SEXUAL SADISM THIS A WINNER

REVIEWED BY ANNA A film critic once described Michael Winner as one of Great Britain's most succ essful and least talented directors — a piercingly rate and rather polite description.

Due to a structure whi ich makes talent entirely secon Idary to profit, the film indust try boasts a number of persona ılities with an overwhelming i insight into and preoccupati on with the correct ingredients 1 for box-office bangers. In th Lis, Michael Winner outstrips t he field.

With single-mindedn‹ ess which certainly indicates stubborn intention to live to his surname, he has, over ver the years, hatched a series films which contrived, witho rut exception, to fulfil the nort ms (as far as these can be OIC- relicted in an unpredictable nd slumping market) of cO1 mercial success "The Nightcomers' is a prir ne example of this the component parts OI sex, ex, sadism, violence and sentime intality.

But, worst of all, the fil film has pretensions toward a mo priggish cultural acceptan Ice than Winner has really aspir ed. to in the past.

It brings to mind the attem of Hugh Hefner to artistica enhance his 'Playboy' mag zim imageeth roding Polanski.

Hefner used Shakespeare.

Michael Winner uses Hen James, not that James had t talent of a Shakespeare.

In any event, all the cha acters of the 'Nightcomers' based on the James novel 'T Turn of the Screw' and wi the unimaginative help screen-writer Michael Hasting during sued torment smatio of relatdo-ships whi smack of pseudo-D. rence, seudo-L. Hartle seudo-Thomas Hardy and pseudo-Henry James to boc The whole thing is. in a wor pseudo.

Those who saw 'The Virg and the 'Women Love' The Go-Betweer will find this film, both in direction and content, only paltry imitation of the wor artistic excesses What Jot Schlesinger, Ken Russell, Peter Yates, Joseph Losey topher Miles do with consun mate ease and sometimes col summate error, Michael Wi ner apes with profound affe tion and constant error One aspect above all othe seems to attract Winner produce and direct 'The Nigh comer's-its sexual sadism.

The fact that he elevates th sadism into a mystical, natur drive with artistic knobs makes it alate crosse on, ling.

The off a film which could mo justifiably enrage women erationists, as every pat clang is trotted out to reinforce the age-old image of the eternal dominant male brutalizing an crushin i thorpuri tan, virgin female 'awake her to sensual realit Having uncovere Marlon Brando in 'The Nightcomers' i.e. that there is in 'love' a high degree of hate, competition and struggle for dominance, and that nature itself is cruel and aggressive, Winner proceeds to one of the most full-blown clichés ever to hit the screen. One feels, as his pretentious camera swings towards facile parallels with the animal world, that he has read ten pages of Conrad Lorenz and misunderstood about nine of them.

Dwarfing all else, the publicity for the film does a hard sell with the caption 'BRANDO, BRUTAL, BEAUTIFUL Directors are Miss not, of course, always to be blamed for what the publicity boys do to their finished product, but in this case, Winner was on to an ad-man who could not have better understood the message of his film.

Marlon Brando is the crowning commodity, his stardom the selling kernel of The Nightcomers'.

The concept brutality beautiful is the other peg on which a dubious morality hung.

All this is wrapped up ind delivered in the name reality and art, tied with