jazz ;By Stuart Nicholson

Max Roast Spry septuagenarian.ii

If you hate! drum

solos, pity Max

Roach 's next-door

neighbours

H

ard bop can be a terrible

bore at the hands of

today's twentysomethingmusicians, but don't blame thedrummer Max Roach. When he

helped shape the music in

Charlie Parker's |quintet in theForties it was fresh, daring and

the epitome of hip. In the

Fifties he went on to co-lead,vrtth trumpeter Clifford Brown,

the finest hard bop ensemble of

them all, a superbly calibrated

group that balanced memo-

rable compositions with suchvivid solos that they could sendlesser musicians into anotherline of work. j

Roach helped transform a

drum solo from something

approximating tb the sound ofa drum kit tumbling down aspiral staircase into a substan-

tial musical eyent. He hasinspired generations of drum-

mers" and if anyone now hascause to sit on their laurels it'sRoach. But Thi> sprightly sep-

tuagenarian is ai innovative asever.

On Friday. Roach launches

the Barbi can's InventingAmerica" season, an ambitious

year-long celebration of thatcountry's an and music. Inkeeping with "the spirit of'Inventing America " . Roachwill present the UK premiere ofan ambitious project that com-bines a 16-piece gospel choir

and a 3322 sextet First of all wedeal with contemporary

arrangements of sorrow sonss,'

says Roach. "There are earlyNegro spirituals like ""Were

You There When They Cruci-

fied My Lord" and " Joshua Fitthe Battle of Jericho" and someoriginal spirituals that I'vecomposed. Then we add music

I wrote for my album Freedom

Now Suite and musicj rom my

album h s Timeihax come from

a period in America's historywhen we were involved in theprotest movement. I did my

protesting musically. It's music

that comes out of the blackexperience in America, from

sorrow songs to contemporarythings."

Much of what Roach will per-

fonn comes iroin two neglectedalbums. It 's Time, from 1962 I(current}}" re-released on CD:Impulse IMPD-185 ) and LiftEvery Voice and Sing, a long-unavailable Atlantic LP from1971. On them. Roach imagina-tively integrates voices with ajazz ensemble and it 's remark -able how far ahead of the times

these albums were Originally

conceived against a backdrop

of black civil rights protest , cli-

maxed by the 200.000 freedom

marchers descending on Wash-ington DC to hear Dr Martin

Luther King's [1 have a dream'

speech, these timeless pieceshave inspired Roach to add

more compositions for thisunorthodox ensemble.

So what is it that keeps him

experimenting and extending

the boundaries9 "You have to1t1

pursue, pursue, pursue.' hesays. 'Miles Davis was reallygood at that. Sometimes itworks, sometimes it doesn 't ,

but if you 've been around aslong as I have you can afford totake chances. I've had the hon-

our of playing with the finest

minds in improvised music -

Lester Young,. ColemanHawkins, Charlie Parker.Dizzy Gillespie. Miles Davis,

Bud Powell, Duke Ellington.

Charles Mingus and it instils in

you the desire to take musical

chances.'

As he's grown older , he'sbecome a whirlwind of creative

energy: forming his percussion

ensemble M'Boom. working

with a combination of jazz andstring quartets, collaboratingwith performing artists, writ-ers, symphony orchestras andhis So What Brass Ensemble.All this was combined until

recently with an academic

career as professor in the

Department of Music and

Dance at the Universi ty ofMassachusetts- Amherst.

Yet such was the breathlesshaste of his career that his

ambitious work from // s Timehad only one public perfor-mance back in the Sixties. Butalthough he's going to be revis-iting his past on Friday, he's

able to make his audiences feelas if thev're visiting the future.

