6 FILM MAKERS SHARE THEIR VISIONS

It’s difficult sometimes to hear the small individual voice sounding its note in the middle of all the madcap ballyhoo and frenzy of the movies. Woody Allen, David Lynch--and maybe now Oliver Stone--to the contrary, the Hollywood studios in recent years haven’t been kind to people who wanted to do something different. (“Were they ever?” some cynic might interject.)

In many foreign countries, however--especially those without overly rich or solidified film industries--an individual voice can be a blessing. And, at the American Film Institute Festival, which ends today, there have been plenty: 100 pictures from 37 countries--from Korea to Iceland.

Apropos of AFIFEST, let’s join a rooftop group at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel where six AFIFEST film makers have gathered to discuss their films, films made mostly out of personal passions. They’ll express, almost universally, a real fondness for the great movies of Hollywood’s past (a magic which often spurred their vocations) and skepticism and disbelief about the priorities, methods and obsessions of Hollywood Present. They’ll all speak openly and knowledgeably and amusingly. And none of them will suggest that we take a lunch next Tuesday.

The six are actress Dominique Sanda (France), directors Pal Erdoss (Hungary), Stephen Maclean (Australia), Anja Breien (Norway), Rudolf Thome (West Germany) and Steve Kovacs (an American--but also an immigrant from Hungary.) Of the group, only Sanda, who in the ‘70s was often called the “New Garbo,” is famous in America.

But they had good or superb films in the festival: a sleek film noir (Sanda’s “Deadlier Than the Male,” directed by Benoit Jacquot); a mock picaresque farce about looniness Down Under (Maclean’s “Around the World in 80 Ways”); a poignant study of private enterprise under socialism (Erdoss’ “Countdown”); a spry social comedy of feminine camaraderie after two school reunions (Breien’s two “Wives” films); a modern version of Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” (Thome’s “Tarot”), and a portrait of a Hungarian-American family struggling through the shocks of the Vietnam era (Kovacs’ “68”).

All, in a way, are realists and romantics--even Maclean, who makes surreal comedies and says: “I’ve got some really silly films in me.” Three--Thome, Breien, Erdoss--are strong admirers of John Cassavetes. As a group, they seem inspired either by the French New Wave of the ‘60s or the American and world film makers (the notorious auteurs) whom the New Wave critics preferred. (Sanda was, in fact, discovered by Robert Bresson.)

Alone, in conversation, each visitor takes on different contours. Erdoss has a calm, plumpish, serene face, like a blue-jeaned Buddha. For him, universality is something that seeps out of a project when you don’t expect it. “When I start making a film, I’m particularly interested in special problems in Hungary, problems of today. I’m interested in any story where I can take the side of the loser. But I discover eventually that problems are pretty much the same everywhere, globally. Like in my film, with the situation of young people, who live on the periphery, without much schooling or training.

“In the past few years we’ve been getting more and more freedom to do what we want. There was only one Hungarian film censored in the past few years, and they’re going to release that now too. It’s practically a free-for-all. ‘Countdown’ is about a private entrepreneur in Hungary, the difficulties of private business. But private entrepreneurship is not just a current Hungarian problem. There are successful, and less successful, entrepreneurs everywhere. So, naturally, this film is international as well.”

Steve Kovacs, whose parents left Hungary, and whose film features footage of the Hungarian revolt shot by Hollywood cinematographers--and Hungarian immigrants--Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Szigmond, is as warm as Erdoss, but more harried. He emphasizes the necessity for pacing, and, sometimes, you suspect, the pace is wearing him thin.

“I was 10 years old when I came over from Hungary. I have a strange background, because I feel, and think I am, very American. I grew up on American television--but my Hungarian background is very important for me. There was a time when the ideal of the melting pot was to lose your identity, be assimilated into the American ideal. But I think, in the last 15 years, that’s changed.

“The world has become very small. It’s quite possible for a foreigner to become conversant with the language of American film. We have these prejudices about European movies moving more slowly, American films more quickly. But I think what’s terrible--for the audience, for producers, for everyone involved--is to make these repetitive stories, these sequels. In fact, the safest thing, from a financial point of view, is something totally original.”

Rudolf Thome seems, at first, an archetypal Teuton: the lean, sharp face, the penetrating eyes, the clarity of speech, even the frequent punctuations of “yah” in his conversation. But he’s influenced less by German cinema (except for Murnau) than American and French (especially Rohmer.) And, when he travels, he prefers to think of himself as international. “The German films are much more recognized abroad than in Germany. And without TV--or the state subsidies--it’s almost impossible to get the money to make them. Yah, a thing like Doris Dorrie’s ‘Men’ is a miracle. It opened in one cinema in Munich with one print, and eventually topped all the U.S. films on the box-office charts.” Thome’s favorite movie maker is Howard Hawks, but he thinks the current American films--what we both call “trailer” movies (movies shot and constructed like trailer ads)--are having a disastrous effect. “There’s a big part of the German audience, I think, which doesn’t go to the cinema anymore. They hate that fast way the new Hollywood film is made: the rapid cutting. You just go in, and all this stuff is thrown in your face, and after a while, you are just kicked back out again--the film is finished--and you barely know what was going on. Your mind is completely empty after seeing the film; you can’t even talk about it. Not all of the new American movies are like that, but quite a few are.

“So a big part of the audience, older people, just don’t go to the movies anymore. And the younger people who go to the cinema--to these ‘trailer’ movies--they are educated to like nothing else. Everything is made that way: TV, advertising. They think that’s all there is. And they like it.”

