Wolf's Bane

By J. C.

STEPPENWOLF

Directed and Written by FRED HAINES

Having been co-opted by street-corner mystics and turned into an advance man for the love generation, Hermann Hesse is much the worse for wear. The studiously mystical German novelist liked to ruminate about higher realities, exalted consciousness, spiritual quest--all topics that have become fashionable since his death in 1962.

In this film, made from his most popular novel, Hesse takes a fearful pummeling at the hands of one Fred Haines, who visited similar punishment on James Joyce in his screenplay for Ulysses (1967). The protagonist of Steppenwolf, the book's readers will recall, is Harry Haller, a writer enraptured with despair. He plans suicide, if only he can work himself up to it. He is also schizoid: he sees himself as both a bourgeois and a fierce maverick, a prowling, implacable wolf of the steppes. An encounter with a beautiful young woman of mystery, Hermine (Dominique Sanda), brings him the chance of reconciling the shards of his psyche.

Life Within. Hermine helps Harry find a pliable paramour and introduces him to the world of popular music and drugs. Harry listens to hot jazz (remember, this is 1927), snorts a little white powder and generally acts confused. Eventually Hermine and her jazz musician crony Pablo (Pierre Clementi) decide that Harry is prepared and usher him into their Magic Theater. As rendered by Director Haines, the experience is like being sealed inside a demoniac color television set. The Magic Theater experiences convince Harry, in the words of the novel, to "see the ruins of my being as fragments of the divine." Lesser mortals would have just called the TV repairman.

The magnificent Max von Sydow plays Harry with more conviction than the movie can afford and more dignity than it allows. Even confronted with insights like "There is a life within--you have only to step out of your shadows to see it," Von Sydow bears up fearlessly and with something like grace.

J .C.

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