Women and film critics firstFILM

By :PhilipFrench

Titanic (195 mrs, =!_) Crated try Jams Gamsron;

s_mg l_a_ni[) BGaprn Kats Wiste and Sty Zare

Das Boot (209 mis. 15) Drated by Wolfgang

tearsaft §svng Japi Prochnow

I Went Down (107 rare. 15) freciedt . PaddyBrBaiiiKJr s&rrg Brwdan Season Peter Gafrey

and Tony Dqyte

Laws & Oark & George (M'nre. 18) Dra&l

b.' Rod MgC^: a_m^ SaS-nkr XuBreh. Dan

&rtter

and Ross Mstoran

Lucie Aiibrae (115 inns. 12) DrsSsd by Gkide

Barrt starrre> fetfe Bougies and Barel Aiiai

Breaking Up (92 runs. 15) Directed by Robert

&B3n«a_t sjiriT^g Ris^I &o»3Jand Sakna Hay^c

The Winner (84 mre, 15) Drated by Alax Gox;

steig Mecca D= Moray. Vreert D'Onofrio and

Michasi Mafen :

Up'n'Under (93 mns. 12) Directed by John

Gofer. siamtB _a\ ten and M Momssey

The

fatal maiden voyageof the RMS Titanic in

April 1912 is our twen-

tieth-century ship of

fools, a complex

metaphor for the

hubris of technological manwith his belief in taming

nature, the foundation image

for our tragically hopeful times.

Despite the far worse catastro-

phes that have followed, theTitanic disaster has lost none ofits power to haunt ourininds.

It's a mosaic of astonishing sto-

ries of courage and cowardice,

of duties done and neglected, ofbizarre and surreal incidents,of the interweaving of chanceand fate. It is part of thelegend,

the narrative of our century.James Cameron's deeply dis-

appointing Titanic is a sadthing when set against the mod-est, factual 1958 film , A Night to

Remember. Even the much

vaunted special effects give the

picture a woozy, surreal appear-ance, rather like those MalcolmMorley paintings that repro-

duce old picture postcards on avast scale. Of course each gen-

eration must make its owninterpretation of the event andit is perhaps a comment on ourdumbed-down /77? de siecle cul-ture that the film should have

no imaginative grasp on his-tory, no feeling for tragedy, andthat a banal romance should besubstituted for a complexshared experience.

In the film 's framing narra-tive, a salvage merchant (BUIPaxton). searching the wreckof the Titanic in 1996 for a safethought to contain a pricelessLouis XV] necklace, discovers

instead a charcoal drawing of

a female nude. When she seesthe drawing on TV . a 101-year-old woman called Rose identi-fies herself as its subject and -

despite her frailty - is flown out

to the salvage ship in theAtlantic where for the firsttime she tells the story of her

Titanic experiences.The 17-year-old Rose DeWitt

Bukater (Kate Winslet). a

penniless upper-class Ameri-

can girl, her overbearing wid-

owed mother (Frances Fisher)and her rich, boorish fiance CalHockley (Billy Zane) are

returning from Europe toPhiladelphia where Rose andCal will be married in the soci-

ety wedding of 1912. Rose, how-ever , is a rebellious NewWoman of high intelligence,prodigiously well-versed in art

and psychology.

To the disgust of her nance,she fills her cabin with newlybought Impressionist andCubist paintings, including LesDemoiselles D Avignon by an

artist she calls 'somethingPicasso'. 'This somethingPicasso - he won't amount toanything.' Cal snarls. At din-ner she puts down the boastful

White Star 's managing direc-

tor. J. Bruce Ismay (a supercil-ious Jonathan Hyde), remark-ing that. 'Dr Freud has some-

thing to say about size. ' 'ThisFreud, is he a passenger0'

Ismay inquires. She also putsthe ship's designer on the spotby calculating that there areonly enough lifeboats to take a

quarter of the passengers.There is. however, a Marxist

worm in Rose's bud. Desper-

ately unhappy at the prospect

of life as a New York societymatron, she decides to throwherself into the briny but is

saved in an hilariously melo-dramatic rail-hanging scene bythe free-spirited artist Jack

Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio),who is travelling steerage on aticket he won at poker. It's loveat first sight, and having res-

cued her from suicide in thestern, Jack is soon turning herinto the ship's proud figure-head as they stand in the bows,

looking westward.

The metaphoric iceberg

threatening this smug young

couple's happiness (as opposedto the real one lying in the pathof the other 2,198 passengers) is

the crazy plutocrat Cal. Com-

bining the jealous rage of Oth-

ello with the malice of Iago, heplots to destroy Jack , first byridicule, then by a frame-up; he

finally chases him around the

sinking ship with a revolver.

