The Presence of Jean Renoir ERNEST CALLENBACH and ROBERTA SCHULDENFREI 8

PER COPY $1.00 Q UART E RLY $4.00 PER YEAR FILM VOL. XIV, NO. 2-WINTER 1960

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK 2 CALIFORNIA PRESS ARTICLES

The Presence of Jean Renoir ERNEST CALLENBACH AND ROBERTA SCHULDENFREI 8

Editorial and Classics Revisited: La Grande Illusion JAMES KERANS 10 sales office: Berkeley 4, An Interview with Sidney Lumet PETER BOGDANOVICH 18 California THE FESTIVAL SCENE- Berlin, Karlovy-Vary, Venice CYNTHIA GRENIER 24 London DAVIDSTEWART HULL 30

EDITOR THE ART FILM AND ITS AUDIENCES: I- Allies, Not Enemies PHILIP CHAMBERLIN Ernest Callenbach 36 FILM 40 ASSISTANT EDITOR REVIEWS Albert Johnson Dejeuner sur l'Herbe: GIDEON BACHMANN The Entertainer:ARLENE CROCE Los ANGELESEDITOR The Savage Innocents: DOUGLASCOX See You Tomorrow: NORMANC. MOSER Colin Young The Flute and the Arrow: ROGER SANDALL Macario: R. H. TURNER NEW YORK EDITORS The Ballad of a Soldier and A Stranger Knocks: ALBERTJOHNSON William Bernhardt Black Pearls and Be Good All Your Life: KENNETH J. LETNER and Cecile Starr Ein Mann geht durch die Wand: HARRIET R. POLT ROME EDITOR Romeo, Juliet, and Darkness: JOSEPHKOSTOLEFSKY MarvinGluck Era Notte a Roma: LETIZIA CIOTTI MILLER

PARIS EDITOR Mein Kampf: CHRISTOPHER BISHOP Cynthia Grenier BOOK REVIEWS 56 Theory of Film and The Three Faces of the Film: ERNEST CALLENBACH ADVISORY Kino: DAVIDSTEWART HULL EDITORIALBOARD Andries Deinum ENTERTAINMENTS 61 August Frug6 Hugh Gray PRODUCTION REPORT 62 Paul Jorgensen Gavin Lambert THE COVER: Nadia Gray in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

Copyright 1960 by The Regents of the University of California. Views expressed in signed articles are those of the authors. Indexed in the International Index to Periodicals. Published quarterly. Second- class postage paid at Berkeley, California, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. 2

Editor's Notebook dium, in this sense, we should indeed dismiss as an irresponsiblecritic. And there are few critics who would, as a matter of fact, pass up The Critical Question: the chance to say whether they think the tenor Another View or tendency of a film is "good"or "bad,"according to their lights. In the Autumn issue of Sight & Sound editor So this is not really the question. Penelope Houston has done film and film criti- Miss Houston'sarticle is also good in its firm cism a signal service by bringing into the full sense of being situated in a particularhistorical view of her large and international audience tradition. Her generation, as she says, is that some questions about film thought which have which created Sequence at Oxford and later not received much public attention, and to turned Sight & Sound from the all too official which hardly any new answershave lately been organ of the BritishFilm Instituteinto the finest forthcoming. Where, in short, is film criticism journalof film criticism in the world (which it going? Anothermajor article in the same issue still is, in our opinion). But that generation, of Sight & Sound is a discussion of what is so "whoseattitudes toward the cinema were being far the only serious Western alternativeto the formulatedat the time of the neo-realistexperi- dominant school of film writing: the work of ment,"now finds itself under attack by younger the Cahiers du Cinema "gang." As Richard people in England, and a certain dissatisfaction Roud convincingly shows, this is no real alter- with Sight & Sound may be encounteredin the native. To turn from what now may seem the United States as well. In this issue Miss Hous- stodgy or literary approach of Sight & Sound ton takes up the cudgels, which is, surely, all to or other "official"journals to the wildly inac- the good; there is, sadly, little traditionof seri- curate and sometimes crypto-fascist approach ous debate in film criticism. of Cahiers would be change but certainly not -Not that the attacks she is answering are progress. entirely serious. (It is weird to hear the unmis- Perhaps, however, we can hope for more- takably querulous "beat" note emerging from for the growth of what we might without em- the new journal she quotes, Oxford Opinion.) barrassmentcall a new film criticism. The sturdy ship of S&S, afloat on a sea of liter- Miss Houston's long article seems to us ex- ary and intellectualtradition that has been run- cellent in many respects. Above all (for this is ning for some centuriesnow, is not likely to be a point on which grave misunderstandingsmight blasted out of the water by such sniping. But it arise) we must admire the concern for human is worth considering the alternatives proposed beings, for human life, which underlies her de- there, and in Cahiers,and in some circles in this sire to have critics deal primarilywith what she country: the cult of the worthless story, the terms the "motive force" of films. The phrase jazzed-up gangster film, and sometimes Leni may be a bad one: the motive forces of artists Riefenstahl. It is tempting to dub this juvenile- are often inscrutable,and what appears in one delinquent film criticism,and the phrase is not decade to be-the driving force of a film later entirely inaccurate: the critical stance arises may pale into irrelevance. Nonetheless: film is from the same impulse-to destroy the smug a social art, one we take to be of direct personal and hypocritical cant of the "square"-adults, importanceto large masses of men. It exists as to adopt as idols things the elders despise. One an industry in an elaborate social context; its person'ssophisticate is another'ssquare; so odd creators are men living and acting, culturally sympathiesmay spring up in this kind of game. and politically, in a world whose reality is so It is an interesting attitude; but we doubt insistent no one need insist upon it. Any critic whether it is criticism. who attempted to write about films without a Miss Houston's article is also admirable in consciousness of the seriousness of the me- pointing out that "Film criticism is in search 3

