Sft GOES TO THE MOVIES Showplace RADIO CITY "'"^'^^'^H^f ^Z MUSIC HALL """ <^%e tjMu^ic ^al^'& The War That Nobody Won ^tea€^A'u^ltnu6^ ^Aouit O A NATION still saddened and what literary episodes themselves that GARY sickened by the violence in Dallas give this picture its special strength, but AUDREY Ta few short weeks ago, the theme rather the underlying conscience that of Carl Foreman's The Victors must unites them, the sharply observed inci GRANT HEPBURN seem particularly apt. War, he tells us, dentals of Army life that keep them a has no victors—only survivors; the act fresh and alive, and the skilled perform CHARADE" of killing destroys the killer as well as ances of an all-star cast that sustain his victim. The Victors vigorously illus them. George Peppard, long a promis Co-starring Walter Matthau trates these concepts through perhaps ing young actor, at last fulfills that prom with James Coburn half a dozen interlinked vignettes of ise as a soldier who would prefer to Produced and directed by Stanley Donen World War II that start with the inva fight the war as an uncommitted observ in Paris and ttie French Alps. A Universal Release in Technicolor® sion of Sicily and end with the first chill er. Eli Wallach wins sympathy for his of the cold war in East Berlin. Inevita rather stock character, the tough, knowl bly, there are variations in the quality edgeable, war-weary sergeant. But best ON THE of the episodes, even in the subtlety of of all are the actresses—Melina Mercouri, GREAT STAGE '^ their handling; but never is there any Jeanne Moreau, and Romy Schneider— 'gCije i^atibttp"\ mistaking their import or Foreman's who lend the film a warmth and poi fierce convictions that drove him to gnancy rare in this genre. The Victors, Far-famed pageant of the First Christmas, and... write, direct, and produce the film in for all its weaknesses, is an appealing the fir.st place. film, and Foreman's fundamental sin "CHEERS' -Merry new holiday spectacle with Perhaps, then, first recognition should cerity makes it an important one. breath-taking effects and go to the fact that Foreman's broad can One hesitates to be uncharitable to a huge company including vas is stark and uncompromising. War film like Charade, which seeks only to celebrated Rockettes, Ballet is not made glamorous; its heroes are provide a little innocent merriment and Company, soloists, Vocal Ensemble, specialty acts. rewarded with dirt, danger, and death. make pots of money. One hesitates also Symphony Orchestra and What humor there is is indigenous to to be uncharitable to such affable and Grand Organ. the characters and the setting, not graceful performers as Gary Grant and dragged in to lighten a scene with a Audrey Hepburn, whose perdurable pointless laugh. No Mort Sahls perform charms suffuse every frame of this mys a comedy "bit" from a foxhole. Foreman tery comedy in the Hitchcock tradition. has carefully controlled every element No doubt, a few weeks ago Charade A new History of in his film, until its final impact is both could be viewed with relative equanim ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH, NEW YORK clean and, despite the disparate epi ity. True, its deaths are frequent and by Elizabeth Moulton sodes, monolithic. It is as if the war violent; but we have grown quite used *'St. George's History represents a window to the history of the whole church and nation." were a bit of statuary that Foreman to that in our pictures—even in our —Pieface by Reinhold Niebuhr holds in his hands, and every facet as he comedies. But that, I fear, is just the $4.00 postpaid from turns it is ugly. But what the film in point. Our films and our television have St. George's Church, 207 E. 16th St. N. Y. 3 sists upon, and what gives it stature, is made us so familiar with murder that not merely the surface ugliness of war, we can laugh about it and shrug it away but war's destruction of decency, self- —until murder walks the streets and respect, and ultimately life itself. lurks in police corridors. TO SPEED YOUR CHRISTMAS If The Victors emerges as less than a The mass media, like it or not, have a perfect work of art, however, it is be heavy responsibility. They not only re MAIL cause of this very insistence. Foreman flect our times; they affect them. The is so anxious to have his message under Victors is that rarity, the work of a man SHOP EARLY stood that, apart from a Dos Passos- of conscience. Charade, in which shoot esque newsreel to punctuate and date ings, beatings, and strangulation are MAIL EARLY the episodes, he clings to the conven played for laughs, is a bit more sympto tional—a G.I. who unselfishly befriends matic of our times. Certainly no one in ADDRESS PLAINLY a young Sicilian widow, then goes to bed volved—least of all Mr. Grant—could be with her; a crude sergeant who is unable accused of a lack of conscience. But AND TAKE A TIP FROM to comprehend why the destruction of a they, like most of our picture-makers modem art collection has so shattered a today, must plead guilty to a lack of MR. ZIP . . . sensitive young Frenchwoman, but goes awareness that each film that laughs at to bed with her; another G. I. who meets murder, each film that celebrates vio USE ZIP NUMBERS AND a beautiful Belgian violinist in a bar, only lence, each film that makes a hero out of to find she has turned whore when he a man with a gun is dehumanizing our INCLUDE YOUR OWN returns a few months later. A visit with society just a little bit more. Of itself. a kindly British family is mawkishly un Charade is a stylish and amusing melo ZIP NUMBER derlined with "Hail, Britannia" on the drama; but in the context of the blood- music track; the mid-winter execution lust that seems unloosed in our land, it is IN YOUR RETURN ADDRESS of a deserter is set with forced irony to as sinister as the villains who stalk Miss a syrupy Christmas song. Hepburn through the cobbled streets As a result, it is not so much the some- of Paris. —ARTHUR KNIGHT.
