Author: Judith M. Kass

by Judith M. Kass, Contributors, Directors, Interviews, Wim Wenders

“At Home on the Road” – Wim Wenders Interviewed

Written by Judith M. Kass September 26, 2010

[Originally published in Movietone News 57, February 1978]

September 30, 1976

Could you tell me what Kings of the Road is about and how you came to make it?

It’s a film about two men and they’re making a journey across, along the border of East Germany from the North to the South, which is about a thousand miles, in an old truck, and they are repairing the projection equipment in the small villages.

How did you choose the subject?

Well, that’s not an easy answer. There are different subjects in the film. It’s not only the journey of the two men, but it’s also the situation of cinema, small cinemas in Germany that are dying out. It’s a little bit about the end of cinema altogether. It’s about the situation of men who are 30 now, born after the war like me. It’s about Germany nowadays. It’s about a lot of things. It’s about music and it’s about rock’n’roll just as well as about cinema.

There’s quite a lot of rock’n’roll on the soundtrack. How did you pick what you used?

I picked some favorite things.

There’s a profound feeling of alienation in the film, emphasized by Bruno’s scream at the end. Are you trying to make any larger statement about men as a group being alienated, or do you limit this sense of alienation to these two men? .

It’s more or less Tarzan’s scream. Well, it’s not only the alienation of these two because in the film … As soon as you pick somebody as the hero of a film, it turns out to be statement, not only about him but about mankind. So it is, rather, a film about men than about these two men. In a way, it’s a film about men totally in an American tradition—the road movie tradition—but on the other hand, it’s just the opposite of all these films because it’s not dealing with men the way all these films used to deal. It’s not reassuring them. On the contrary.

Actors, by Judith M. Kass, Contributors, Interviews

“Directing doesn’t start on the floor”: Claude Goretta and Isabelle Huppert Interviewed

Written by Judith M. Kass August 16, 2010

[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978]

The Lacemaker (La DentelliÃ¨re) was shown in the 1977 New York Film Festival. Claude Goretta, the director, and Isabelle Huppert, who costarred with Yves Beneyton, were interviewed before the film had opened commercially. The Lacemaker is the story of a young girl, employed at a beauty parlor, who falls in love with a student very different from her in aspirations and in intellect. The affair fails and the girl is left suffering from a kind of nervous breakdown.

Judith M. Kass: In the films of yours that have played here, The Invitation and The Wonderful Crook (Pas si mÃ©chant que Ã§a…), events give the appearance of going along well and then something happens to disrupt the order. Does the idea of change causing social and personal disruption interest you particularly?

Isabelle Hupper in The Lacemaker — Isabelle Huppert in "The Lacemaker"

Claude Goretta: What interests me is the idea of common lives which can show us that people are deep inside a situation in which they can express something else, something the others don’t see. I’ve always been interested in people who don’t always have the means of expressing their sensibility. In The Invitation the people show the others very little of themselves. They have a richness inside that others don’t notice. And the problem for me as the director is to show the audience that the people on the screen are much more interesting than what they show to the others. It’s the problem of “the lacemaker.” She’s a girl without culture and she’s naturally silent. And people today, facing this sort of character, take the silence as a denial and not as a way of accepting the world. They think the silence is something against them. The problem of the student is that he has a theoretical idea of life and no experience at all. He can’t have a fundamental communication with the girl because he lacks experience of life. He’s not a bad boy; he’s not worse than the others. But this experience is a flop for him because of his youth. For me, the students are caught in a sort of closed world. Their generosity, all the high ideals of life, are theoretical. When they are confronted with real life, it’s quite different. I think in our lives we always have been either somebody’s lacemaker or somebody’s FranÃ§ois [the student]. But we are always responsible for somebody else, but we don’t know it sometimesâ€”that we are responsible for the other.

Actors, Interviews

“I had to risk not being liked in that scene” – Michael Murphy Interviewed

Written by Judith M. Kass March 28, 2010June 9, 2020

[Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979]

May 9, 1978 New York City

Judith M. Kass: Vincent Canby of The New York Times called your acting in An Unmarried Woman “an exceptionally complex performance as the husband whose emotional problems set in motion the events that make possible the Clayburgh character’s eventual liberation.” I’m specifically interested in the crying scene. Was that intended to get her sympathy or was that Martin’s genuine reaction to the situation?

Michael Murphy: I think that was a very complex scene. There were a lot of things going on there. I think he feels very badly about what he’s doing, but at the same time I think, yes, it is aimed at her. He feels so bad, he wants her to feel as badly for him as he feels for himself. I think her reaction to him when she gets mad is something he doesn’t expect. And so it had a sort of little twist to it. But people take it lots of different ways. I always felt that the scene needed to be sort of self-serving. I don’t mean that he was literally faking it; it was a very emotional moment, but at the same time it had that sort of semi-shallow feeling. I had to risk not being liked in that scene.

And in the whole film, because when he comes back to her and says ‘Take me back”…

But there were ways to play that scene. I could have gotten more tearful and it would have been more sympathy-provoking. Paul [Mazursky] and I talked about it a lot. And you have the sense of the guy having kind of a seizure more than a tearful, sad quality.

Interviews

“It doesn’t take any imagination at all to feel awed” – Peter Weir

Written by Judith M. Kass December 4, 2009June 9, 2020

[Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979]

Peter Weir was interviewed by Judith Kass in New York City on January 8, 1979, in connection with the U.S. opening of his new film The Last Wave. The Last Wave concerns a lawyer, played by Richard Chamberlain, who defends five aborigines accused of killing a sixth in Sydney, Australia. Through them Chamberlain comes in contact with what the aborigines call “dream time” and his own involvement with their myths.

Richard Chamberlain is principally known in this country as the star of the TV series Dr. Kildare. What is not so widely known is that after becoming a star he left the U.S. to learn how to act. Why did you choose him for The Last Wave?

I thought he’d always been photographed in white light. When I think back to Kildare I think of those hot lights and I thought he’d never been photographed at night. I don’t mean that literally, but there was something in his face; there was some alien quality, and in my story my character had that quality. I had one actor in Australia I’d thought of using, but he was unavailable. Also, we couldn’t raise all the money in Australia and we were looking overseas, and Chamberlain’s name occurred to somebody and I remembered that face, those eyes in particular.

Interviews

Rejoicing about things Australian: Phillip Noyce

Written by Judith M. Kass November 30, 2009June 9, 2020

[Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979]

Judith M. Kass interviewed Phillip Noyce, the director of Newsfront, and David Rowe, the production and marketing consultant for the New South Wales Film Corporation, when they were in New York City in September 1978 for the film’s showing at the Lincoln Center Film Festival. Newsfront uses Australian newsreel footage and integrates itâ€”and the historical events portrayed thereinâ€”with the fictional story of Cinetone, an Australian newsreel company trying to survive in the 1940s and 1950s, until the advent of television in 1956.

Whose idea was the film?

Phillip Noyce: It was actually the idea of the producer, David Elfick. He conceived the idea, he says, in conjunction with some discussions he had with other filmmakers. Bob Ellis wrote the original script and I adapted it to produce the final shooting script.

Where did the funding come from?

PN: The funding came from the New South Wales Film Corporation, which is the majority investor in the film, but the budget was also met by private investors, one of the more significant being an Australian distributor called Marshak. For instance, the New South Wales Film Corporation is heavily involved in devising methods with consultant merchant bankers to fund and solicit investment from other sources, so some of the authorities are very much involved in production in an entrepreneurial way. Each bank would be termed, for want of a better description, as executive producers.