of an aesthetic, which will not be found in the of commentand discussion." But this, surely, is narrowerissues of committed versus anti-com- the province of politics, broadly conceived, or mitted attitudes . . . the unattractivetruth, of of a special kind of sociology highly developed course, is that there is plenty of reviewing and in this country, with its elaborate techniques not nearly enough criticism (and a magazine of content analysis and so on. The main con- such as this one must accept its share of the cern of critics cannot be with the rhetoric of guilt); that the film, because it cannot be taken films, in this sense-or with their "ends"-any home and studied like a novel or a play, invites more than it can be with their grammaralone- reactionsand impressionsrather than sustained with their "means." analysis; that there has never really been an Films do advocate and promote and oppose. aesthetics of the sound cinema, and that most But a film, if it is a film and not merely a com- of the standard textbooks are useful only for mercial product, cannot be dealt with as if it those who still believe that cinema history vir- were an animated tract. A good film is good tually stops with Blackmail and The Blue precisely because it is an indissoluble whole, Angel." This is both a gracious and an ac- a tightly knit, incredibly complex, artistically curate statement. And it is valuable as a re- unified organism. minder that, in searching for a new criticism, Perhaps,therefore, what is needed to enable we are not trying to invent some miraculous us to push through the present impasse is a machine, into which one puts films and out of kind of "textual" criticism: criticism which which spews criticism. (There are people who sticks much closer to the actual work itself would welcome such a contraption.) "In the than is usual. (There is hardly a published long run," Miss Houston writes, "the critic is critic alive who could not do a chilling parody still on his own, confronted with the work of of the usual film review.) For the ordinary art. His tools: his sensibility, his knowledge, treatment given films in Sight & Sound, this his judgment, and his apparatus of values." journal, and most other film publications,does This is very true, but not simple. For any not get down in enough detail to what we need critic also operates, consciously and uncon- to know about how, exactly, the new films are sciously, in a tradition. Some of this tradition being made, and where they are going. Such he perceives as "knowledge,"some as "values"; questionsare grubbyand difficult;they demand the most dangerous,in the long run, is the part that critics know what they mean by art in he perceives as "sensibility" or "judgment." screen terms. What many film writers seem to be feeling at Such analysis would, of course, make short this juncture is that the traditional constella- work of the "masterworks"of the Cahiers tion of these factors has become unsatisfactory. school. Moreover, even je-m'en-foutismecan It must be made perfectly clear that no one be subjected to scrutiny, if one is really inter- yet knows precisely why. But we do know that ested in the films and not in the pose of the some of the obvious "ways out" are insufficient. critic. (The Cahiers pose is the most dramatic One might, for example, take the "technical" yet devised, no one will deny; and it should not way out-arguing, as do some of the madder be dismissedlightly-where are the young Eng- young French critics, that it is fine trouvailles lish or Americancritics who are likely to make that make a film. (It is a rare film in which one a 400 Blows, Les Cousins, Hiroshima, Mon may not find some shots or scenes to be enthusi- Amour? If it be madness, it is evidently a astic about.) Or one might take Miss Houston's productive one.) own way out, which proves to be a reaffirmation We do not need some new doctrineinstantly, of the "liberal"tradition in criticism as in poli- which will sweep all critics into its net by sheer tics. "Primarily,"she writes, "I would suggest force of logic; perhaps we do not even need that the critical duty is to examine the cinema new textbooks. (See, elsewhere in this issue, a in terms of its ideas, to submit these to the test review of Kracauer'sTheory of Film.) But we 4 obviously and direly need critics who will cope with films in new who will deal with ways, the c fabric of the work in less literary terms than is c customary. i It is hard to do this, of course. There are ob- c jective obstacles such as those mentioned by Miss Houston. (Though we need, in this connection, critics willing to look over and over c/nl I -;r again at the films which are available for patient study-really a vast corpus since it includes thousands of fine films available on 16mm a? ,: - rental.) There is the lack of precedent. There L is the suspicion that "the readers" prefer a gen- C eral, mish-mash approach. There is the feeling that too much concern craft or u ?? w'th technique is dull or-perhaps-ungentlemanly. There is :iiXluc-s~ the distrust of which fears that under- i I, analysis i standing a work in its own concrete detailed, 1, ;; ; terms will somehow destroy its "appeal," its magic. F I d But tighter, more closely reasoned criticism can happen. The temperature of the little world of film criticism seems to be rising. And since film criticism, like serious thought of any kind, operates at its own pace, by a kind of mysteri- b ous Brownian motion of we will ideas, perhaps "f~~c;t~ soon see really remarkable new developments. But they cannot be forced. Even making the unhealthy assumption that the editors of all the film journals in the world agreed on what the The Future of the new criticism should be, it would not produce San Francisco Film Festival a single lasting work. The writers themselves must feel their way toward what is to be said, It will doubtless seem strange to our readers in and the editors, if they are doing their jobs, other areas of the country and abroad that we will be willing and able to bring their work to cannot take a simple local pride in the San the public. Little by little, then, the new ex- Francisco International Film Festival, which citements of new films made in new places in is the nearest thing to a major film festival ever new ways will give added dimensions to criti- put on in the United States. Instead, we re- cal thought. (It is lucky that Hiroshima, Mon grettably find ourselves joining in the general Amour has appeared at precisely this time, for ill-will toward the Festival generated among instance.) By this odd process the increasing film people by the strange policies of Irving number of film books and periodicals may bring Levin, its organizer; and we must lay out in the us the new thought we all seek. plainest terms what is wrong with his festival k and what he must do if he hopes to make it a genuine cultural event of the international sig- nificance we would all like it to have. Levin, who is an exhibitor, has been able in the past four years to organize two-week-long 5

