The Miami Film Festival was five years old this year--as festivals go, it has come of age. A mere few years ago, however, there were a number of naysayers who opined that Miami was a dynamic but essentially frivolous town without a cultural community capable of supporting good cinema. They have since been proven wrong--by the festival's nearly sold-out attendance; the high standard of films (many Miami selections have been American premieres of movies like last year's My Life as a Dog, which went on to nationwide success); and the relaxed, hospitable atmosphere that gives the screenings and special events a distinctly unstuffy, and special atmosphere simply not available at any other film festival on this continent.
One of the festival's trump cards is the opportunity to view movies as they are most satisfyingly viewed--in a grand, "atmospheric" movie palace. The Paramount Publix Olympia in downtown Miami first opened its doors on February 11, 1926 to present to enthralled Floridians a show composed of The Grand Duchess and the Waiter, starring Adolphe Menjou, on screen (accompanied by the Mighty Wurlitzer organ) and, on stage, the Paul Whiteman Band. Florenz Ziegfeld and Al Jolson were in the audience on opening night. During the next four decades, everyone from Eddie Cantor to Elvis Presley performed on the stage. By the sixties, like most downtown theaters in the nation, the Olympia had lost its audience. It was shut down in 1971, but saved from demolition by philanthropist Maurice Gusman. It now functions as a year-round cultural center and is the home of the Miami Film Festival. The mechanical effects of the magical old theater have recently been restored--stars now twinkle and clouds scud across the trompe l'oeil sky ceiling as in days of yore.
New Spanish Comedy
After years of stringent censorship, the freewheeling school of new Spanish comedy has emerged during the post-Franco period. Films of this genre, which are generally not widely seen in this country, have become something of a Miami specialty. There were two this year, both American premieres--Emilio Lazaro's The Most Amusing Game (El juego mas divertido) and Oscar Ladoire's With Feathers (Esa cosa con plumas). Lazaro's film is a lively screwball farce, in which life imitates fiction when the leads in Hotel Fez, a ridiculous and popular TV soap, fall for each other in spite of previous emotional commitments. With Feathers marks the first directorial effort of scenarist Ladoire, one of the best screenwriters of recent Spanish comedies. He also plays the lead, a Woody Allen "nebbish" type who works as a gender inspector in a chicken factory. The film is also slightly reminiscent of Chaplin's Modern Times--but Ladoire is a genuine original. The title, incidentally, comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson, who wrote: "Hope is that thing with feathers."
Australia furnished Miami with a diverting sleeper--Warm Nights on a Slow-moving Train, written and directed by Bob Ellis, longtime scenarist for director Paul Cox. The central character (Wendy Hughes) is an art teacher who spends her weekends incognito, plying the trade of a prostitute on the overnight Sydney-Melbourne train.
Although this is not really a good film, Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love, made three years ago and still unreleased at this writing, was a justifiable festival choice, for it contains the last screen performance of one of cinema's giants, Orson Welles. Jaglom's
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