Glittering Prizes

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE COMPETITION

Directed and Written by Joel Oliansky

For him (Richard Dreyfuss), it is the last chance; pushing 30, he feels that if he does not win this piano competition he might as well abandon his dream of a concert career and take the job back home teaching music in the public schools. For her (Amy Irving), it is the first big opportunity; if, at 21, she wins, then her career will be launched as a near prodigy. A loss will hardly be the end of the world. Because there is less pressure on her, it makes sense that she should act the sweet aggressor in their relationship, and that he should be the one to resist romantic distraction from his long-sought goal. It is all very modern and up to date, this role reversal. And in The Competition it is rather agreeable, giving Dreyfuss his shot at representing that new beau ideal, the decent male who is not aggressively masculine. Since Irving seems to have overcome the blandness that has marked her previous appearances, The Competition has a certain tensile strength at its center.

It is the edges that become bothersome. There can be no question that Writer-Director Oliansky truly loves his subject and wants everybody to know everything he has found out about it. There are enough subsidiary characters with strong, if not subtly shaded personalities to stock a couple of movies, and enough extraneous melodrama to plot a Competition II. Granted, a piano contest in which six high-strung finalists must each play a concerto within a single 24-hour period is likely to be an emotionally taxing occasion, but enough is enough.

Before The Competition is finally decided, audiences will have witnessed the defection of the Russian artist's teacher and the emotional collapse of her charge; Dreyfuss's disputing Conductor Sam Wanamaker's interpretation of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and taking over the baton to show the orchestra how it should be done (not exactly the way to win an important friend); a string snapping in Irving's piano as she launches into her concerto (she insists on changing not only pianos but the piece she has rehearsed). Besides all this, there are the predictable bits of sad personal histories, familial pressures and sexual hanky-panky with which the participants must deal.

In the midst of this teacup tempestuousness one comes to admire Lee Remick. She plays Irving's ambitious, cynical and, it would seem, sexually frustrated teacher. She has given up her life for her music, and it falls to Remick to deliver most of the movie's truly impossible lines --the stuff about art being a more reliable lover than any man can be, for example. Somehow, she manages to throw all that stuff away gracefully and emerge likable. It is a little triumph of professional grace for Remick, who must be one of the busiest--and best--actresses around (see following story).

One must also spare a kind word for Oliansky's contemplation of a difficult issue, that of a talented, ambitious man coming to terms with the fact that the woman he loves may be more gifted than he, that he may have to live in her shadow if she carries off first prize. In the traditional scheme of things, this represents the ultimate role reversal and Dreyfuss handles the passages where he is feeling funked out by the conflict between love and ambition very nicely. This comes as something of a relief, since his abrasiveness in the early stages, when all the competitors are busily psyching one another out in search of momentary advantages, is anything but appealing. He is, heaven knows, a confident actor, and his energetic belief in himself keeps one caring even while not quite liking him. If the implicit answer to his conflicting emotions is the easy, romantically satisfying one, Dreyfuss's confusion on the issue is honestly and painfully stated.

Indeed, that is pretty much the way of this movie. It usually remembers to press the soft pedal-- a Mozartian bit of dialogue, a moment of hard observation --and pull itself back from the Lisztian brink. Add the novelty of the subject matter and the compilation of best-loved themes from favorite concertos, and The Competition can be awarded a bronze medal in this year's Christmas movie competition.

-- By Richard Schickel

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