showings of films. These have included many skilled person who knows films in this post for we, like film people throughout the country, two months before the event, to obtain, digest, have been anxious to see and report on. This and prepare press materials, the Festival would year, for the first time, he also managed to pro- receive untold reams of really intriguing pub- duce a certain aura of glamor which got the licity both before and during its two-week Festival more attention than it has ever had be- period; for the background stories involved in fore; and this glamor was not all of the usual the case of most of the films shown are news, meretricious festival variety, either, since guests and the personalities who attended the festival included Soviet director Grigori Tchoukrai and are also. critic A. Karaganov, the young stars of Ballad There are many other things that should be of a Soldier, director Edward Dmytryk, and done to make the San Francisco Festival the several distributors. Mary Pickford helped kick success it should be. Like the "Art in Cinema" off the opening night, and from time to time series of years past, it should include as central Elsa Lanchester, Sterling Hayden, Rupert features of its programs talks by directors-the Crosse (of Shadows) and other film personages men who actually make the films. In spite of were in attendance. The judges were Kara- Hollywood's aversion to the Festival (since it ganov, Herman G. Weinberg, and Darius Mil- isn't a Hollywood festival) many talented direc- haud. It began to seem, for the first time, that tors would be pleased to address a genuine film the provincial pall that has hung over the Fes- festival audience. tival in previous years, convincing many that The co6peration of other film institutions in Levin's objective was merely to impress San the Bay Area should be sought to help generate Francisco high society, was to be replaced by a interest in the medium during the Festival genuine air of cinematic internationalism. This period. The San Francisco Museum of Art, for happy possibility was strengthened by a speech example, should be asked to help provide exhi- Jean Renoir gave on opening night. Levin in- bitions related to film. The cooperation of uni- troduced him for a brief "hello," it seemed; but versities would be helpful. Art theater operators Renoir launched into one of his amusing but in the area should be shown that the success of deadly serious pep-talks on the art of the film. the Festival would redound to their own advan- And so, for the first time, the Festival began as tage also, by augmenting serious interest in the what it should be: a festive event centered on filmn. film as an exciting art, not on the number of Such developments are perfectly possible. minks that can be cozened through the lobby But to carry them out will require a clear direc- of the Metro Theater. tion and purpose for the Festival. And it seems It did not remain so; after the interest gener- to us obvious what this direction should be. ated by the surprise withdrawal of La Dolce This festival, in the city whose officials are proud Vita (apparently because of distribution cau- to claim it "knows how," ought to be the direc- tiousness) and the showing of Ballad of a tor'sfestival: its focus should be on the filmsand Soldier (after which the Russians received a the makers of the films. No other festival really standing ovation from the San Francisco audi- succeeds in this, as far as we can see. Venice ence) the heart went out of things. And not, it and Cannes are glamorous commercial dog- must be realized, because good films were not fights. Karlovy Vary and Berlin are ideological on the schedule [see reviews in this issue]. The dog-fights. London is a summation and an op- Festival died because it does not receive satis- portunity to see the upshots of the preceding factory local publicity. And it does not receive festivals. San Francisco can claim a unique and this publicity because Levin, though he employs necessary function in all this, and perhaps re- a "public relations" firm, does not understand claim the very idea of film festivals from a cer- press relations and has not employed a press tain uneasiness that has set in during the past secretary with real authority who does. With a several years. 6

There are also, of course, less important the absolute necessity of broadening the support changes that should be made. of the Festival in the Bay Area community. He Festival showings should be held in a theater does not have the government or municipal sup- that is centrally located. The Metro, which port enjoyed by the European festivals. (And belongs to Levin's chain, is a neighborhood it is hard to see who would recommend he get house with entrance and lobby arrangements any, on the basis of the existing event.) He totally unsuited to the handling of large crowds, needs, therefore, the unqualified support of film and is abominably decorated inside. (The people and of the press generally. An exhibitor Opera House would be an ideal setting: it is since boyhood, Levin naturally operates in terms large, elegant, and convenient to public transit of the box office and his immediate audience. and a monster underground parking-lot.) The Thus he creates a social occasion on which films should be selected with more care, it goes upper-crust San Franciscans may congratulate without saying-for this as for virtually any themselves for their support of the arts; he festival (Levin's luck and performance in this mobilizes the many local nationality groups to area has improved much, though not enough). attend the films from their native lands. But in But most of all, the Festival must be put for- the long run he cannot make the Festival a ward in the public eye, locally through the really first-rate one without the people who newspapers, and nationally and internationally attend the Art in Cinema showings at the Mu- through the serious and not-so-serious film press, seum of Art; the people who attend the many as a genuine festival focused on the films to be special showings at the University of California shown, and not primarily as some kind of society and San Francisco State College; the people bash. (The society page of one San Francisco who support the repertory Cinema Guild and paper ran photographs of Levin kissing actress the other art houses of the Bay Area. These are Zhanna Prokhorenko at the awards ball; there the people who love films, and who will turn out was practically no notice of the awards in any in thousands if the newspapers tell them of films other part of the paper.) Huge excitement that are interesting. These are also the people could be generated on this basis; for in movies whose word-of-mouth communication will, if and the making of movies there is still a great anything does, spread the fame of the Festival interest on the part of large masses of people. in their circles, many of which are nation-wide Indeed, with a proper press office the Festival or international. could probably lure crowds large enough to The San Francisco International Film Festi- warrant use (at lower admissions) of the giant val can be a focus of American attention to new Fox Theater on Market Street, whose 4800 seats films. It can be a place for serious public dis- make it the second largest house in the country. cussion of the film and its potentialities and Its red plush, gilt, and marble would lend a problems. It can be a place where film-makers smashingly festive air to the Festival and show from America and abroad meet and discuss the that films still mean something more exciting trends and hopes and plans that agitate them. than attending another program on a typical It can be a place where critics can see the best neighborhood street. of new films, and talk with film-makers of what To help carry out such changes, we suggest is past, or passing, or to come. that Levin establish an advisory committee We are grateful to Irving Levin for bringing which he would really use for advice. (At the Festival into existence. Without him it present his "advisory committee" consists of would not be; and it is an institution whose eminent names; it never meets; and only one of importance can be immense. The child is born; its members could by any conceivable stretch but now it must be allowed to grow up. Levin be said to know anything whatsoever about should immediately set about providing proper films.) He faces, whether he realizes it or not, godfathers. 7

