O Pioneer!

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

ZANDY'S BRIDE

Directed by JAN TROELL

Screenplay by MARC NORMAN

"I got the right," Zandy snarls as he proceeds to rape Hannah his mailorder bride. It is a PG rape--no nudity or bad language. The assumption apparently is that somehow such discretion makes it easier for parents to offer guidance about why that bad man is doing that bad thing to that nice lady.

Still, one is almost grateful for this opportunity to muse once again over the asininity of the rating system, since the rest of this predictable slice of frontier life (the setting is California's Big Sur country) offers almost nothing to think about. Hannah's response to her groom's welcome is to teach him table manners. He makes some progress toward civility, but he keeps getting distracted. Late in the film he is still capable of driving a herd of cattle through her vegetable garden purely as an exercise in cussedness.

The ending is trite and contrite. He presents her with a length of calico and a new stove. She presents him with twins. It may not be too late to make this marriage work, but Zandy's conversion from misogyny to generosity of spirit comes far too late to save the film.

Even such able performers as Gene Hackman and Liv Ullmann cannot bring off a rescue effort without a little help from the writer and the director. Writer Norman has contented himself with providing a painfully straightforward story line, to which Director Troell has pinned a number of handsome album shots that appear to have been left over from his earlier The Emigrants and The New Land. There was a certain stately glory to those works, a sense that Troell's pioneers were big enough to deserve the great country he seemed to perceive with a fresh eye. In Zandy's Bride the land is unfortunately allowed to dwarf the characters. . Richard Schickel

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