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Friday. January 19. 1973
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from the wires
Compiled by Dean Gerdes
Wire Editor
Court upholds state death law
The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty is not
only constitutional, but mandatory for the crimes of first degree murder, first degree
burglary, rape and arson in the state.
The Court held that a decision by the US. Supreme Court last year made a section
of the State Capital Purrshment Statute, enacted by amendment in 1949,
unconstitutional.
But the court said the section, which gave juries discretion to sentence defendants
to life in prison, was severable from the rest of the statute, which was enacted earlier.
The seven-member court was unanimous in agreeing that the section allowing jury
discretion in sentencing was unconstitutional, but hat the court was preempting the
Legislature by making the death sentence mandatory for the four capital crimes.
Corona convicted of murders
Juan V. Corona was convicted today of killing 25 farm workers.
,' It took 30 minutes for the jury to report the 25 guilty verdicts reached after 46
hours of deliberation over seven days.
After deliberating for about two hours during the morning the jury asked the judge
to reconvene the court.'
Judge Richard Patton ordered Corona transported to the courtroom from nearby
Vacaville State Prison for the session.
Appeal stalls Watergate trial
The Watergate bugging trial was stalled Thursday while a federal appeals court
decided if the prosecution's star witness may testify about conversations he monitored
last year from the tapped telephones of high level Democrats.
The witness, former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III, had testified Wednesday how
he was hired to eavesdrop on conversations from a listening post a hotel room across
the street from the Watergate complex offices of the Democratic National Committee.
But when victims of the eavesdropping objected to his disclosing what he
overheard some of it reportedly of a highly intimate and possibly irrelevant nature
the trial was recessed while Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica listened to their
arguments in secret: I
When Sirica overruled the objections and ordered that Baldwin's testimony could
be admitted, the decision was appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia."
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by Bruce Mann
Feature Editor
Director Luis Bunuefs first film. Un
Chien Andalou" ll28), shocked
bourgeois audiences with its close-up shot
of a woman's eyeball being slit by a well
stropped razor.
Written in collaboration with painter
Salvador Dali. the surrealistic movie was
the great director-magician-avowed
atheist's first pot-shot at the uptight
middle classes of the world.
More than 40 years of film-making
later, with the production of "The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,"
playing at Chapel Hill's Varsity Theatre
through Tuesday, we find Bunuel still
aiming at the same target, but with a
renewed, subtle accuracy; a warm, muted
sense of humor; and an almost sincere
feeling of affection for his victims, the
bourgeoisie, imprisoned by their
morality.
"I am against conventional morals,
traditional phantasma, sentimentalism,
and all that moral uncleanlincss that
sentimentalism introduces into society,"
Bunuel once wrote. "Bourgeois morality
is for me immoral, and to be fought. . ."
Bunuel has waged th relentless fight
in such well-known films as "Viridiana"
(1961) and especially "The
Exterminating Angel" (1962), in which
an elite group at a party find they cannot
leave the premises, that they are
psychically rooted to the room for weeks,
and that they must experience their most
private fears during the time (unattached
hands float in the air and corpses collect
in public view). But never before has
Bunuel achieved such satirical success on
all cinematic levels.
Whereas in previous films his actors
have been inexpressive cardboard
characters, his meanings occasionally
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ambiguous, and his technical work sloppy
(in many Bunuel films, microphones are
visible on the screen), in "Discreet
Charm," the acting is controlled, the
script sharp, and the editing smooth and
effortless.
In a Dali surrealistic painting, a
commonplace image is often
transmogrified into a nightmarish one, as
in "The Persistence of Memory," when
timepieces melt. In "The Discreet Charm
of the Bourgeoisie," the 72-year-old
magician-artist creates a naughty carnival
by selecting a commonplace event
important to the rich middle class social
code-eating dinner- and turning it into a
series of nightmares. -
The group which always gathers
together for dinner but which never
succeeds in eating consists of bachelor
Raphael, Mirandan ambassador to France,
played by Fernando Rey;his two friends,
Henri and Francois (Jean Pierre Cassel
and Paul Frankeur), who with Raphael
deal in drug traffic; their wives, Alice
(Stephane Audran) and Delphine Seyrig;
and the latter's sister, played by Bulle
Ogier as a bit of a bourgeois tramp,
monied, spoiled, and living in a world of
constant self-interest.
The surrealists believe in "the
omnipotence of the dream," and Bunuel
exploits almost every middle class dream
and fear in interrupting the dinners.
Embarrassingly, the group arrives for
dinner at Henri's house on the wrong day.
They drive to a nearby inn to eat and
find, behind a side-curtain, the corpse of
the manager lying is wait for the
undertaker. At another time, they sit to
eat and are served rubber chickens and
cola. Moments later, lights shine on the
table, a curtain rises to reveal an
expectant audience, and a prompter feeds
the cues of "Don Juan" to the, surprised
connoisseurs. "I don't know the lines,"
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breathes Henri, perspiring in fear. In yet
another scene, a restaurant waiter tells
the women that he is out of coffee, tea,
and milk! And as if that weren't enough,
soldiers on maneuvers march into Henri's
house and end an attempted repast.
AH the incidents contain dream
elements and petty fears, and as the
movie progresses, we realize, thanks to
Bunuel's remarkable skill at cinematic
storytelling, that some of' the events are
indeed dreams and dreams within dreams.
In fact, the few violent portions of the
film are creatively undercut by the
revelation that they are merely dreams
and fantasies.
Bunuel constantly levels attacks on
the bourgeois code of hypocrisy, clinched
speech, trivial decorum, and incessant
socializing. Meaningless adages stated
with Confucian seriousness abound: "Is a
meal without soup really a meal?" "To
carve a leg of lamb you must stand up."
Hypocrisy infiltrates the system:
Francois, who is himself in competition
with the Marseilles dope trade, condemns
marijuana, "It's the first step. I hate drug
addicts." Francois also delivers orations
on the making of a good martini and the
ignorance of the masses: "No system can
help the masses to become refined."
The cast is indeed magnificent.
Delphine Seyrig (remember her "Last
Year at Marienbad"?) smiles often, but
there is intent behind every smirk-guilt,
embarrassment, or nervousness. Stephane
Audran's face is a mask of pure ego and
instant gratification in one scene, she
clandestinely takes husband Henri out the
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bedroom window into the garden to
make love while the guests arrive
downstairs. Fernando Key, who also
plays a drug dealer in another top ten
film of 1972, "The French Connection,"
has somewhat an affinity for Bunuel
scripts (witness "Viridiana"), and he
displays ail the discreet charm necessary,
whether spraying his mouth with
freshener before hi mistress arrives or
defending his apparently corrupt country.
One need only sense and feel Bulle
Ogicr's sensuous performance; she is both
the prime exemplar of her bored class and
an expert of facial expressions.
As with any Bunuel work of art, there
are certain motivic ambiguities, motifs
which seem to gain a special significance
throughout the film, and "Discreet
Charm," one of Bunuel's French films, is
no exception. Bells become warnings;
noises resembling air raid signals, wind,
jet turbines, and typewriters clacking
occasionally drown out speech; and
segments of the film are devoted to the
sextet symbolically walking down a road,
toward nowhere in particular and
seemingly making no progress. You may
do with these what you will.
But for some reason, all the motifs
seem right-as does the entire film itself.
Bunuel has mellowed and matured, and
his film reflects the wisdom and wit of a
sage. He still twirls his figurative
mustache with glee at the squirming
bourgeoisie who watch and are a part of
his films. But he does so in "Discreet
Charm" in such a way that we can
laugh-with him and at ourselves.
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