Crowther's Folly PETER BOGDANOVICHhas been a professional Bosley Crowther's article in the New York actor, directed an off-Broadway production of Times, "Subtitles Must Go!" provoked a loud Odets' The Big Knife, and has published film outcry, but the danger that his proposal will articles in Frontier and other periodicals. He is be taken up by all distributors of foreign films now planning to make a feature film. remains a real one. We are as anxious as the PHILIP CHAMBERLIN is working for his doc- distributors that foreign films should secure torate in education and philosophy at UCLA larger audiences in the United States, but not while at the same time planning film programs at the cost of the artistic integrity of the films. for University Extension. (There may be some films in which the lan- DOUGLAS COX is a film-maker with most of guage is not an integral part of the tone and his experience in directing abroad in difficult structure of the work, but their number is and often primitive locations. His first feature small.) The heart of the matter is that while is being prepared for release. bad subtitles may harm a picture, they leave ARLENE CROCE has reviewed many films for it intact-but bad dubbing may destroy it ut- this journal and other periodicals. terly. We have already seen that almost all JAMES KERANS teaches drama and film and dubbing, which is done post hoc and by shoe- is a director on the drama faculty at Stanford string operators, is very bad dubbing in- University; he has written previously for this deed. Unless the distributors are able to se- journal. cure versions prepared by the original director JOSEPH KOSTOLEFSKY has written many re- and writer, they will gain nothing but ill will views in previous issues, and has contributed from informed audiences. And even if they did criticism to other journals. secure such versions (which no one seriously KENNETH J. LETNER is ManagingDirector of thinks they can) they would be guilty of yet the Ensemble Theater in San Francisco. another acquiescence in the process by which LETIZIA CIOTTI MILLER is an Italian film works of screen art are converted into mere journalist who lives in Berkeley. commodities. Nor can we conceive of distribu- NORMAN C. MOSER is a poet and has written tors with the time, energy, and money to pre- previously for this journal. pare and distribute two versions-one dubbed HARRIET R. POLT has written severalreviews and one subtitled-so that at least our metro- in previous issues. politan audiences could have a choice. For all ROGER SANDALL is a student of film and an- practical purposes, dubbing is a Bad Thing, and thropology at Columbia University. it is sad that Crowther has lent his columns to ROBERTA SCHULDENFREIwas Jean Renoir's the campaign for extending it. personal secretary during his tenure on the Berkeley campus. R. H. TURNERis a writer and editor at the University of California, Berkeley. About Our Contributors Binders for Film GIDEON Quarterly BACHMANNis the editor of Cine- We have finally been able to make arrange- mages and conducts a radio program on films ments for handsome imitation-leather binders heard on KPFA, KPFK, WBAI, and other sta- in a special size designed to hold eight issues tions. of Film Quarterly. The binders have a flat back CHRISTOPHER BISHOP, who was formerly on on which the name of the journal is stamped in the staff of the Museum of Modern Art, is now gold. Price is $3.50 (plus 140 sales tax in Cali- Curator of Films at the San Francisco Museum fornia); orders should be sent to Periodicals of Art and director of the new Art in Cinema Department, University of California Press, series. Berkeley 4, California. ERNEST CALLENBACH AND ROBERTA SCHULDENFREI The Presence of Jean Renoir

For much of the past year the portly, Gallic, Renoir's main project while on the Berkeley sometimes uncannily Khrushchev-like figure of campus was production of his play, Carola. In Jean Renoir has been a familiar one in the San the rehearsals for Carola's world premiere, we Francisco Bay Area. Renoir came to the Berke- came to understand something of the Renoir ley campus of the University of California for a method. A key to it lies in a gesture: he often semester as a Regents Professor, but he has re- rubs his thumb against his other fingers, as if turned on other occasions, too. Film people in trying to feel the real substance of what he is the Bay Area have come to feel toward him saying, thinking, or seeing. With it goes the some of the filial attitude of writers in Cahiers word "perhaps." It is as though he were think- du Cinema. At 66, Jean Renoir remains an in- ing aloud. Nothing is absolute or absolutely spirational force and a great man. He is over- settled; everything is "perhaps." Yet in his work whelmingly energetic, with an endlessly intelli- with actors there is a firmness not necessarily gent volubility. Even more astounding is his predictable from his interviews and talks. personal warmth, his enthusiasm for life. Carola was produced under severe limita- In his public speeches and in his informal tions. The actors, all students, were younger conversations, with students or with others, than the characters; the stage facilities were Renoir has hit steadily at a main theme directly scant. Nonetheless, the play took shape. As related to his own way of living and working. students read for the casting, Renoir rubbing He stresses the need for personal communica- his thumb against fingers would say, "Perhaps tion, for the "author" of a film (or of a story-he he could be Henri, or perhaps Josette would be proclaims himself a storyteller not committed good for her." Then sometimes to the eager stu- solely to one medium, and has recently done a dent for whom he saw no part, "Perhaps you play, a TV film, and a book) to reveal himself. could help with sets." It is this, not the creation of ever-living master- The nightly rehearsals were one great "per- pieces, he continually reminds us, that must be haps": this is how a work grows, in Renoir's the objective of the film artist. And Renoir hands, by a kind of experimental method. First insists on the role of the conscious, prickly artist he tried one thing with his actor, then perhaps in an industry most of whose directors are re- another, and another; and when the feel was signed to being "foremen on the set." right, when the actor and Renoir had found the He serves, thus, as a focus for an attitude right way, he would change from his crouched- toward film as an art: a role of immense impor- over position to one of a satisfied director, lean- tance in a medium whose apprenticeships are ing back in his chair. too often warped by commercialism or dilettant- Also, during rehearsals the script itself ism. It would make a formidable difference in (adapted into English by Renoir with Angela the atmosphere of the industry if there were a and Robert Goldsby) changed considerably couple of other directors who were capable of through rewriting arising both from Renoir and exercising this kind of influence: if, say, Zinne- the actors. Sets, make-up, and the like were all mann and Huston could find the time to speak done by students. Renoir criticizes and suggests seriously of their art to young people concerned alterations, in this area as in that of interpreta- with it. (And perhaps, as Renoir feels he does, tion, only after something has been tried: there they might learn something from the exchange. ) must be a start, a germ which can be helped to ?ii--i_:-i i:::: :?::: :-:--:: :i::: -'::-i'';:':li- -i::-_i-::1:::::-:- n-j -si:::;::::::::-~:1: ::-?~~$~::,:::: -i:::i ~ :-ad~~s~L:~~$ 8'4~ i:~:-:::?.:::::--

