merely to
create a more modem equivalent,
the Noble (peace-loving) Savage.
Instead, Ulzana's Raid, despite its
modem perspective, is unsparing
in its depiction of both the brutality
and the martial skills of its maraud
ing Indians.
In Ulzana, as elsewhere, Al
drich describes men caught within
larger processes that are beyond
their control. The actions of each
individual may be important to him
and those around him but are
futile as attempts to control the
situation. The integrity of Burt
Reynolds' cop in Hustle, or the
patriotism of Burt Lancaster’s
missile base hijacker or the de
cency of Charles Durning’s presi
dent in Twilight’s Last Gleaming
(1977 s best film), are meaning
lessly overwhelmed by the perva
sive immorality of their societal
and political contexts.
It is hardly surprising, then, that
Aldrich has created some of the
most devastating final images in
the American cinema. Kiss Me,
Deadly (1955) concludes with the
sound of an endless scream as an
A-bomb explodes. In some ways,
the final shot of Twilight’s Last
Gleaming is even more agonizing
as the camera recedes from a
slain American President sur
rounded by symbols of the
militarism that has demanded his
life.
Thus it is not surprising either
that Aldrich's newest film, The
Choirboys, though billed as a
“comedy," is not very funny. Al
drich has a malicious sense of
irony, but his feel for the nuances
of comedy is erratic. As a result,
the film’s weakest moments are
often those when it is most con
spicuously laboring to be funny; a
parking lot traffic jam, obviously
and ineptly plagiarized from
Nashville, is one glaring example.
But if The Choirboys (the name
refers to a group of Los Angeles
cops who hold choir practices —
drunken debauches — in a city
park) fails as comedy, it is more
than redeemed by its characteris
tic Aldrich strengths. It is most ef
fective in the force with which it
suggests the treacnery or me
choirboys working environment.
In fact, one reason the film is not
particularly funny is that Aldrich is
never unmindful of the consequ
ences of the ways policemen ex
ercise their power. The choirboys
may be no worse than ordinary
men, but in their job that makes
them dangerous, to themselves
and to others.
As a result, the film's humor
often has perverse overtones.
When a psychotic patrolman talks
tough to his partner, his brutal de
scriptions may be grotesquely
humorous. But when he talks
tough to a potential suicide,
thereby persuading her to jump,
the humor pales. Later, with a
swaggering machismo that is al
most terrifying, the same man
turns a minor domestic quarrel
into a near riot, in which he is fi
nally beaten with a violence that is
disturbingly cathartic; for this act,
he receives a special citation.
In short, the film is typical Al
drich. It is other, less brutal choir
boys who fail each other, and who
become involved in sadomasoch
ism, suicide, and murder. Finally,
the oldest and wisest of the group,
“Spermwhale” Whalen (Charles
Durning, in a brilliant perfor
mance), six months from retire
ment, saves himself and his pen
sion by betraying his fellow offic
ers. Despite an ambiguous final
reversal, it is clear here, as in all of
Aldrich, that the well-intentioned,
no less than the brutal, can be de
stroyed. Heroes don’t survive.
Too late the hero.
TONIGHT — FRI-SAT-SUN
2nd week
Starring Priscilla Lauris
"This is a play to rLift your hat to!’ ”
-Don Bishoff, Eugene Register-Guard
October 15, 1977
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