Rushes

THE MISSIONARY

His position is not in darkest Africa but in the steamy slums of Edwardian London. His task is to rescue the souls of their prostitute population. Unfortunately, this earnest young cleric is distracted by the pleasures of the women's generously proffered flesh, and by the importunings of his rich and lubricious patroness (a subdued Maggie Smith). The missionary is played by the Monty Python's Michael Palin, who also wrote the script. But the jokes are mild, single-minded and, too often, familiar. Palin appears less interested in being funny than in offering criticism of a society that is long since dead and at least as immune to his sallies as a modern audience is likely to be. He seems to have confused irreverence with irrelevance and entirely lost touch with his funny bone.

FIVE DAYS ONE SUMMER

It was a tony touch in Ecstasy, 49 years ago, when the heroine's string of pearls burst and scattered to symbolize her surrender to passion. When the same visual genteelness is employed in a modern film, it is a little like getting a set of stereopticon slides instead of a VTR for your birthday; more nostalgic good taste than you really need. The subject now is not mere infidelity but incest no less, between an uncle (Sean Connery) and his niece (Betsy Brantley), who are on a climbing holiday in the Swiss Alps in the 1930s. Their guide (Lambert Wilson) restores them to moral health, but nothing can rescue the movie from the prissy pictorialism of Director Fred Zinnemann (in a big step down from High Noon and A Nun's Story) and the frigid portentousness of the script.

MONSIGNOR

Hello, everybody. This is Father Guide Sarducci, gossip columnist for L'Osservatore Romano. Well, all the Vatican is abuzz with news of the latest scandal to hit St. Peter's Square. No, Yasser Arafat has not been made a Cardinal. No, a Swiss Guard has not run away with Koo Stark. (That's just my little joke.) Instead, some movie people have made a big expensive picture about, get this, an American priest who finances the papacy with money he got from the Mafia. He also has a real steamy love affair with a French lady who is studying to be a nun. And, on top of that, this scheming monsignor is played by Christopher Reeve--that's right, Superman--so he's supposed to be a kind of nice, charming guy. Now I hear that concerned Americans of every religious persuasion are trying to fight this movie by laughing it off the screen. But what I want to know is: Where's the Legion of Decency when we really need it? Thank you and good night, everybody.

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