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_:::-:::::::: 10 grow. The costume that looked inappropriate Renoir's views on film-making have in recent on the hanger was first tried on the stage before years been set forth fairly often in the press and any change was attempted. Such a method through interviews, most recently and accessibly gives rein to inspiration and instinct, rather than in an interview with Gideon Bachmann pub- relying on logic: its compound of openness to lished in Contact magazine (Sausalito, Calif., change and professional experience character- $1.45), No. 4. Cahiers du Cinema (146, izes Renoir's directorial method. Champs-Elysees, Paris 8e, 3.5 NF) devoted its And this is the method that resulted in La entire issue of Christmas 1957 (No. 78) to Grande Illusion and La Regle du Jeu. Carola is Renoir; it includes a talk by Renoir, "Ce Bougre a strange play, which many have found not de Monde Nouveau," an interview by J. Rivette really satisfactory. And there are some of us and Frangois Truffaut, excerpts from Carola, who do not like Elena and the or French Men, and a biofilmography by Andre Bazin. Instead do not find Can-Can; some, indeed, the loveli- of duplicating such admirable materials, there- ness of The Golden Coach to their or wish taste, fore, we present, as our homage to Jean Renoir, The River were more We genuinely profound. an analysis of La Grande Illusion. This film was must, our minds on these recent obviously, speak voted fifth among the great films of all time at works. Yet we are to Renoir for con- grateful the Brussels Exposition. Its reputation is im- to make films at a time when he could tinuing mense and genuinely world-wide. (Moreover, with retire from the follies good grace simply it was a great popular success, unlike La of the film world to his olive trees and Regle grand- du Jeu, and a revival of it in a definitive version children. In all his films, Renoir himself does specially prepared Renoir was a smash come as he wishes. In the crowded by hit through, in Paris several years back.) Yet, like forest of film his trees many production particular films, it has received too little have a verve and and great serious personal grace humanity and too much of which we have far too little. analysis superficial praise. The following reappraisal, then, aims to show For them, and for his uncontested master- some of the reasons why La Grande Illusion is a last- pieces, we are in his debt, as those who love the ing work of art. film will always be.

JAMES KERANS Classics Revisited: "La Grande Illusion"

Above all, in La Grande Illusion, we find lucid- La Grande Illusion." I see no reason to disarm ity and innocence. We find these qualities the film of this central motive, or to turn its everywhere in Renoir, but never under such dramatic energies out to graze in the pastures stress, for here they are not only signs of a style, of "film art." It is a persuasion: it tries to turn but maneuvers in a gathering war. Are they the us away from Z and toward A, and from this right maneuvers? We are bound to ask the turning proceed the real excitement, tact, and question, regardless of our aesthetics, because beauty it offers. we are being asked to agree and to act, as well Certain difficulties always latent in pacifist as to admire: "Because I am a pacifist," Renoir persuasion appear in acute form in La Grande wrote in a postscript to the film in 1938, "I made. Illusion. There can be none of the familiar 10 grow. The costume that looked inappropriate Renoir's views on film-making have in recent on the hanger was first tried on the stage before years been set forth fairly often in the press and any change was attempted. Such a method through interviews, most recently and accessibly gives rein to inspiration and instinct, rather than in an interview with Gideon Bachmann pub- relying on logic: its compound of openness to lished in Contact magazine (Sausalito, Calif., change and professional experience character- $1.45), No. 4. Cahiers du Cinema (146, izes Renoir's directorial method. Champs-Elysees, Paris 8e, 3.5 NF) devoted its And this is the method that resulted in La entire issue of Christmas 1957 (No. 78) to Grande Illusion and La Regle du Jeu. Carola is Renoir; it includes a talk by Renoir, "Ce Bougre a strange play, which many have found not de Monde Nouveau," an interview by J. Rivette really satisfactory. And there are some of us and Frangois Truffaut, excerpts from Carola, who do not like Elena and the or French Men, and a biofilmography by Andre Bazin. Instead do not find Can-Can; some, indeed, the loveli- of duplicating such admirable materials, there- ness of The Golden Coach to their or wish taste, fore, we present, as our homage to Jean Renoir, The River were more We genuinely profound. an analysis of La Grande Illusion. This film was must, our minds on these recent obviously, speak voted fifth among the great films of all time at works. Yet we are to Renoir for con- grateful the Brussels Exposition. Its reputation is im- to make films at a time when he could tinuing mense and genuinely world-wide. (Moreover, with retire from the follies good grace simply it was a great popular success, unlike La of the film world to his olive trees and Regle grand- du Jeu, and a revival of it in a definitive version children. In all his films, Renoir himself does specially prepared Renoir was a smash come as he wishes. In the crowded by hit through, in Paris several years back.) Yet, like forest of film his trees many production particular films, it has received too little have a verve and and great serious personal grace humanity and too much of which we have far too little. analysis superficial praise. The following reappraisal, then, aims to show For them, and for his uncontested master- some of the reasons why La Grande Illusion is a last- pieces, we are in his debt, as those who love the ing work of art. film will always be.

JAMES KERANS Classics Revisited: "La Grande Illusion"

