Walking Small

By J.C .

THE PEDESTRIAN

Directed and Written by

MAXIMILIAN SCHELL

The Pedestrian broods over German guilt rather too prettily. It is the third film directed by Maximilian Schell, and it is serious -- perhaps excessively so -- in purpose and demeanor. The Pedestrian is riddled with angst and festooned with a lot of fussy, soft-focus photography that makes its sober speculations on national culpability look like the latest thing in a trendy magazine: "Germany -- Forgive and Forget" or "The Fatherland: Two Decades of Remorse." The subject of the film is a prominent German industrialist who may or may not have participated in executing most of a Greek village. His complicity in this wartime slaughter may also have driven his son (played, for his brief appear ance, by Schell) to his death. Peter Hall, new head of Britain's National Theater, puts in an anomalous but welcome jolly appearance as a press lord who pays equal and fastidious attention to politics and pinups.

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