Stephen Maclean, a tall Aussie in shades, was bred on this disposable pop culture, and he worked in its world. When he describes it, he has a wry skepticism: “Everybody in Australian cinema came from two sources: television and advertising. Our world-famous, beautiful cinematography--our wealth of talented cinematographers--is a result of the ad industry. So, I guess, when you get out of TV, you want to identify up: Go PBS.

“Actually, I’m of that disappearing species, the Working-Class Australian. I come from a completely working-class background--which, over the years, has disappeared, as Australia’s gotten more homogenized. And people like the tone of my work, I find, more here than there. Australian people are so hilarious, yet the films are so dull: ‘Masterpiece Theater’ stuff.” (Maclean’s films are fast.)

His first cinematic revelation came at 12, when he hurriedly bought a copy of the Wilder-Diamond screenplay for “Some Like it Hot” in a railway station, thinking it was a trashy paperback potboiler. He worked as a child actor on Australian TV and then “when it got just too heartbreaking,” turned to pop journalism: “It was an exciting period. The music was terrible: It was actually hideous, all this rubbish that was ruling the charts. But the excitement was great.”

Later, Maclean went to England, dabbled in Australian “Youth Culture television,” and used recollections of his pop past in the screenplay for Gillian Armstrong’s “Starstruck.” And, much later, one afternoon, “Hollywood or Bust”--with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, riding cross-country to Los Angeles--came on television. “It was like primal return. I realized how much ‘Starstruck’ was like ‘Hollywood or Bust.’ I guess that’s it: I’m inspired by the magic I got out of films when I was young.”

Anja Breien is one of the leading film makers in a country, Norway, where, remarkably, one third of the working film directors are women. “That is probably because film is financed by the government,” she says. “I think that a commercial system is much harder. Also, we don’t have this very heavy and rich film tradition like you have--or even the Swedes and Danes. That is a pity, but also an advantage--because I think that any filmic tradition is patriarchal, because the society is patriarchal. The cinema industry is less so; it’s more innocent and newer.”

The word “patriarchal” may look harsh or accusatory in print, but not when Breien uses it. Her tone is sunny, and like her characters, she seems amused by everything around her. “When I went to French film school, there were no women directors. I had no models. I was brought up like a motherless child in the cinema; but I had lots of fathers.” (One of them, her friend Ingmar Bergman, advised her on re-shooting part of the “Wives” sequel.)

“What went wrong for all of us in the 1970s was that we made statements that we thought would change the world. We had this really childish attitude that if you had the right analysis, then the world would eventually be just as you analyzed it.

“We really thought we could change the world. And then we failed. And though we are much better off than we were 10 years ago, it’s not what we thought. More women have gone into different lines of work . . . You know, in the Labor Government now, we have actually very many women ministers. But, at the same time, the divorce rate has increased--to 60% or something. Everything goes in waves: I don’t think the world changes so easily, since we didn’t make a revolution.”

In the ‘70s, Dominique Sanda seemed part of a cinematic revolution: the blond ice princess, star of “The Conformist,” “1900” and Bertolucci’s first choice for “Last Tango in Paris.” She was recently divorced herself, and says with chilly certainty: “I will never marry again. Never.”

“It’s easier for me to be adopted by a strange country, outside mine--like Italy. I didn’t really wish to do films in France. I wanted to hide. I was hiding all the time. I wasn’t born an actress. I wanted to have something to do with art, to lead a poetic life. I was very protected by my mother and father: a very sweet child. Very gentle.

“Very quickly, I changed. I learned to break everything. I wanted to escape. And I really did.

“You know, in life, what makes us make so many mistakes is that we are scared. I was scared. The people I met at the time--the men I met at that time, whom I loved--didn’t help me. Nobody helped me. They left me isolated, alone; they didn’t understand me. What happened to me was too strong. So I had to destroy it, somehow. Destroy it, to get back my balance, my equilibrium. It took me quite a while to feel my strength. I’m really strong now. It’s lovely to be strong--no, not lovely, but very important.”

Like many sensitive women, who are also considered great beauties, Sanda tends to draw back and pull forward by turns--her conversation reaching, retreating--then broken up by an entrancing laugh. The sun strikes her in that special way, lights up the lines of gold blowing by her face. It’s a spectacular face, and you shiver a little watching it. “Are you cold?” she asks. “Should we go inside?” No, you nod--a bit confused. What about Hollywood?

“I had a wrong idea about Hollywood when I first came because I wasn’t simple enough. When I came here, I had two films in Cannes, and I’d won the prize for best actress (for Bolognini’s “The Inheritance.”) But I didn’t trust myself; I had to escape. I agreed to make a film here (“Damnation Alley”) because I thought--Ridiculous!--I thought: Oh, it’s easy, it’s science fiction. I’m going to break the ice. Why not? And they offered me a lot of money. I refused; then I came. I had all sorts of wrong ideas about coming here.

“I felt trapped here. I had really the feeling that this was not acting: It was waiting for the special effects. The director (Jack Smight) was very kind. But he was really in the same position I was. I don’t think he was so happy to be making this science fiction.”

The Golden Hour draws to a close. Sanda’s favorite movie actress? “Katharine Hepburn! She’s the greatest! She’s so beautiful, so vigorous! Such strength!” And her current projects? “If I receive five scripts, you can be sure four of them will be from the outside world. I get scripts from Germany, France, even Turkey.

“But not from here.”