coercions based upon organized honor or dogma compulsion and constrictions (on German and -these are irrecoverably the property of the mil- French alike) for which the fortress stands. itant man. Appeals to the impulse toward "bet- This view is capable of considerable refinement, terment" in any form, economic or moral, even- and on its terms the film is a masterpiece. tually work around to systems of striving, of I find this reading insufficient in that it does competition, of sacrifice, which betray the dis- not follow the film carefully enough to distin- guised logic of disregard for personal peace. guish one kind of fraternity from another, one Worst of all (and most common) are films in kind of escape or eloquence from another. It is the "but-can't-you-see-how-horrible-it-all-is?" all too easy to enter upon the exquisite pain and tradition-sexual fantasies masquerading as anti- traditional nobility which dictate our response war films, which combine panoramic violence to the Boeldieu-Rauffenstein drama. Few films, with twitching close-ups, shuddering landscapes if any, can execute as beautifully as this one with blasted meat, all done in an atmosphere of does the ready oratory of heroic resignation. "grimly exposing the empty heroics of war." (It The death scene-with its snow and ticking would be comforting to suppose that half a cen- watches and cut flower (to say nothing of von tury of education to the psychological facts of Stroheim and Fresnay) -is moving, but the skills life would have rid our more thoughtful film and apparatus it uses are the stock in trade of audiences of the rudimentary gullibility in- the apologist for heroes in their essential guise- volved here. But consider Paths of Glory. This dying the beautiful death. Renoir takes this tidy bit of rough-toughery might sound "realis- scene in stride; but he goes on to prove he is tic" in a high-school valedictorian, but who even a greater master than he is usually thought would have mistaken it for a protest against war by transcending this material and leading us to if he had not heard it approved as such by "en- another value: a life almost without name, of lightened" audiences?) I suppose one of the bread, wife, child, work, and survival. How can reasons La Grande Illusion is not always con- such material compete with the exaltations of sciously and immediately recognizable as a paci- ritual sacrifice? Any praise falsifies it, any in- fist film is that it avoids all this noise and as a tensification or highlighting spoils it, even ab- result actually works as one. It does not "fight breviation misrepresents it. One thinks of the the war for peace" with any of the overt strate- gorgeous, hectic celebrations of "natural life" in gies that provoke opposition, or even excited Dylan Thomas. This is all very well, but sup- agreement: the customary response to the film pose you don't want to celebrate, or appropriate is a kind of inarticulate acceptance, a profound, the rhetoric of religious fire to speak for daily disarmed approval. I feel this, too, and think it bread? Suppose you don't want people to thrill exactly the right response. to daily bread, but to eat it? Thrill leads only to thrill, and nothing better shows the serious- One view of the film finds it a demonstration ness and integrity of Renoir's film than the risk of the essential sympathy which binds men and it takes in refusing to "combat" the glorifications which is perverted by the unnatural conditions of heroic suicide with irrelevant seductions to of war into complementary killing and sacrifice. pacifist survival. The farm, as we shall see later, The affection and respect between de Boeldieu is clearly the alternate to the fortress, and it is and von Rauffenstein cannot prevent one's kill- dangerously near to exaltation in the near- ing the other, once they are factors in the war miraculous ease with which it offers plain food equation. Captor and captive are alike unwill- and love, but it is a metaphor, as is the fortress, ing, war finds its metaphor in a crumbling for- and only the sentimental would feel that Renoir tress in which the elite of a culture die or kill by is promising it to Marechal. We see it plainly rules which misuse their capacities for loyalty and at its best-but so do we see Rauffenstein; and love. The solution is escape-literally from and the lucidity and innocence of which I spoke the fortress, metaphorically from the military earlier, once they have faced both "sides," speak 12 irresistibly for their equivalent in life: the farm. ine its cultural attitude, but a more modest be- This is a major triumph in the film-the political ginning would be to examine how the differen- victory of a style which features candor, bal- tiations between Mar&chal and de Boeldieu in- ance, antithrill. (Revisiting the film in the con- troduce the larger appeals. At their meeting, in text of present-day Bergmanism, with its mys- the first episode, the lines are drawn. Every- tifications and general goosing of all possible thing about Marechal is negligent, easy-his effects, one is struck by the wonderful clarity uniform, the nostalgia with which he listens to and dignity of Renoir's masterpiece. an old record, his anticipation of a night with The essential action of La Grande Illusion, one "Jenny," whom he dismisses from the film that which organizes nearly all its material, is a with an offhand "She'll wait for me." The mis- dialectic, as we would expect in a persuasive sion comes to him as a slightly bothersome re- strategy. The tendencies involved are hard to minder of the present. De Boeldieu, on the name, because they attach to a tremendous other hand, is meticulous and intent. We first amount of detail, from rudimentary psychologi- see him studying an aerial photograph through dal gesture to the complexities of national honor. his monocle, very much the staff officer, stop- One tendency I call ceremony; the other, in- ping tactfully short of urgency or officiousness, stinct. Under ceremony I range the impulse tying up a loose end at the front. A marvelous toward rules and order, reserve, sacrifice, honor, little stroke in the dialogue gives away the con- suicide, brotherhood by exclusion; under in- nection between his own psychology and the stinct: relaxation, conviviality, drift, disorgan- system of military responsibilities he represents. ized emotion, survival, brotherhood by inclu- He holds out the photograph and accounts for sion. Presumably, any person includes both the mission: "It's this little gray smudge that tendencies, and a possible problem-play ap- disturbs me." No one can say just what the proach to the material would be to have a hero smudge is, so a plane is called out, and the con- confronted with a series of choices which lead sequences of Boeldieu's curiosity begin to tick. him one way or the other. The trouble with this This is military scrupulousness, of course, but approach is that it forces upon the deciding the reader must pardon me if I refuse to ignore character a form of consciousness and clarity, of the overtones of neurosis in the fussiness. reflection, which both simplifies his character Throughout the film white-glove militarism is and eliminates alternatives to his choices. given plenty of literal play and symbolic weight. Renoir's solution is the "double"-a dialectical At one point Rauffenstein wonders ruefully resource most familiar to us from the nineteenth- whether the two pairs remaining to him will century novel (La Grande Illusion is very like last out the war; in their last conversation War and Peace in many respects). From the Mar&chal and Boeldieu are talking about the moment they set out together on the aerial mis- fundamental differences between them, and the sion which opens the film, Marechal and de background business to the scene is Boeldieu's Boeldieu are linked by common circumstances, washing a pair of white gloves so that his large and from this community proceeds the dialectic gesture shall be in high parade style; and the which says that they move toward opposite hand with which Rauffenstein shoots Boeldieu poles. They are further linked by the ironies and closes so tenderly his dead eyes also wears involved in their "escapes," each of which is a white glove. In the film these details do not dependent upon the other. The irony of de seem like trifles embarrassingly inflated into Boeldieu's escape through honorable death is opportunistic symbols; rather they are, as in the in the obvious; as for Mar&chal-can one really escape music, passages through major key at the expense of accepting (to say nothing of midst of a series of modulations. In themselves forgetting) another man's life? Escape to what? and in their variants they speak everywhere for Because the film is an address to the people. the ritualized distrust of and withdrawal from of Germany and France, we must finally exam- whatever puts a smudge on the immaculate ~iiiiiiii-i.~:ilis:ii; :::::::''::' ::::l::i::~ :?:_:::: ~:::(-:-::-?'::~:::i ::::::- ::??:;i:::::::j O-`.ia 1::i:::_:::::: ::::-::::::: ~i-Di:i-i?-:_i-i:i:_-

