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Near the beginning and at the close of the critics’ Festival screenings, we were shown two utterly remarkable ‘rockumentaries.’ The first, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, was the digitally restored and remastered compilation of The Who’s smashing (in both senses of the word) performances, and their outrageous video interviews.
The film was compiled by the group’s greatest fan, Jeff Stein, who, thankfully, talked the strongly opposed Who leader, Pete Townshend, into permitting this documentary. Stein first released it in 1979.
It is unlikely you will ever hear it as vividly as we critics did on the superb sound system at the Walter Reade Theater. If you love this group, or even if you don’t really know them, you must own this DVD (Pioneer Home Entertainment/New Concorde).
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT has been re-issued to commemorate the first concert by The Who, given 40 years ago. That makes at least two generations of fans born to hear the best in rock & roll — the first creators of full-length rock operas, like the Who’s splendid “Tommy.”
The film plays the group’s great, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” so often and at such volume, I felt it had been indelibly tattooed on my brain pan.
The second documentary, “MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP (First Look Media/Overseas Film Group) is a pathetic look at the career of the once- celebrated Los Angeles radio d.j., Rodney Bingenheimer. Little Mr. B. is an elfin outsider, who transformed his autograph-seeking into becoming buddies with rock stars, beginning in the mid-60’s, when he “doubled” Davey Jones in the Monkees.
First a music business publicist, and then a top d.j. on KROQ (rhymes with rock), Bingenheimer promoted the leading newcomers in punk, new wave, and alternate rock. In turn, Rodney became a major, rock personage—without ability — in the vapid and transitory pop music business. As a sexless, male groupie, Bingenheimer befriended nearly every name in rock and roll, many of whom make personal or archival appearances in this film, in which only Bingenheimer is a no-name. Ancillary to his top-rated radio show, the names flocked to the small, insiders nightclub which Rodney ran to entertain the elite of the music business. But it folded long ago.
Led Zepplin’s Jimmy Page marvels that Bingenheimer got more girls than he did, while his best pal and gofer refers to him as a ruthless sexual predator. But Bingenheimer’s current “girlfriend” claims she has no romantic interest in this now-wizened man, and this viewer doubts he ever had any serious interest in women. George (HEARTS OF DARKNESS) Hickenlooper, the fine director of MAYOR, is too discreet to pry any more deeply.
With nothing to show for his 40 years in proximity to the business, Mr. Bingenheimer now lives alone in a memorabilia-filled, dingy apartment off of the Sunset Strip. He has now been relegated to a midnight shift at KROQ, a compensatory post after having been ousted. The honorific “Mayor of the Sunset Strip” is a now-dishonored, nowhere man, but for this excellent tribute.

In 1945, during a cocktail party at Jack Warner’s house, Walt Disney encountered the notable Surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. As a fellow artist, Disney knew that however obscure the message of doom Dali proclaimed in his art, his paintings were exquisite. The famed artists agreed that, the following year, after Dali completed his groundbreaking work on Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND, Dali would come to work for Disney.
Their short film, intended as a segment of one of Disney’s compilations, was called DESTINO, from a Mexican ballad sung by Dora Luz, who sang the lilting “You Belong to My Heart” in Disney’s, THE THREE CABALLEROS (1945).
Dali completed 25 “original paintings” (now worth a fortune, Mr. Eisner!) and a complete set of storyboard sketches. But DESTINO was destined for shelving, in 1946, allegedly because of post-War hard times at the Disney Studio.
Now that DESTINO (USA/France/Disney) has been completed by Dominique Monfery, after two years’ work at the Disney studio in Paris,
I can tell you that the English lyrics to DESTINO are so insipid; the melody so dull; and Ms. Luz such a lackluster singer, that the newly refurbished sound by Sony only reveals the miserable dud for what it is.
Of course, the reason for completing the short, is that, in its dazzling 6 1/2 minutes, it contains nearly the entire lexicon of Dali’s fabulously, bizarre imagery. The tuxedo-clad bloodshot eyeballs wearing battle helmets were new to me, as were Dali’s familiar ants which turn into bicyclists here, and the two giant heads carried on the back of giant turtles are terrific. You may know the rest, but you have never seen Dali’s weird and marvelous imagery in animated form. The Tower of Babel sequence, which the Parisian team has largely reimagined, is truly wondrous.
I read in the program notes that the film is about the transformations a woman must make in order to win the love of a man. They should have put that tripe into the egregious song Destino’s lyric. That would have greatly clarified the plot, which needs one.

Though less well known than the epic Siege of Leningrad, The Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), was equally crucial and ghastly, both costing well over a million lives. Stalingrad’s position as “the Jewel of the Volga” (it is now known as Volgograd) made it strategically crucial to Hitler, who kept throwing manpower and materiel at it, to no avail, and going progressively bonkers as his invasion failed. Like Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Moscow in 1812, Russia’s bitter winters ultimately repelled invaders. Both sides suffered cruelly, and there are Russian as well as German survivors, in this film, to testify to the winter’s harshness. The scenes of Russian housewives and German soldiers foraging for frozen horse carcasses are astonishing. (How they even managed to shoot with the primitive movie cameras of the ‘40s, in that terrible cold, is remarkable.)
With teams of other German writers and directors, Sebastian Dehnhardt has fashioned an epic, three-part documentary on the seesaw struggle, 156 minutes in length, STALINGRAD (Germany).
The compilation of newsreel footage from both sides, including personal 8 mm. footage by the combatants (remarkably preserved) is intermingled with blue and red computer graphics which show how German encirclement led to their ultimate undermining by the Russian defenders.
The most poignant of the many tales are those of the German soldiers who describe the surprisingly kindly treatment they received from a Jewish woman doctor, who had lost an arm in the fighting. To me, the most vivid shots are those of the now-elderly German soldiers, seemingly doomed to extinction by the Russians’ retaliatory stranglehold, who burst into tears of relief when they recalled their unexpected liberation.

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