But before we get to the wreck,

Jack has introduced Rose tothe liberating life of steerage(an uninhibited dance party

with cheerful Irish and Italianimmigrants that appears to he

a homage to A Night at the

Opera) , executed his drawing

of her in the nude and madelove to her in the back of Cal'sfancy automobile in the bag-

gage hold. The lookouts in thecrow 's nest are distracted bythe sight of Jack and Rosecanoodling on deck with theresult that they spot the

approaching iceberg only atthe last minute. 'Fuck me,' theterrified matelot shrieks. Wehave no documented evidencefor his remark, but to today'saudience this might well seemthe least fanciful of all JamesCameron's speculations about

the Titanic affair.

The sinking of the ship isspectacular , if not spectacularlyconvincing. While the captain

goes catatonic, an officer shoots

a couple of mutinous steerage

passengers then commits sui-

cide, and (yes, yet anothermyth) a string quartet plays

'Nearer My God to Thee', Jack

and Rose remain in the fore-

ground, performing selfless acts

of reckless heroism before end-ing up in the freezing sea cling-ing to a wardrobe. We know, ofcourse, from the beginning that

Rose will survive and during a

sentimental, would-be reso-

nant ending she tells us that 'awoman's heart is a deep oceanof memories'. As opposed toTitanic, which is a shallow pool

of cliches.

In The Line of Fire, Outbreakand Air Force One have estab-.

lished Wolfgang Petersen asone of Hollywood's leading

action directors, but his bestfilm is Das Boot, the 1981 WestGerman production set almost

entirely on a Second WorldWar U-boat , which is now backin a 'director 's cut', nearly anhour longer than the versionoriginally released and techni-

cally enhanced in America.James Cameron admired thepicture immensely and notonly was the design of the

movie that made his name, TheTerminator , influenced by it ,but he originally wanted

Jiirgen Prochnow, the U-boat 'scaptain, to play the title role.

One of the finest war movies,

Das Boot has a frighteningly

claustrophobic atmosphere, anunsentimental feeling for com-radeship and sharply etchedperformances, with Prochnow

unforgettable as the compas-

sionate, unshakable skipper.

The length allows Petersen topay attention to detail and rou-

tine and make us feel that weare there with Lieutenant

Werner , the naval journalist

assigned to write about theReich's heroic submariners.

What he finds is a crew of

stoics , bound together by pro-fessionalism, mutual respectand an ironic humour, sharingthe privations and dangers oflife on their rusty, patched-up

craft. In one especiallypoignant scene they all sing'Tipperary ' in English. Only ayoung upper-middle-class offi-

cer , who has returned fromMexico to fulfil his patrioticduty , has respect for theFuhrer and a belief in Nazi waraims. It is here that I have cer-

tain doubts about the moviethat led me back in 1982 to

describe it as not so much aship of fools as a submarine ofrevisionists. The movie takes

place in late 1941/early 1942 -

were German sailors so disil-lusioned that early in the war?

Still, we should perhaps begrateful that it has been recon-structed, rather than remade.

Otherwise, we would have hadHarrison Ford as the anti-Nazi

skipper and Kate Winslet com-

ing aboard as Lieutenant

Werner , personally appointedby Gobbels's wife Magda: 'So

I'm a fraulein; you.got a prob-

lem with that?'

After these North Atlanticmaritime epics, separated in

time by a mere 30 years, and

together lasting 404 minutes,

there is little space left for the

580 minutes that constitute the

week 's other movies. But only

one is worth more than a sighand a scythe.

I Went Down is not, as thetitle suggests, the memoir of a

Titanic survivor, but an engag-

ing comedy thriller about twosad ex-convicts, both aban-

doned by their women, beingsent south by a Dublin gang-

ster to apprehend an abscond-

ing partner-in-crime. The roadmovie as Irish shaggy-dog

story, it's infinitely preferable

to Lewis & Clark & George, theroad movie as wild-goose

chase, in which two escapedconvicts drive around New

Mexico in search of a lost gold-

mine, bumping into (and fre-quently bumping off) a variety

of eccentric bystanders.

Both are more enjoyable thanLucie Aubrac, which nianagesto make tedious and uncon-

vincing the true story of the

eponymous Resistance leader

(Carole Bouquet) who, through

courage and cunning, rescuedher husband (Daniel Auteuil)

from the clutches of Klaus Bar-

bie in 1943 Lyon.

