Private Parts Showtime movie remembers photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the city of Cincinnati. by TOM SHALES Dirty Pictures is a movie dealing with controversial photographs taken by artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989. Some people think some of the photographs are obscene. Many of those photographs are shown in the movie, though only for seconds or fractions of seconds at a time. But only one image in the film is really obscene. And it isn't an image conjured by Mapplethorpe. It is the sight of police officers entering an art gallery to seize works of art and force all those who had come to see them to leave the building. This happened in the United States of America, the "land of the free," in 1990. And, presumably, it could happen again in Anytown, USA, tomorrow. Dirty Pictures, which premiered last week on Showtime and shows again on June 6th, 11th, and 18th, is gripping, provocative, alarming, and important, one of the best films ever to premiere on the Showtime network. It's not about Mapplethorpe himself, but about an exhibition of his photographs shown at a gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the incredible, often hideous hullabaloo that resulted. The hero of the film is the director of the gallery, Dennis Barrie, played with great integrity and no sanctimony by James Woods. Barrie endured tremendous public pressure and abuse and, finally, a criminal trial for attempting to exhibit Mapplethorpe's work. Some of the pictures show naked people doing peculiar, potentially offensive things, but the pictures do not meet the test for obscenity established by the Supreme Court. People under 18 were not allowed into the exhibit, and everyone was duly warned that some of the pictures might offend them. Nevertheless, zealots, crackpots, and political hacks forced the trial on Cincinnati and, via the media, on America and the world. The film is mostly the story of that trial--of the havoc it wreaked on Barrie's private and public life and on the threat it posed to the First Amendment. It's the most important amendment, don't you think? And yet the one most frequently imperiled by would-be censors and self-appointed moral arbiters. The film tells the story with actors playing the roles, but it includes inserts of real people, most of them famous, talking about the case and what it represented. There's news footage of Pat Buchanan pledging that, if he is elected president, he will shut down the National Endowment for the Arts, which had contributed to the funding of the exhibit. And on the other side of the political fence, people like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and ACLU President Nadine Strossen express, as you'd expect, contrasting viewpoints. The danger is that Dirty Pictures will turn into a talk show and stop being a movie. But for the most part, the sound bites are painlessly interwoven. They don't slow the film; they help it. All the odds seemed to be against Barrie. Cincinnati is a conservative town, the home of Procter & Gamble. A demagogue leading a group called "People for Community Values" stirs up as many citizens as he can, proclaiming Barrie to be "evil." Then there's Judge Albanese (R.D. Reid), depicted in the film as being totally biased against Barrie and of conducting a shoddy farce of a trial. Even Barrie's wife (Diana Scarwid) begins to weaken, and the Barries' two little boys are taunted and beaten at school by other children whose parents have brainwashed them. Outraged citizens who considered the photos obscene made vile, threatening phone calls to the Barrie home that, in fact, were obscene--a depressing and appalling irony. Skillfully and tightly written by Ilene Chaiken and directed with the proverbial sure hand by Frank Pierson, Dirty Pictures makes the Cincinnati trial seem immensely significant--like the Scopes trial or the Salem witch trials, both of which it resembles in various ways. This is a vital and fascinating film, intelligently made and potentially unforgettable. Tom Shales is with the Washington Post Writers Group.