204 - Thursday Afternoon at the Movies

Thursday Afternoon at the Movies
By Richard Fuller

The November afternoon was damp and gray. I was glad to be inside, even when it meant climbing three long flights of stairs, carrying a couple of films, to the audio-visual studios. Wayne Whitelock was waiting in his office. Before I had a chance to ask if there was any coffee (there was), he asked what the films were. I told him: Roman Polanski's Two Men and a Wardrobe and Alain Resnais' Night and Fog. "Good films," he said.

Richard Fuller is a writer and film critic. He is the Associate Editor of Colloquy magazine, published by the United Church Press. The film described by Mr. Fuller was prepared as a term assignment for a course taught jointly by him and the Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY (who, if he were more modest, would delete the personal references). The film is in black and white and runs about twelve minutes. The student directors did not complain about the mark they received for the course, but they all agreed that they had put in much more time than they would have invested in a conventional term paper. The film has been shown to various kinds of groups, such as a panel of high school students who discussed it on a "Youth Speaks Up" radio program, sponsored by the local YMCA. It is being previewed as an example of non-literary classroom work by the Division of Audio-Visual Instruction (DAVI) of the National Education Association (NEA) in Washington. The film is available for screening, without charge, for a limited time; write to: Mr. Wayne Whitelock, Director of Audio-Visual Services, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J. 08540.

205 - Thursday Afternoon at the Movies

1 warmed my hands around the cup of coffee while Wayne set up the screen and projector. The overcast Thursday afternoon was my fifth Thursday afternoon at Princeton Theological Seminary. I was there at the invitation of Professor Hugh T. Kerr to participate in his course with the official title: "3551 Christianity in Essence and Existence." The plan of the course was this: he would meet with the twenty-five students for Tuesday sessions on the "essence" problem; we would all meet together on Thursdays for "existence," see films, and discuss them. "The students may prefer the Thursday sessions," he said to me with a smile. "Which is fine." The remark suggests something of Professor Kerr as teacher and man: his openness to experiment, his willingness to take a chance on me (I hadn't been in a classroom for years), and his desire to take the last word in that course title seriously.

When he arrived, we talked about the films we would see. I suggested seeing the Polanski film first. It would provoke the kind of discussion, I hoped, in which everyone would be a student with no one teacher. I suggested showing the Resnais film second, near the end of the class, and then dismissing the class. Night and Fog is too strong to talk about after you've just seen it, and you aren't likely to forget it. It's a remarkably detached film about concentration camps. I hadn't planned on the weather matching the film's title.

As it happened, the Polanski film caught something of the day's dampness too. It begins with a shot of the sea. In the distance, two figures struggle through waves toward us and the shore. They are men, and they are carrying something. As they struggle closer, we see they are carrying an old-fashioned wardrobe with a large mirror. On shore, they put the wardrobe down and dance together. One of them tumbles over the sand like a circus clown. We hear a wispy jazz score on the soundtrack.

Their brief joy is qualified during a fifteen-minute odyssey in the world. They try to board a streetcar. No room for two men and a wardrobe. They enter a restaurant and are shown the door. As they wander about town, they put the wardrobe down and rest. One of the men sees a girl. She turns, interested. But when she realizes that man and wardrobe go together, she leaves. They pass by a ravine, and the camera pans down by a stream where one man kills another with a rock. They encounter a trio of toughs who amuse

206 - Thursday Afternoon at the Movies

themselves by killing a cat and throwing it at them. One of the toughs (director Polanski) bloodies the nose of a wardrobe carrier. Finally the two men, and wardrobe, wander back toward the sea through a maze of bucket-shaped sand castles. They step awkwardly into the waves. The wardrobe tilts into the sea, and they are gone.

The film was puzzling and fascinating and it provoked discussion. One student compared it with another film on our list, It's About This Carpenter. I mentioned that Polanski made the film, as a graduation project, while attending the National Film Academy at Lodz. He was twenty-five.

This film, and the other films, provoked more than discussion. Five students in the class took a cue from student film-maker Polanski and made a film of their own. In their case, the course turned out to be a do-it-yourself kit, which is the best kind of course. The five directors, Pete McWilliams, Ted Naffziger, Jim Persons, Art Smith, and John Wintringham, had never handled a camera before. (They learned how from Wayne Whitelock.) They had a budget just this side of laughable: $98.50. They didn't have time, or money, to reshoot any scenes. Their film was a first draft.

It is a remarkably good first draft. The title of their twelve minute film is A Calling? The question mark is essential to the meaning of the film and a central aspect of the way the film was made. As in the Polanski film, there is no dialogue, just music. A seminary student (John Wintringham) leaves a classroom and walks across the campus. He carries an attaché case, his "wardrobe." His walk becomes an odyssey in miniature. As the classroom doors close behind him, we see a series of doors closing: ornate ones, battered ones, a prison door. The style of the film has been introduced: a collage effect linking the campus with the world. On the soundtrack hear "'Terry Riley in C." The student passes by a tree. The camera closes in on a tag identifying the tree. Then, in quick shots, we see some of the "tags" that fill our world. He enters Miller Chapel. We hear Handel's "Messiah" on the soundtrack, used ironically. The Chapel evokes more images of the world. He wanders toward the campus gates, leaves. The end.

In brief evocative shorthand, the film catches the look of our world now: the crowds, the frenetic rush of our highways, the poverty and affluence, the buildings, the people, the war, brief glimpses of love and death. The world is the calling of the film's title. The ques-

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tion mark conveys the seriousness, and the irony, of that calling.

We saw the film during our last Thursday Afternoon at the Movies. After we watched the film, the five film-makers answered questions and said what the movie meant to them. The other students responded, saying what the movie meant to them. Then we watched the film again.

Fellow students are tough critics, much tougher, really, than most film critics. Judging by their response, A Calling? was a success. For me, that film made Professor Kerr's "experimental" course a successful experiment. We saw some good films, besides the good ones I've already mentioned. They included: Robert Enrico's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Chickamauga, John Huston's San Pietro, Peter Watkins' Culloden, a BBC documentary called Vietnam-Journal of a War, John and Faith Hubley's The Hole, Buster Keaton's The General.

This is stiff competition for novice film-makers to go up against. New York City turned out to be stiffer. Mayor Lindsay is always inviting film companies to shoot in Fun City New York. The invitation, apparently, does not apply to film companies with a budget of $98.50. While shooting in New York, the five directors were hit with a $50 traffic fine. Film-making is exciting. Life, as usual, is difficult. But they know all about that.