The other three films arepoorly adapted plays. In Break-ing. Up, a two-hander byPulitzer Prize-winner Michael

Cnstofer, a New York infantteacher (Salma Hayek) and her

photographer lover (RussellCrowe) talk endlessly andexclusively, in and out of bed,

about their tedious relation-

ship. There are at least morecharacters in The Winner , aconfused, over-acted story of anassortment of desperate losers

battening on to an inspired win-

ner (Vincent D'Onofrio) in LasVegas. Director Alex Cox triedto get his name removed fromit; he might also have hired

. some computer expert to oblit-erate his cameo as a casinochoreographer.

Even worse is Up'n'Under ,adapted by writer-directorJohn Godber from his likeable1984 Hull Truck Company com-

edy. It is an East Riding Rocky,

in which an ex-rugby league

• professional takes a bet that ineight weeks he can turn a teamof losers into the winners of anamateur rugby league seven-a-

side championship. It worked

on stage (especially the coup detheatre of the seven actors play-ing both teams in the climacticgame). On the screen, per-

formed by a cast largely

recruited from TV, it is a dis-mal affair that falls flat in the

mud between This SportingLife and Carry On Passing .

Sadly it features the finalappearance of the lovableBrian Glover.

The Titanic's sinking is spectacular if not spectacularly convincing, complete mth a string quartet playing 'Nearer my God to Thee'.

What's on,

whe re it's on,

when it's on.for answers to

all your film queries

call free on-.

SCOO T™ j mKOSOO L_ _

192192 ^|j r

The Observer Interactive

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VIDEOSBy Philip French

The Pleasure Garden (1952, U, Connoisseur,

Reta il) The American poet andavant-garde film-maker JamesBroughton made this 35-

minute lyrical oddity on a visitto London. Limpidly pho-tographed by future Oscar-winner Walter Lassally in theruined Crystal Palace Gardens,it 's a whimsical allegory of acontest between a puritanicalkeeper (John Le Mesurier) andthe liberating Spirit of Albion(a prancing Hattie Jacques).The supporting cast includes

Lindsay Anderson (who also

produced) and Jill Bennett. Itwon the Prix de Fantaisie

Poetique at Cannes and cap-tures the wistfulness of austere

post-war Britain.

Inside (1996, 18, Entertainment, Rental) Pre-

miered at Cannes but never

released here , this intense ,

superbly acted drama, directedby Arthur Perm, stars EricStoltz as a white South African

political activist whose death in

prison becomes a matter of con-

tention after the end of

apartheid, as a black investiga-tor (Lou Gossett Jr) examines a

brutal , self-righteous police

colonel (Nigel Hawthorne).

Although chess games are

pre-eminently recordable

on paper, there is still , as

with any theatrical or sporting

event , much to be gained from

seeing them live. They may

seem fearfully slow - except to

the players themselves - and

be largely impenetrable even to

experts ," without the special

concentration produced by

actual playing: but a good com-

mentary room , or , for thosewho can get in , a press room,

or , best of all, the postmortem

between the players after thegame, provide insights far

beyond anything which can bewritten down.

This week's game wasplayed last December in the

German Bundesliga. My team,

Solingen, suffered a most unex-

pected and painful defeatagainst SK Passau when themiddle order collapsed. But

Arthur Yusupov's win on top

board against Philipp

Schlosser was truly splendid.A great gentle bear of a man,Yusupov is often mistaken fora purely positional player, con-centrating mainly on the grimexploitation of endgame advan-

tages. In reality , beneath theplacid surface beats the heartof a true hacker: a man whowill , given the opportunity,happily embark upon the mostmurderous sacrificial adven-

tures. Like myself , he prefersthe middlegame and endgame,

with an apparently somewhatinsipid opening repertoire

which doesn 't gave him as

many opportunities for sacrifi-

cial attacks as he might like,and may perhaps slightly haveburied his more bellicoseinstincts. But as the following

shows , he is not lightly to beprovoked.

