“I have wrought my simple plan
If I give some hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man
Or the man who’s half a boy.”
Thus saith Arthur Conan Doyle in his preface to The Lost World, and thus quoteth Bob Dingilian, Executive Director of National Publicity, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation as a preface to his notes for Star Wars (Dominion and Odeon, Leicester Square, U). And I must say, it about sums up the picture, except that it gives some two hours of joy, and will probably also be appreciated by girls who are half women and women who are half girls too. Bob, you’re a genius.
Quite whether George Lucas, of American Graffiti fame, is also a genius is another matter. Viewed dispassionately - and of course that’s desperately difficult at this point in time - Star Wars is not an improvement on Mr Lucas’ previous work, except in box-office terms. It isn’t the best film of the year, it isn’t the best science fiction ever to be translated to the screen, it isn’t a number of other things either that sweating critics have tried to turn it into when faced with finding some plausible explanation for its huge and slightly sinister success considering a contracting market.
But it is, on the other hand, enormous and exhilarating fun for those who are prepared to settle down in their seats and let it all wash over them. Which, I firmly believe, with the extra benefit of hindsight, is more or less exactly what the vast majority of the cinema-going public want just now. Last year it was Jaws, which gave us more dangerous frissons, and not long before that it was The Exorcist, with enough green slime to give us all nightmares. Inevitably 1977 was going to be the year of safer pleasures. Star Wars, let me tell you, wasn’t given its U certificate for nothing. The only exclamation the producers want from you is “Wow!”
So how do they get it? Well, they start by saying “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” which really means “Don’t worry, it’s only a fairy story.” And then they tell us a tale about a pretty Princess (Carrie Fisher) who gets kidnapped by wicked chaps who want to control the galaxies, with whom a pretty ordinary bloke, or ordinary pretty bloke (Mark Hamill) falls head over ski-boots in love. Then there’s this nice old retired knight (lucky old Alec Guinness with two per cent of the financial action) who teaches our hero to “stretch out with your feelings” and observe the Force of Good pulsing in his otherwise bloodless veins.
Added to that, there are two funny (no, quite funny) robots, See Threepio (Anthony Daniels) and Artoo-Detoo (Kenny Baker), an ace pilot (Harrison Ford) who represents our disbelief by proving a sceptic, an apeman or “walking carpet” (Peter Mayhew) who looks as if he’s come straight out of a neolithic pantomime, and an assortment of villains so unterrifying that it looks as if you’d only have to pinch them to produce a fit of giggles (but who would dare do any such thing to Peter Cushing?).
Finally ladies and gentlemen (or should I say boys and girls?) there are the special effects. And now I want you all to rise from your seats and salute since they were all Made in Britain. I can’t say there’s anything very new around in this direction, compared, say, to Kubrick’s 2001. But Star Trek it is not. Besides, Lucas has been clever enough not to make the mistake of explaining everything. All the hardware is taken for granted by the characters, which means we’ll wonder at it the more. Let us not forget either the very traditional music score from John Williams, which eschews electronic blops and bleeps in favour of martial airs and graces, just to keep us in touch with some kind of reality.
But I haven’t mentioned the film’s chief sleight of hand, which is that (unlike most super popular movies) it makes itself into something fashionable enough to prevent buffs feeling like schlocks when they join the queues. This is done, quite deliberately, by looking back into the past rather than forward into the future. Every conceivable convention of the genre is shamelessly brandished rather than concealed. Star Wars, as Lucas himself has remarked, seeks to generate a “high level of fantasy.” And you can’t do that nowadays by blowing the mind without suitable references.
These are legion - there is a space-age Western saloon, there’s swashbuckling with laser beams, there’s slapstick which reminds one of Laurel and Hardy and sentiment that reeks of the Wizard of Oz. There are lines which are almost, if not quite, taken from old movies and direct allusions whipped from everything from The Searchers to The Triumph of the Will. It’s an incredibly knowing movie. But the filching is so affectionate that you can’t resent it. Whatever else you think about Star Wars, you can’t call it the height of originality. The entirely mindless could go and see it with pleasure. But it plays enough games to satisfy the most sophisticated. It opens on Boxing Day, by the way, so don’t all rush at once. And Force, friends, Force.
Derek Malcolm also reviewed the second and third instalments of the franchise:
Star Wars - a force that may be with you indefinitely: The Empire Strikes Back, 22 May 1980
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