26 - Wednesday, Nov. 4, 1992 ~ North Shore News

Black and white world

Great performance by Joe Pesci in fictionalized

account of NYC tabloid photographer Weegee

The Public Eye % % % (Univer-
sal) Rated 14 years (at the

Park & Tilford, Royal Centre,
Coquitlam, Richport and Clear-
book cinemas)

Tim Belt
FILM REVIEW

EON BERNSTEIN (Joe
Pesci) sees everything
in black and white. As

a tabloid photographer in
1946, he’s got no choice.

Armed with a flash camera, a
police radio and a mobile dark-
room in the trunk of his car, the
shutterbug not only beats the cops
to the crime scene, but collects his
$3 cheque from the newspapers
before his competition can even
load their cameras.

No wender he’s dubbed the
Great Bernzini.

His snaps capture the hope and
despair of New York — drunks,
socialites, killers, lovers, com-
moners and corpses. Despite the
stark emotion in his pictures, no
publisher can see the art behind
the ‘vulgarity’ of his portfolio of
black and white, entitled, ‘‘The
Public Eye.”

No matter. Bernzy hardly has
time to worry as Kay Levitz (Bar-
bara Hershey) asks him to find out
about a thug muscling in on her

nightclub.

Dazzled by her beauty. the
“public eye’ agrees to turn
private eye. With his legitimate
and shady contacts, it should be a
snap.

And before you know it, there’s
a body ... and the FBI, and the
mob, and even a fittle sex (very lit-
tle).

The formula may be familiar, but
Joe Pesci turns in a stellar perfor-
mance as the inventive, cigar-
chomping Bernzy.

Even though he resorts to posing
as a priest to get a $20 shot of a
hatchet victim, he still makes you
admire his craft.

Barbara Hershey's character is
less well developed, but given the
short running time and the fact
that it’s Pesci’s film, that’s in-
evitable.

The dark and dingy mcod of
‘40s movies like Double Indemnity
and The Postman Always Rings
Twice is brilliantly captured in a
rich set design and atmospheric
photography.

Bernzy is based on Arthur Fellig
(aka Weegee for his Ouija-like
ability to show up at a crime
scene), and the film’s greatest im-
pact comes from still shots taken
from his collection, ‘‘Naked Ci-
ty.”

The rest of The Public Eye may
not be as original, but it scores as
90 entertaining minutes.

La Fernme Nikita (Vidmark
Video/Image Laserdisc) Rated R

This hard-edged, in-your-face
French import features a great per-
formance from Anne Parillaud as a
junkie social deviant turned into a
one-woman army by her gavern-
ment’s secret service.

Thoroughly unlikable at first, her

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character occasionally softens to
reveal more human emotions.

At her first birthday, after three
gruelling years of training, she is
touched by her mentor offering
her a present. But the embarrassed
grin freezes when she opens her
gift. It’s a gun and this is her first
assassination.

Not what you'd cai] a heari-
warmer, but it is stylishly done,
with a brutal intensity and a Euro-
pean vein of grim humor.

SHOWTIME HOTLINES:
Famous Players ..

Cineplex Odeon 687-1515

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