After drawing ratherquickly with Zoltan Ribli , Iwas able to watch both the

dramatic end of this game and

the subsequent postmortem.The next day , after a furtherdisappointing result - a drawwith SV Erfurt West -1 set offwith Arthur , who very kindly

took me as a passenger fromPassau , on the Austrian bor-

der , to the Fide knockoutworld championship inGroningen in the north of Hol-

land. I hope that the notes to

the game, written during our

overnight stay at a motorway

motel , reflect the freshness of

the battle.Arthur Yusupov v Philipp

Schlosser Bundesliga 1997

Queen 's Pawn Opening

ld4 Nf6 2 Nf3 e6 3e3 c5 4 Bd3Nc6 5 0-0 d5 6 b3 Yusupov hasplayed this system many times.Although it looks fairly harm-less, plenty of wood remains on

the board and he hopes to .be

able to wind up later for seriousaction.6...Bd6 7 Bb2 0-0 8 c4!?A 'nov-elty ' in the technical sense thatit hasn 't been played in thisexact position: but hardly revo-

lutionary.

8...Qe7 9 Nc3 cxd4!? Giving up

some central control but inreturn f orcing the exchange ofthe potentially potent bishop onb2.

10 exd4 Ba3 11 Qcl Bxb2 12

Qxb2 dxc4!? After his reply,Yusupov is lef t with so-calledhanging pawns on c4 and d4.But as he said in the post-

mortem, White risks at worstending up with a slightly nastyending: while behind in devel-

opment Black must already bevery careful. 12...Bd7 was safer.13bxc4 Rd8

13...Qb4!? may be better to dis-

turb White.

14 Radl b6 Certa inly not

14...Nxd4? which loses to 15Nxd4Rxd416Bxh7+!15 d5 Na5 16 Rfel Qc5 Gettingout of the pin and apparently

exerting painful pressure on the

c4 pawn. But White has all hispieces in play while Black hasstill not completed his develop-ment.

17 Ne4! Nxe4 18 Bxe4 Bb7 If18... Nxc4 19 Qc2 when f5? losesat once to 20 dxe6!.Philipp Schlosser (Black)

After the game, Arthurexplained that recently he 'd

heard a comment about his

play from one of the youngTitans, Kramnik possibly,who 'd said that Yusupov'played very well but never

attacked anything '. This set

him thinking and after various

false trails he hit upon a 'begin-ners ' move', which happens tobe extremely strong. Of course

White's centre is collapsing: but

on the kihgside White has ahuge preponderance of force.19 Ng5!! Much better than 19

Qbl which was what I was

expecting and , I believe, where

Arthur started his investiga -tions19.. .h6 Coming fresh to thisposi-tion during their postmortem, 1was amazed just how powerful

White's attack is and ca lledforth a reprise of lines like

19... Nxc4 20 Bxh 7+ Kf8 21 Qe2Rxd5(if21...Bxd522 Qh5Nd623Bg6! is decisive) 22 Nxe6+!fxe623 Qxe6 with the murderous

threat of Qg8+.

20.Bh7+! Kh8 If 20... Kf8 Arthur

hadn 't yet decided which square

to sacrifice the knight on.a) 21 Nxe6+?fxe622 Rd3 allowsa defence Rd7 23 Rf3+ Rf7 24Rxf7+ Kxf725 dxe6+ Kf826 Qd2

Qg5 27 Qd6+ Qe 7 28 QJ4+ Qf6

and both sides must repeat.b) But 21 Nxf7! Kxf7 (if 21...Nxc422 Nxd8 Nxb2 23 Nxe6+ Kf7 24Nxc5 wins materia l) 22 Rd3

wins since now the king is on f l

so the defence with ... Rd?' isimpossible.21 Nxf7+ Kxh7 22 Qc2+! Actu-ally I was expecting 22 Qbl+ to

avoid a pin on the cfile.22...Kg8 if22...g623Nxd8Rxd824 Rxe6 Rg8 25 Rdel wins egNxc4 26 Re7+ Rg7 27 Rxg7+

Kxg728Re623 Nxh6+! gxh6 If 23...Kh8 24

Nf7+ Kg825Ng5 is the end of the

world; while if23...Kf824 Rxe6

Rxd5 25 Rxd5 Bxd5 26 Qf 5mate!24 Qg6+ Kffi 25 Qxh6+ Kg8 26

Qg6+ Kf8 27 Qf6+ Kg8 28 Re5

And Schlosser resigned.

CHESSByJori Spee lman