Little Gems Amid All the Flashy Biggies

From Thanksgiving until Christmas week, we are going to be inundated with the Big Ones. Studios, which suspect--and perhaps not without foundation--that motion-picture academy voters’ memories barely stretch back to Labor Day, invariably beef up the year-end with flossy star entries they hope will find their way onto nominating ballots in January.

So soon we’ll have “Wall Street,” “Empire of the Sun,” “Broadcast News,” “Moonstruck,” “The Dead,” “September,” “Housekeeping,” “Good Morning Vietnam,” “Ironweed,” “Batteries Not Included” and “Throw Mama From the Train.” One glance at the current covers of Life and Newsweek, featuring “Ironweed’s” Meryl Streep and “Moonstruck’s” Cher, should give you an idea of the long-range planning that has gone into the timing of these releases.

It’s hardly a new situation. But this time, the year-end rush is going to intensify one problem that’s been growing all year, and fairly snowballing since September: the trick of seeing a good performance while it’s still around to be seen.

You may not have noticed, but with the new multiplexes that are mushrooming everywhere, the handling of a small film, a foreign film or one that gets poorly nourished during its crucial first few days has become absolutely cutthroat.

Little newborns, which might have flourished with a little friendly word-of-mouth, are being tossed out after one week. More solidly established movies are suddenly being moved away from the bigger, more prestigious screens into dinky ones without Dolby sound--70-seat no man’s lands.

I suspect that “Sullivan’s Pavillion” was one of those films, not a world-beater, but one with which the right audiences would certainly have identified, and certainly a movie that might have found its audience in older, simpler days. Now you have to have your track shoes in order to catch the joy as it flies.

There is barely time between reading the reviews, which are themselves mushrooming, and the end of a week’s run--and suddenly that movie you meant to see is gone. Juzo Itami’s charming first film, “The Funeral,” was given an indecent burial by the AMC Century 14 complex after a week. Fortunately for audiences, it was picked up over at the Goldwyn Pavilion and double-billed with Itami’s lusty “Tampopo,” so all was not lost--only nearly so.

In this climate of desperation, there are a few performances which deserve a red flag and immediate attention before they get moved aside to make room for some big Christmas noise like “Eddie Murphy Raw.”

In “Anna,” a New York-made independent film by director-emigre Yurek Bogayevicz, the American-born Sally Kirkland so completely buries herself in the character of a Czech film star that it seems odd to hear Kirkland speaking remarkably good English when one comes face to face with her off-screen. Her Anna has fallen into disfavor after the Russian takeover of Czechoslovakia and has been jailed in Prague after rowdy anti-Communist behavior. Finally allowed to leave, she has arrived in New York and is struggling to re-establish herself in a pretty apathetic city. Her director-husband, who shared her fame in Prague, has emigrated before her and abandoned her to become “more American than Americans.”

I have no idea how good Kirkland’s Czech sounds, but her English-accented Czech has exactly the same lilt that I have heard from Czech friends. However, an accent is only a jumping-off point. Kirkland’s performance goes far beyond linguistics into the soul of a European-born woman: Her Anna combines irony, tragedy, a hair-trigger response when crossed and an enormous capacity to see the ridiculousness of life. Kirkland has the knack, in common with Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau or Colleen Dewhurst, of being able to look sourly plain one instant and luminously beautiful the next.

In outline, “Anna” seems to sound grimmer than it should; one of its intensely European characteristics is that it has almost criminally funny moments around the core of a serious subject. Kirkland, it must be noted, is bigger and better than the vehicle that shelters her, but you mustn’t overlook the draw of the radiant Czech-born model-turned-actress, Paulina Porizkova, who is currently the cover goddess of the world, and whose gamin character shares the story with Anna. There is never a lack of something to hold your interest in “Anna.”

“Gaby” has no less than three singular performances in its true story of a young woman with multiple sclerosis whose struggle is to be judged and accepted by the same set of standards as the non-handicapped. The physical obstacles facing Rachel Levin as Gaby Brimmer are formidable, since she has been completely faithful to the uncontrollable aspects of the disease, and since Gaby’s paralysis allows her only the movement of one foot with which to communicate with the world. The film makers have also not been timid about showing the less-than-noble side to their well-born heroine, so Gaby is at times a royal pain in the side of those around her. Yet with all sides visible, Levin’s tough, unsentimental work truly soars.

On a par with her is the first English-language performance by the Argentine-born Norma Aleandro, whose character fills the same role for Gaby that Anne Sullivan Macy did for Helen Keller. There is never the question of a grand actress playing down; Aleandro slips gently into the role of a relatively uneducated woman from the provinces who--at times--learns along with her pupil, and who must learn to adjust her own morality to suit Gaby’s more sophisticated values.

Finally, there is one of those shining examples of a relatively uncomplicated role given depths and insights by careful casting. Except for his underappreciated work in “Jagged Edge,” Robert Loggia’s Hollywood roles rarely afford him the range of which he seems capable. Here, playing a prosperous husband who all but loses his wife to the full-time care of their severely handicapped daughter, and a father who cannot not abandon his standards of excellence and challenges rather than coddle his child, he gives the role maturity, subtlety and breadth.

It might be noted that both “Anna’s” Yurek Bogayevicz and “Gaby’s” Luis Mandoki are first-feature directors.

So there are a few recent delights to stock up on--fast. Actually, the most ferociously fine performance by an actor this year (and this includes everything up to but not including “Ironweed” and “Good Morning Vietnam,” which I haven’t yet seen) was Morgan Freeman’s 42nd Street pimp in “Street Smart.” This was an example of an actor rethinking one of the most cliched roles in films, and creating a character of terrifying power and dangerous unpredictability. Didn’t catch it when it ran back in March? Don’t feel bad; you’re probably in the 90th percentile.

If there were justice in the world of film awards, you’d find Freeman’s performance given the attention it deserves. But I suspect it’s doomed to be one of those electrifying memories shared only by a lucky few. In the past, that used to be the fate of great performances in the theater. It’s odd to think that things have changed so much that it may now become commonplace in movies.