One man's creative S-F fantasy THE ARTS vii .- - - ..I If anyone cotild ever feally explain, 4even post facto, what makes a wild, runaway box- office success - like Star Wars. the film busin'ess would be' a very different game and our lives would not be. littered with spin-offs: and sequels' and counterfeits and daugfers:ol- Emmamnuelle. Two factors, though, have clearly pjayed a part in the Star Wars miracle. One is thai this is a film not made by 'a committee' of accountants try. ing to devise a chemical for. mula out of the incalculables of box-office -attractions but a single person's creativd ?aniasy, which by grace. of 'luck'and a moment of braver'y at 20th Century-Fox, he has been able to realize. George Lucas, the writer-director, belongs to. the group and generation (thir- ty-ish) of Francis* Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Lucas says that even before American Graffiti (1973) he had the idea of doing a space fiction movie on the classic, elemental lines 8f Flash Gor- don. Since the rights to Flasht Gordon were tied up, he was obliged to research the whole archaeology of science fiction and come up with his own story. The story-and this is a second major factor in the Star Wars phenomenon-syn. thesizes a whole body of the most potent myths on which we have all been reared. Lucas's uncomplicated, essen. tial characters-heroes, vil. lains, beautiful princess and venerable seer-with their odd dialogue, at once formal, stilted, and comically collo- ouial, are the very stuff of strip cartoon. But there are much broader references. The golden robot, the hooded mid- gets in the desert, the great. fearsome, whimpering simian wvho is navigator of 'the space- ctaft, are none other than rein- carnations of the Tin Man, the Munchkins and the Cowardly Lion from The Wtizard of Oz. When the prim gold robot is in company with his miniature partner, Artoo Detoo, with its expressive range. of electronic chirps and grumbles, they are transformed, again, to Stan and Ollie (and John Williams's witty score even sneaks in a ohrase of "The Dance of the Cuckoos" to underline the point). The old seer (Alec Guin. ness) is Merlin; and it is he who hands over to Luke Sky- walker (note the link of'Luke/ Lucas) the Excalibur which his dead father had left behind ... but then the story evokes the lore of the West, with Luke's return to the smouldering homestead which determine., his course of action; and the lone gunfighter (called signifi- cantly, Solo) wbho makes the tTaditional transformation from Ben .Kenobi (Alec Guinness) does battle with Dartb Vader (David Prowse) reluctant mercenary to commit- ted champion -of the dispos- sessed heiress, who here happens ta.-be a Princess of romance. The storm-troopers in the streets, the gun battles on the space ship, the -masked war- riors (wearing the Samurai armour that gave us night- mares after childhood visits to the museum), the climactic dog-fights in the galactic sky dredge up lost memories of a lifetime of movie-house experi- ence. John Williams's score meanwhile runs the gamut from biblical epic to Lawrence of Arabia, and finally brings us home to Ruritania, as the Musketeers stride side by side through the parted ranks in the courtroom where their res- tored Princess is enthroned. It is an anthology not so much cf actual scenes as of almost subconsciously recalled sensations and sentiments of the film-goer's memory. May be it is this more than any- thing that inspires such fierce 1(.valty in audiences. Peonle who have already seen the film get snappishly defensive if you have the temerity to say things like " It's very silly, of course "; and retort "But it's such fun ". And, indeed, it is. Star Wars unashamedly restores all those qualities which film-makers and audiences have almost for- gotten in their chase after illu- sory sophistication-brightly defined characters; a story that hurtles, along at such a pace that it leaves no time for questions; a world of fantasv so confidently portrayed (in Star Wars special effects achieve new heights of tech- nical expertise) that there is no thought of disbelief; a genuine escapism that obliges you to make no connexions at all with real worlds. Not least, Star Wars, for all its own technological accom- plishment, heartens the strong current sentiment of mistrust of technology, which has found its most notable expr,ession in the proliferation of films of the occult. In this future vworld, the technological mar- vels (already showing signs of wear; the heroes' spacecraft is getting pretty crocky) exist alongside the dreadful mutants and zombies, preserving all the worst of human qualities, who appear in one of the film's most marvellous fantasy scenes, set. in a galactic water- front barroom. In the outcome victory goes not to technology, but to the mystical and redigious. Alec Guinness represents the old, suppressed religion, " The Force ", and having warned the renegade Darth Vader that he wiNl be much more power- ful dead than alive, returns in spirit to guide Luke Skywalker with the advice that he wi!l triumph not by thinking, but by feeling. It's a reflection worth considering in the historical view; and it certainly explains something of the triumph of Star Wars. There seems even less chance of explaining the suc- cess of another American box- office winner, The Deep, un- less it is the expectation raised by the original literary pl-op- erty, the novel *vith which Peter Benchley followed Jaws. It is one of those films in which at least vou have to admire the effort. Much of the action takes place under water, and a book-about-the-film (In- side the Deep by Peter Guber) relates at length how writer, director (Peter Yates) and stars (Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Risset, Nick Nolte) spent ntonths beneath the ocean around the Virgin Islands. There is a lot of plot, which involves ihe discovery of. two sunken treasure hoards-one of seventeenth-century gold and the other of twentieth- century morphine-in the same sPot. It is all ingeniously con- ducted to a finale of remarkable complexity. U.Tnderwater it is good-look- ing (with some very appealing and impeccably trained fish) and fun. Ashor e it is like a beached whale with everyone sitting around, poring over old documents and explaining things to one another in tedious detail. Tn the past 12 months Ino fewer than eight Emmanuelles have been launched onl Lon- don. (They have been Black, Yellow, Young, Black and White; gone to Tokyo and to America; and been teamed in Emanuelle and Francoise.) Properly speaking you should be able to identify the Real Thing (that is. the authentic word of the novelist Emmanuelle Arsan) by the consonants: two m's and one n is the genuine article; one m and one n or two n's is coun- terfeit. Unfortunately not everyone plays fair. Goodbye Enmmanuelle seems authentic in as far as it has Sylvia Kristel in the title role. The promise of the title is not to be trusted though: Emmanuelle still looks far too perky as she follows her new lover off to Paris. Even more than its predecessors, this fan- tasy of the lives of hedonist expatriates in the sunny Sey- chelles, indulging every permu- tation of sexual activity, is erotic wishdream for arrested adolescence. Allowing for a few nude scenes and talk of orgasms, it all seems peculiarly innocent. There now seems little hope of saving The Other Cinema. On Tuesday the governors of the British Film Institute told them that it was not possible to find money of the order-E25,000- they need; and their public appeal has not brought fast enough results. Not the least misfortui1e of this hair's-breadth failure ot the cinema, which will probably close in early January, is that it may strengthen the claim of the landlords. National Car Parks, to change the use of the site, which has been a place of entertainment since 1772. Origi- nally the New Rooms in Totten- ham Street, from 1905 to 1969 the Scala Theatre occupied the site. The Other Cinema's final pre- sentation is Helga Sanders's Shirin's Wedding, the story of a Turkish girl who becomes a gastarbeiter in Germany in order to follow her faithless fiance. A mordant commentary on the, abuse of migrant workers is somewhat vitiated byv the iaux-naif artifice of the plot and main performance. David Robinson Onle man's creative S-F fantasV Star-Ws(u); - - :oominioniLeicester: Square- .';: ,- . - (from Deember 26) TheDeep ia,) .. I Odeon, Leicester Sq Goodbye Eumanueille (x) Columbia Shirin's Weddine The Other.Cinema: a