Films
Superman
Directed by Richard Donner
McDonald Theatre
Superman the Movie is faithful
to the spirit, more or less, of the
book — the comic book, that is.
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That’s a problem. When was the
last time you spent over two hours
with a comic book?
The introductory credits take
forever — one name at a time
zooms into the screen. Then the
whole Superman myth is laid out
from the beginning If you didn't
know that Superman was born on
the planet Krypton, that his father,
Jor-EI, launched the baby Super
man in a rocket for earth moments
before Krypton exploded, that a
Midwestern couple, the Kents,
raised the young super hero, and
that he later went to work for the
Daily Planet in Metropolis as the
mild-mannered Clark Kent, etc.
the first half of the picture is at
least educational.
Marlon Brando (as Jor-EI) sets
the tone for the picture’s first half
with the words. “This is not a
fantasy,.Never mind that he’s
not speaking about the film per se,
we get the point. Superman is up
to some serious tricks. Brando de
livers his lines with the authority of
the narrator of a Btolical epic. He
speaks of suppression, the weak
nesses of earthlings, and the rela
tionship of fathers to sons. For
those who learn their philosophy
from comic books, Brando s talks
are at least educational.
Special effects provide about all
the entertainment there is to the
first half. Krypton is a barren
planet, occasional cities dotting
the landscape like a multitude of
Las Vegases. The architectural
motif is crystal. The people, with
the exception of Jor-EI and Ns
wife Lara (Suzanne York), are
poker faced and cold.
The scenes of Superman's
youth in the Midwest are beauti
fully photographed. His foot race
against a train is amusing. His rela
tionsNp with his adopted parents
is never convincing, although we
are meant to care that his father
(Glenn Ford) dies and that he
feels compelled to leave his
mother. Yawn.
In the second half, Superman
has been educated for twelve
years in the inexplicably present
Fortress of Solitude at the North
Pole, we are at last given Super
man in his guise of Clark Kent
working for The Daily Planet, and
as the caped-crusader himself
fighting for truth, justice and the
American way. Finally there are
some touches of humor — Dark
Kent confronts a city devoid of en
closed phone booths; Lois Lane
(Margot Kidder) interviews
Superman and asks questions
about his biological functions and
Ns size.
Superman’s flying is the big
gimmick of the second half. It’s
invigorating. The effects are never
as stupendous as one might have
hoped for, but still the flying is en
chanting.
A sequence where Superman
carries Lois Lane aloft on a date,
otherwise charming, becomes
overdone when Lane's thoughts
are over-dubbed. Imagine Rod
McKuen at 30,000 feet — its
enough to make one airsick.
Margot Kidder, whether acting
dazed by Superman’s hand
someness and strength or dis
dainful of Clark Kent’s awkward
ness and lack of sophistication,
never errs. But the most marvel
ous aspect of her performance is
how she so naturally invests Lois
Lane with a libido.
Chris Reeve, as Superman,
pulls off the same trick. He also
gives his character an air of com
passion and a Bondian sense of
humor. Reeve’s Kent, however,
fumbles too much and speaks in
too high a voice. Clark Kent is
mild-mannered, not castrated.
Jackie Cooper’s Perry White is
terrible. Cooper over-acts and is
relentlessly one-dimensional.
Gene Hackman, as Lex Luthor.
an archvillian out to perpetrate the
crime of the century, is reminis
cent of Batman villians on the old
television show. The crime is re
miniscent of many SPECTRE
plots in the Bond films. Snore.
Superman pulls off miracle after
miracle to thwart Luthor. But it’s
like going to the moon — after the
first trip, the others seemed insig
nificant After the first great feat
Superman performs in Metropolis
— his rescue of Lane from a
plummeting helicopter — we start
thinking. “Well, big deal,”
whenever Superman is finished
closing the San Andreas fault or
whatever.
The film s producers are obvi
ously hoping the public is looking
for a hero. But why resurrect
Superman, who has had his day?
Why did DeLaurentis remake
King Kong? Why did Lumet and
company do The Wiz? Why did
they remake The Body Snatch
ers? Because the seventies are
bereft of original ideas, that’s why.
Sure the Superman character
has been updated to the extent
that he has a libido. But that's not
enough. He still acts as if he's in
the thirties. And his enemies have
not been updated.
