Rushes

'NIGHT, MOTHER

The structure of Marsha Norman's Pulitzer-prizewinning play was pure melodrama. An unhappy fortyish woman announces to her mother that she intends to take her own life that evening; the older woman tries many stratagems to avert the plan but fails in all of them. Improbable as this plot was, it permitted Norman to explore with sensitivity a dramatically less riveting, emotionally more subtle matter: an archetypally vexatious mother-daughter relationship. In adapting play to screen, Norman and Director Tom Moore have been somewhat undone by their new medium's imperatives. The realism of camera close-ups turns probability into utter implausibility. And the casting of Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, who cannot help projecting intelligence and the will to prevail, is inimical to the story's cause. Still, the painful honesty of the play's psychological observations survives and remains worthy of attention.

OTELLO

Why bother to film Verdi's Otello if you are going to omit its most famous aria, the haunting Willow Song, thus reducing Desdemona to a walk-on? Director Franco Zeffirelli never quite answers that question. The flamboyant Italian's 1983 cinematic version of La Traviata widened the opera's scope with tender reminiscences only implied in the libretto. In Otello, however, flashbacks to the Moor's slave childhood are maudlin, and Zeffirelli's camera, jumping edgily from storm to massed choruses to brawls and bedrooms, tires the mind. As Otello, Tenor Placido Domingo is in robust voice, and Bass Justino Diaz makes a splendidly vile Iago. Yet Zeffirelli's presumption in heavily editing Verdi's taut masterpiece serves neither movie audiences nor opera lovers well, and the patina of homoeroticism that suffuses the film contradicts the heterosexual spirit of both libretto and score. No wonder he cut Desdemona's big number.

SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT

This comedy of manners deserves plenty of goodwill. It was made in twelve days by 29-year-old Writer-Director-Editor Spike Lee. It displays the sumptuous camerawork of Ernest Dickerson. And it tries -- how hard it tries -- for something fresh. Nola Darling (Tracy Camila Johns) is a woman with a mind and libido of her own, much to the exasperation of three swains. Seems like Woody Allen territory, with two important exceptions: the characters and creative team are black, and just about everyone is straining as hard for effect as Nola is for the perfect orgasm. If the film were as good as its intentions, She's Gotta Have It might have earned the critical and popular praise lavished on it.