LA GRANDE ILLUSION: Arrival at the first prison camp. glove, photograph, or honor of the career officer. They have the look of manliness and the reality of suicidal courage; nowhere does Renoir disgrace them, as Zola would have done, with blunt, impatient "disclosures" of their dark side; and the watcher with a taste for soap- opera (or Hemingway) sentiment will see only beautiful reserve in the last words of Boeldieu and Rauffenstein. But through these words we can also see the dead end of a way of life which gives men nothing more to say to each other than small talk about marksmanship and agree- Boeldieu's surrogate, von Rauffenstein. Imme- ment that death is "a good solution." To those diately after we leave Boeldieu about to dress who are outraged by my discounting of the for flight, we meet Rauffenstein just taking off eloquence of the deathbed scene I can only say his flying clothes in his canteen-practically a that I, too, have tried to find in it an argument replica of the French canteen-after the flight against war based on the sense of waste we feel during which he shot down Boeldieu and Mare- when we see the flower of a nation's honor in- chal. The ease of this transition from freedom extricably trapped into killing each other. How- to captivity is one of the brilliant strokes of the ever, I prefer to agree with Boeldieu, rather film. It lets us know directly that we are not to than cry for him: the "good solution" he reaches be bothered by a rehash of patriotic hostilities he has prepared, like the mathematician of be- and heroics, that except for the one great cir- havior he is, with all but conscious accuracy. cumstance which makes some men captors and To cancel his death is to cancel the other side others captives, life and motives are pretty of his equation-his life; and the impulse to do much the same on either side of the line. The this comes from what he calls the "shop-girl central event of the episode is the dinner-a soul." model of Hohenzollern gallantry-to which If we have come a long way from the Rauffenstein treats his enemy. It is a courtly, smudged reconnaissance photo, it is by a logic almost formal affair, despite the operation-shack which finds in honor a ritual suicide only slightly surroundings, resolutely above any cheap tri- more disguised than Russian roulette, and in umph or rancor, and Marichal, the "officer by this "dignified" suicide a disguise for the per- accident," as the script describes him, seems fectionist's fastidious rejection of life along with almost imperceptibly out of place. Decidedly other messes. The logic, retraced, brings us to in place, however, and perhaps definitively so, the end of the first episode and de Boeldieu's is the unfortunate entry of a black wreath of amusing, suavely sarcastic indifference to which mourning about to be delivered as a memorial sort of flying clothes he will wear: the goatskin to a fallen French pilot. The grace of Rauffen- suits smell bad, while the fur suits shed hairs stein's apology for the incident, like the grace on his uniform. of his apology to Boeldieu later, cannot quite The polarity of Mar6chal and Boeldieu might disguise the fact that the fraternity of honor have become clumsy and loud if its extremes includes among its other courtesies that of had not been assigned to characters more re- mutual extinction, and the party is spared the mote from each other. The next two episodes stress of proving its ability to respect this con- introduce these surrogate figures in a beauti- dition by the arrival of the civilian police, who fully subdued and suggestive sequence. First, lead the prisoners off. 14

Very different is the dinner to which Rosen- anywhere and everywhere (Rosenthal was born thal-Marechal's surrogate-treats them. Just as in Vienna of a Danish mother and a French- the expected hostility of the conqueror fails to naturalized Pole), is ingratiating, flourishing, materialize at the front, so at the prison camp and assuming the places-in one sense, at least- the cliche brutalities and deprivations are re- of the first. placed by conviviality and, thanks to Rosenthal, Renoir redeems this banal motif by the qual- abundance. There is a slap-dash, gossipy fa- ity of the association between Rosenthal and miliarity immediately set up, from which de Mar6chal. In the postscript to the film, to which Boeldieu seems slightly distinct, as did Mare- I referred earlier, Renoir speaks of a ground of chal on the preceding occasion. The quiet, understanding (un terrain d'entente) to be dis- bracketed exchange at the front, in which Mare- covered by men of good will, the true pacifists, chal and Broiler, one of the German officers, dis- whom he identifies as "authentic" Frenchmen, cover that they have a trade in common, here Americans, Germans, etc. This terrain appears becomes the tone of the occasion, open, eager, in the film as Switzerland, the land whose fron- relaxed. These men are a civilian army, appar- tiers are man-made, unnatural, as Rosenthal ently more concerned with comfort and rapport tells us at the end of the film-the refuge from than with the practice of war. They do not enmities, the symbol of international sanctuary. brace themselves with any pretensions, their Mar6chal is an "authentic" Frenchman, and he motives for escape are as vague as their motives does cross over into the land of understanding for fighting, and as various, while those of the in a gesture of hope-not unmixed with irony, career officers are single and clear. Their war as we have seen, but still hope, and even en- is not the daytime chivalry of the air, but sur- couragement. But what of Rosenthal? We have reptitious nightly burrowing in the earth; and been carefully told that his Frenchness, like their reward is not a funeral wreath, but, as the the food which reaches him in prison, is by engineer among them puns, "une salade de pis- special favor, whatever may be his legal status. senlits."* They too have a "death's-head" at And yet it is Rosenthal who has the map of how the banquet, but appropriately lacking in glam- to get to Switzerland, the map for which Mare- our-the dull, cuckolded, square teacher, the chal once thought him as mad as the translator epitome of petit-bourgeois failure. of Pindar or the Senegalese with his drawing of The polarity of Rauffenstein and Rosenthal Justice prosecuting Crime. The point would is too obvious to call for much explication. seem to be that it is the mark of the authentic Junker and Jew were as relevant in 1938 as they Frenchman (or German, etc.) that he will put could ever be, and there is not time here to humanity-not some "other" nation, but human- explore all the varieties which keep the polarity ity as detached as possible from specific na- alive but not obtrusive. More interesting than tional loyalties-before Frenchness, and that their personal differences are the clusters of when Marechal identifies himself with Rosen- ideas which gather around them. Each is repre- thal he finds "Switzerland." (Boeldieu's part sentative of a brotherhood, an international in the escape I shall take up later.) elite. Rauffenstein is the spokesman for the The faint resonance of "salvation" here is European corps of military aristocracy left over supported by Rosenthal's joking reference to from the French Revolution, Rosenthal for the Jesus as "my racial brother" during the Christ- international fraternity (French jargon for mas Eve party at the farm, and by the obvious Jewry) of the chosen people. The one is jeal- value of some form of Christian reference in a ous, exclusive, moribund, and in the process of pacifist appeal. Here, as always, Rosenthal and being dispossessed; the other aspires to belong Rauffenstein are arranged as opposites. To * A crucial pun. Pissenlits are a kind of poor man's radish; but also, "mangerdes pissenlits" (to eat pissa- beds) is slang for "to die," about equivalent to our "pushingup daisies." 15