Superman should smash
OPEC by importing oil from space,
or he should humble the South Af
rican whites into abolishing apar
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theid, or he should bring Peace to
the Middle East. Otherwise he’s
no more interesting or believable
or competent than Jimmy Carter,
who one assumes is also fighting
for truth, justice and the American
way. \
As it is, the effects of the film are
nice, but the overall intentions of
the film are irrelevant. The best
fantasy has its roots in reality.
Superman the Movie never has
any more than one foot on the
ground By William Kogut
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Springfield Cinema
Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, like Superman, is
based on premises that have
been around awhile. But unlike
Superman, Snatchers success
fully updates and adapts itself to
this era.
The original Snatchers was set
in a small town. The new version is
set in San Francisco. Spores from
deep space reach the earth via
rain and overnight they mature
into small pods with flowers at
tached. Elizabeth (Brooke
Adams) picks up a pod and carries
it home. Kept by the side of her
bed, the pod grows overnight into
a duplicate of her lover, a dentist.
The original dentist deteriorates
into a mass of black cobwebs
vtfiich surreptitiously is thrown into
the garbage in t .3 morning by the
duplicate, or pod person.
The duplicate lover is unnatur
ally free of anxiety — is super mel
low. Elizabeth notices this and
begins a crusade to uncover the
reason for the change in her lover.
Her ally in this crusade is Matthew
(Donald Sutherland), a fellow
worker with Elizabeth at the De
partment of Health.
As the pod people multiply,
Elizabeth s and Matthew's para
noia grows. They join forces with
another couple played by Jeff
Goldblum and Veronica
Cartwright. A pop psychologist
(Leonard Nimoy) tries to assuage
tie couples fears.
To sleep means to take the risk
of being duplicated. Elizabeth and
Matthew fight to stay awake while
fleeing from hoards of pod people.
San Francisco is a center for
alternative life-styles. The film
manages to present the transfor
mation into a pod person as being
analagous to changing one’s life
style. Since a pod person's life
style is anxiety free and encour
ages a sense of community (albeit
with other pod folk), it resembles
various seventies life-styles that
pretend to be "The Answer."
But at the bottom line Ameri
cans fear losing their individuality
to mass movements. Snatchers
exploit these fears and in doing so
seems to lend support to the old
argument, “Sure, this society suf
fers from anxiety, etc. But that’s
the price one pays for living in a
free society where the individual is
allowed to make his or her own
choices.”
The movie also appeals to a
self-indulgent sense of pes
simism. ‘‘Look at the blank-faced,
uncaring and insensitive pod per
son,” the viewer is encouraged to
say to himself. “People are really
becoming like that too. I’m sur
rounded by pod people! I’m the
only sentient being left in this cold
and cruel world.” Snatchers does
not deal in good and evil as does
Superman. Snatchers deals with
compassion, which it implies is a
dying emotion.
Elizabeth s dentist lover cares
more about a televised basketball
game than about her kisses. A
step further on, the duplicate lover
doesn’t even care about basket
ball. Snatchers implies we are all
only a step short of becoming pod
people
Horror and science fiction films
have a way of reducing charac
ters, making them secondary in
importance to ideas. But the
characters here co-exist in impor
tance with the ideas. Elizabeth is
vulnerable. She brings a pretty
flower home and it turns against
her! One could not be more vul
nerable than that. An obvious un
derdog ignored by her boyfriend in
both Ns incarnations, Elizabeth
has our sympathy from the start.
Matthew is first shown inspect
ing a restuarant for health code
violations. This is a master-stroke
of writing — initially he tries to pro
tect people from what might go
into them, later he tries to protect
people from what they might turn
into.
Kibner (Nimoy)is an operator, a
probable charlatan, yet projects a
certain rationality. Nimoy is per
fect in this role — his association
with the utterly rational Mr. Spock
in the Star Trek works wonderfully
to his advantage. Spock, after all,
is a bit of a pod person himself —
as is Kibner.
All the scenes have important
little touches — there is always
something happening in the
background. Garbage trucks are
everywhere devouring the cob
web bodies of pod victims.
The scenes of emerging pod
people are terrifying. The sound
track is well done — director
Kaufman has paid enormous at
tention to detail.
Film buffs will spot a number of
in-jokes in Snatchers, chief and
most terrifying among them is a
scene featuring the hero of the
original film (1956), Kevin McCar
thy, banging against the cracked
windshield of Matthew s car and
shouting, 'They’re here! They're
here!”
Superman gives us miracles in
which we no longer have any faith.
Snatchers depicts a socio
psychological disaster the in
evitability of which we accept now
more than ever. By William
Kogut
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