24 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG SR/December 14, 1963 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED throughout. But as Meff and Dust, Jered BROADWAY POSTSCRIPT Barclay and Harris Yulin have great dif ficulty in not seeming somewhat too pleased with the ineffectuality of much of the material they are required to re Next Time We'll Get It cite. Is Next Time I'll Sing to You a master piece, as it has been called by one Lon ARTISANS of Waiting for Godot puts great force behind intellectual state don critic? If so, we find ourselves with are apt to embrace the Phoenix ment. And when, ultimately, he de the difficult obligation to regard every PTheatre's latest ofifering, Next Time scribes the world as "a zoo with all the ineffective joke, every futile attempt to I'll Sing to You. For Britisher James cage doors left open by an idiot keeper, arrive at a conclusion, as a masterful Saunders's theatre exercise is equally ob where the animals roam at will devour demonstration that our actions do not de scure, wanders facetiously up temporary ing one another, leaving exotic and un fine us and that, although true under cul-de-sacs in the same exasperating lovely messes on the neat concrete foot standing cannot be stated, it can be way, and is here and there touched with paths," he accuses God and society so sensed by going through the motions of a comparable inspired statement of the starkly that we see the horror of our re instinctively filling in the time between human condition. cent national tragedy in unsentimental our conception and our death. and unpolitical perspective. Presented without a curtain or a pros The less sympathetic theatregoer will cenium arch on a stage stripped down to As Lizzie, Estelle Parsons confides in be more inclined to regard the thirty- its mechanical underwear, it apologeti the audience with one deliciously funny eight-year-old James Saunders as simply cally puts on display five characters who soliloquy about the pros and cons of ex a promising new playwright with more seem to be exactly what they are: pro tramarital sex. Using a technique similar talent for short, theatrically imaginative fessional actors. Only their names are to that made famous by Judy Holhday, spurts and occasional profound insights falsified. They are called Meff (Me- but with her own very distinctive per than for fashioning a total play. But it fistopheles?). Dust (Adam?), Lizzie, sonality. Miss Parsons is completely win must be admitted that on a second visit, the identical twin of Lizzie (Eve, be ning and convincing in an examination the less finished production of Next fore and after?), Rudge (God, or his of an ordinary young girl's search for Time I'll Sing to You here held my in anti-papist deputy?), and an unnamed suitable cliches to justify the amorality terest more constantly than did the Lon actor hired to impersonate the hermit of of what she finds herself inexplicably de don original and that, at the very least, Great Canfield, an actual person whose termined not to do without, and just as whatever is going on nightly at the life is exhaustively investigated and re inexphcably unwilling to plunge into. Phoenix Theatre challenges the dimen constructed in Raleigh Trevelyan's A William Needles's hermit sustains a tone sions of our theatre and puzzles our Hermit Disclosed (St. Martin's Press, of slightly absurd wounded dignity minds enormously. —HENRY HEWES. $4.75). Incidentally, the play's title also comes from the book, in which the old hermit whispers these words hoarsely and enigmatically to the rector who has come to exchange a few words with his When you DINE Italian, recluse parishioner. What ensues is deliberately made un- WINE Italian dramatic by constant reminders in the dialogue that these actors are saying with only what they have been saying with equal futility and non-understanding RUFFINO every night. Out of a number of meta physical meanderings, a focal problem Italy's Prize can be vaguely discerned. It has some CHIANTI thing to do with man's loss of simplicity and direct understanding in an intellec tually dextrous age. How can we know man or ourselves through his most con stant and most universal characteristic, his omnipresent subsurface grief? How can that be presented through the ritual of stage action? And, more specifically, how can we know a particular hermit whose rejection of the world lends itself to stock technical explanations? Director Peter Coe, with an assist from designer David Hays's soap-box props, has tackled the problem freshly. There is indeed one fantastic scene in which, by means of clothesline and a few upright timbers, the actors create a gigantic spiderweb around the hermit, while Rudge magnifies the image until the web becomes three-dimensional in both space and time and its anchors are fixed at the end of the Universe. In the role of Rudge, James Earl Jones SOLE NEW YORK
SR/December 14, 1963 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG 25 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED