Film review POLITICAI

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Kaufman with the original director, Don Siegel Now in English, On the run from the pods: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum This is yet another Hollywood re-make. And at first sight it seems just another particularly wellmade science fiction film.

But two questions make this film important.

One is what happened to the original film made by Don Siegel in 1956.

The second question is why particular films are made and re-made at particular times.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about the take-over of human bodies by aliens. The humans are turned into beings without feelings.

As the victims fall asleep, pods burst, revealing duplicate people. The "original" person dies.

• The film was first shot at a time when McCarthyism-the frantic witch-hunting Communists, particularly in the media and film industry-was rampant in the USA.

Plot changed The studio made Siegel add a new beginning and a new end to his film. Instead of a pessimistic ending, the plot was changed to show the main star (Kevin McCarthy) narrating, and the main action as a flashback' to warn the forces of order.

This was specifically designed to create the idea that the FBI and state witch-hunters could step in to save any situation, no matter how hopeless.

And beneath the veneer of science fiction lay an underlying anti-communist message.

The way in which Siegel's film was altered shows one of the ways in which films are politically shaped-in this instance by studio intervention even after the main plot and screenplay have been accepted.

Underbelly Such interference did not end in 1956. Director Mark Rydell in a recent interview described the ways in which a film he made in 1976 (Harry and Walter Go to New York) was altered.

"They [the studios] cut out all the underbelly of the film, by removing the whole social element that was present...

"Diane Keaton played a like the Daily Worker of that period.

"And there were scenes of police brutality. Young people came in having been beaten on the streets by policemen. That whole newspaper office was trying desperately to sell newspapers, but the problem was that nobody wants their sheet: all they're buying are pictures of nude women or the Police Gazette.

"Then there were some scenes at a laundry where children were being paid eight cents a day; and there were people picketing for good reasons.

"But they cut all of that out and in the process removed a lot of the characters between Jimmy Caan and Elliott Gould."

On top of this open censorship there are of course the political limitations of the directors themselves.

This brings us to the second important question 1 about the remake of Bodysnatchers: why re-make this film.

Commercial skills

It is generally not simply a question of the big studios deciding that a certain film is to be made-though this does happen. More often the studios choose from the ideas put forward by the talented people who art attracted to Hollywood and the film centres.

Making such a selection is one of the commercial skills of the studio bosses. The most successful know how to recognise and exploit new developments.

Many of the world's great directors-like Hitchcock-have made their way to Hollywood. But other directors too have been used as a source of new inspiration.

But films are above ali a Tony Inva: direci business. Once a talented director has made a successful, money spinning new science fiction film, science fiction films are churned out routinely to order until they are no longer so profitable.

In some cases the market may be created for certain types of films by careful publicity build-ups-as in the gang-war films.

Petty bourgeois fear But this is not the driving force behind ail directors.

So why, then, did Kaufman make this film?

He argues that his motives were simliar to those of Siegel in cha of by rdso reviews the ody Sna Phil aufman 1956:

"against the bureaucratic. emotionless neutrality that was beginning to pervade the world -which I think is on the rise again."

But it seems more likely that Kaufman is motivated by his petty bourgeois fear of the rise of the mass class struggle in the US.

He continuously looks back longingly at the early sixties when middle class individualism -epitomised by the rising Bob Dylan-was at its peak.

Now he talks "paranoia and chaos"

York and the other cities.

Like Siegel, Kaufman has of the in New big US contempt for the masses. admitted his position:

"The fact is that most people are 'pods'. They have no culture or aspirations. They have no emotions '.

Kaufman actually refers to people being "pods " even before they are taken over.

This is the reactionary side of Kaufman 's approach.

It is true however that he attacks careerism, and cites his hostility to Watergate [the 'takeover' by outside forces of the American government?] alongside his attacks of "uniformity"

And when in the film the health inspector (Donald Sutherland) phones desperately around different organisations only to be told "don't create panic" , there is more than a slight swipe at the corruption of the bourgeois state machinery..

The police are involved in the cover-up; the CIA and the FBI are both in it; and in Kaufmann's version the "pods' are even exported (shades of Muldergate?).

Kaufman also compares the words of one of the film's "taken over' characters to the ideology of fascism.

But in seeing the solution in the shape of a "prophetic Dylan" and the individual struggle of 'some people' against the Vietnam war, Kaufman looks to the individual as the only way THE KEY TO THE CUT ENNALS OUTI NO MORE HOSPITAL CUTSI A WSL pamphlet The Poisoned Well Price 20p plus 15p p&p 1HR Sutherland as the Health Inspector Siegel forward The reality of Watergate was that Nixon, absorbed into the apparatus of the crisis-ridden US state machinery, was 'taken over' and driven forward to seek virtually dictatorial answers.

This was entirely the opposite of the way in which workers' consciousness of their role as a class develops in rising struggles.

Only the development of such a class consciousness and class action offer a way forward for mankind and an end to the corruption symbolised by Watergate.

Blames masses

Kaufman however blame the masses-and their supposec "pod-like character-for fascism. Such a view ignores the fact that only through o the organsed fascism establishes gove destruction of organised strength of the working class.

Despite his polițical faults owever, Kaufman has made a film orth seein He is an astute observer and superbly depicts the corrupting effects of capitalism.

He shows how those supposedly investigating the "pods" are themselves "taken over' and thus enlisted on the other side.

But remember when you go that in the cinema as well as on the television politics at eact level help shape the thinas vou see and hear.

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