THE SCREEN

They don't slip down the gullet like meringue, but Potemkin and The Last Laugh are two of the Greatest Movies Ever Made, the former maybe The Greatest. Ah yes, the dopes will walk by them, on their way to see Georgina Spelvin wrassle snakes, but as far as film goes you can't beat these. When Potemkin dropped itself on the world in 1925, it was a revolution--it changed the art of making motion pictures and watching them. It was shocking in form and substance, nobody had created anything quite like it before, and it remains probably the most stirring work of the last half-century. "New ideas can come only from new social forms." Eisenstein wrote in the twenties. "So it is with film art, which comes about only after a big social change. At present America and Europe seem to be groping about for something they cannot find. That is why they are using our ideas." There have been other movies which have understood almost perfectly the social moment which made them possible, but none have seemed so much the quintessence of that moment as does Potemkin. Hopefully, this is the version with the great Shostakovich score.

As for The Last Laugh, it remains one of the most fluid, and at the end, accurately satirical movies we have. Emil Jannings, the master of pompous pathos gives an unforgettable performance, although one can keep as steadier head about both this and his harrowing work in The Blue Angel in remembering his Nazi complicity. The happy tail tacked on to The Last Laugh was apparently a specifically comtemptuous stab at American film tastes. It is almost impossible not to be elated despite the fantastic slur.

The French Connection. And speaking of Americans, who do we have on the big screen this week but good old Popeye Doyle? Shit fuck shit fuck, screech go the car wheels, bangity-bang go the guns, yessir that lonesome American cowboy Popeye is some fella. William Friedkin is not an untalented director by any means, nor is this really a bad movie, but it opened the door to so many repulsive ones that their grimy taste seems to merge with this in the memory. Gene Hackman's work here, like so much of the rest of it, is very good acting despite the fact that it seems like no acting at all.

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. One night when Zero Mostel hosted the Cavett show, he ran up and kissed the television camera lens, molested Paula Prentiss and danced with several old women in the audience. No time watching Zero could ever be called wasted--he is our funniest actor, and when he is harnessed properly, one of our best. This Richard Lester movie comes close to using him correctly, and besides, it has three other extremely talented comedians working for it: Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford and a battered depleted Buster Keaton. It never gets into the high gear which is part of its promise, but like all of Lester's work, it has a disciplined rambunctiousness and a feeling of fresh air. If Lester had been more comprehending of his actors' talents and given them the showcase they needed, instead of competing with them for control of the movie this might have been the vanguard of a new, reasonable way of bringing musicals and actors to the screen. Instead if is restrained in a self-imposing manner by Lester who didn't understand that he was working with geniuses much more important than himself.

Dr. Zhivago. Now we're back to the Russian Revolution again. If this mammoth, loud, soppy dinosaur was shrunk down to its value as cinema (not cinerama) it would fit in Eisenstein's left nostril, who would no doubt, blow it out as quickly as he could.

Pretty Poison. A cult piece, which means that a lot of people liked it better than the New York Times did. No matter--it has Tuesday Weld and that's reason enough to slip over and see it after you've told fifty people at dinner you're going to Potemkin, "unlike the rest of the mealy-brained slobs at this University." Good luck.