Quick Cuts

By J.C.

JONATHAN, according to its publicity, is "the first anti-fascist vampire movie" -- whatever that might be. It could just as easily be the first ecological vampire movie, or the first to plead the case of needy vampires. The work of Hans W. Geissendorfer, a young West German film maker, Jonathan has less relation to the jugular entertain ments of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee than to Artaud's theater of cruelty.

It is abstract and opaque. Yet at times it is brutally beautiful, lavishly choreographed -- a pagan ritual in evening dress. The script, which has some vague relation to Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, concerns the exploits of a university student named Jonathan who is dis patched by his professor to scout a prospective raid on a vampire fortress.

The vampires have been pursuing their normal activities -- laying waste the countryside, terrorizing the peasants -- but when finally confronted by the forces of good, they appear as pitiful, helpless creatures. That sort of facile switch does little for credibility, less for coherence, and leaves the film's heavy freight of symbols (including a bevy of slaughtered animals and the ever popular humpbacked dwarf) lying about like so much unclaimed baggage.

THE HIRELING could never be taken as seriously as it takes itself. Based on a novel by L.P. Hartley, it is cluttered and oppressive with plodding solemnity.

Hartley's work was better served by Jo seph Losey and Harold Pinter a couple of years back in The Go-Between. Once again, as in The Go-Between, class consciousness induces a terse, desperate kind of sexuality, then thwarts it. But there the similarity ends. Robert Shaw portrays a stolid, ambitious owner of a small hired-car firm. Sarah Miles the balmy aristocrat whom he chauffeurs and who drives hi, in turn, to excess es of frustration. Miles' meager talents, her shrill, spindly posturings, have lost through incessant repetition the small novelty they might once have had.

When Shaw raves at her near the film's end, he seems to be trying to draw her into a moment of identifiable human emotion -- acting as much out of his own desperation as the character's. Wolf Mankowitz's screenplay abounds with hock-shop Pinter. "Driving is really an art," m'lady comments, and the chauffeur replies, "More of a skill, perhaps."

"More of a skill," she agrees, and he adds, "More of a knack, perhaps."

Alan Bridges' direction is perfectly in tone with the rest of the film -- stale and secondhand. *J.C.

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