Rauffenstein belong all the vestiges of Christian soldiers, in a world of cosmopolitan isolation. faith. His bedroom at the fortress is the ruined And there is a touch of almost real regret in chapel, and we are introduced to it and to him Rauffenstein's voice when he deplores the com- in his new capacity as jailer by a pan which ing translation of "poor old Pindar." begins at a crucifix in stained glass. The death If we accept the polarity of ceremony and in- of Boeldieu, in that same chapel, is introduced stinct as the scene, so to speak, of the action, by the priest closing the case over his missal, we can see how much of the film is devoted to after administering extreme unction. To the establishing the scene and the place of the despised Rosenthal, on the other hand, occurs various figures within it. But we have not said the idea of celebrating-not a death, but the much about the action itself. In its simplest Nativity, and of carving the Holy Family out form, La Grande Illusion is the story of an of food-potatoes! escape from prison. With certain scenic and A vague cultural corollary to the religious narrative embellishments the prison develops placement of the two men appears in the prop- metaphorical qualities. The prisoners go farther erties we find in their cinematic portraits. and farther into a world of rock and snow and Rosenthal is typically filmed against a back- heights and age, where nothing can grow except ground of Botticelli reproductions and musical one carefully tended flower. The sculpture, the instruments, though he never talks about any commandant, the guards-everything is old, interest in these arts. The typical background useless for anything except to constrict. In this for Rauffenstein includes the photographic por- sense the fortress-its name is Wintersborn-is trait of the Kaiser and Empress (these are gen- really a state of mind as well as a prison. To erally relevant to the German side of the film, escape from it, if you really have been in it, in of course-one thinks of the huge photos at the the psychological sense, you must leave behind German drinking hall in the first prison, and of that part of you which is identified with it, and Elsa's family portrait at the farm), and the in doing so you sacrifice part of yourself. It is melange of weapons, toilet articles, and souve- in this way, I think, that we are to understand nirs of the chic bachelor. the "sacrifice" of Boeldieu. To think of Boel- As we move farther away from both the dieu as a man who sacrifices himself "for"Mare- Marechal-Boeldieu axis and its complement, we chal and Rosenthal is to misunderstand and meet more abstract versions of the split. Lan- perhaps to belittle him. We must remember guage, for example, is a key tool for discrimi- that when the time was approaching for the nating between "sides." Again and again we first escape, and Mar6chal was in solitary con- find the language barrier is only superficially a finement, Boeldieu showed no compunction at barrier. We see a Russian trying in vain to leaving Mar6chal behind. Only Rosenthal felt teach Russian to a Frenchman; Mar6chal tries that. And when Marechal tried to express some unsuccessfully to tell an English officer just ar- thanks for what de Boeldieu was about to do at riving about the nearly-completed escape tunnel Wintersborn, de Boeldieu cut him off-partly, at the prison camp he is leaving; he goes nearly no doubt, because there is something distasteful frantic with frustration at not hearing French in any such attempt, but partly, also, because while he is in solitary confinement; he can Boeldieu was in fact not doing it for Mar6chal hardly say a word to Elsa. But the "entente" in and Rosenthal at all, but doing it in line with most such cases is there, even if the vocabulary his attitude earlier: "What is a golf course for? is not-an entente depending finally on national To play golf. What is a tennis court for? To authenticity rather than language. The facility play tennis. What is a prison for? To escape in language of Rauffenstein and Boeldieu tends from." This is not precisely a man executing an critically to emphasize their privacy-thus, the assignment; rather, a man putting his life into exchange leading up to the shooting of Boeldieu practice. Fundamentally there is nothing acci- is in English, which puts it beyond the listening dental in his death, any more than there is any 16

real military exigency behind Rauffenstein's equivalent - "Switzerland"- to which he may plea-"[Stop or] I'll have to shoot you." The here and now "cross over"; the war stretches death of one and dereliction of the other are before and after the action of the film. But to built into their morale, and the fortress prison think of the action as an ironic dialectic is to is the scenic metaphor of their destiny. Boel- settle for a futile tease under the name of dieu is sacrificed, but not so much by himself as tragedy, or at best a vague rousing of ourselves by the moral imagination that created him. to prevent such a waste. The film is quieter, The escape is a confusion of trials, sufferings, more explicit than that. anger, insults, and affection for Marechal and Rosenthal, whose uninhibited releasings of emo- One of the many motifs we must leave un- tion vividly contrast with the polite, unchang- examined is that of theatricality. Customary as ing (and fatal) relations of their opposites. The the motif is in Renoir, it is especially suggestive German farm to which they finally win is the here. The insistence war brings upon fixed metaphorical opposite to Wintersborn. It, also, functions or ranks or sides or roles prompts a is on a mountain-top, with the same horizon, counterplay of confusion or switch, and both but here Renoir writes freedom upon every- vocabulary and device in the film deal con- thing, with a stream of lovely frames in which stantly with these possibilities, in an attempt to open windows and doors spilling sunlight and sort out, after various stages of confusion and the sense of distance combine with food and resettlement, at least some realities. As we love unhesitatingly offered to make a kind of might expect, the devices bear most upon Mar&- dream of gratification. It is only when the time chal and de Boeldieu and upon the escape. We has come to leave for the Swiss border that we learn that in their various attempts to escape, realize with Marichal the profundity and im- Mar6chal always disguises himself, whereas de possibility of the peace he has been offered, Boeldieu, while he will bear the "smudges" of and, beyond him, its place in the dialectical garbage cans, laundry baskets, and the like, and action of the film. In this anonymous, irretriev- the more abstract humiliation of "making one- able life we are given the terms of the pacifist's self small," as he says, will never disguise him- peace, not that we may have them, but that we self. (Nor does he take a part in the musicale.) may know them. The scene onto which the But he refers to the coming escape at Winters- "authentic" man or pacifist steps is defined by born as a performance for which a rehearsal has conflict. There is no farm, nor its national been provided, and he himself is the central performer-playing in a grotesquely un-Boel- dieu-like way upon a fife (for which instrument he has a horror, as we learn earlier). If I understand the film properly, these inversions (they LA GRANDE ILLUSION: Wintersborn-stone are virtually innumerable) are a context for the walls, white gloves, and the realities (ironic, it is true) of death and freedom geranium,possibly the most famous flower which the two heroes achieve, but any kind of in screen history. adequate explication must be deferred. .'.'' So much praise has fallen to the artistry of -i~~ ..-i :I-- s;:ai~: -iBiQ; this film that I hesitate to add more. Symbolic ~jcl~g ggjidni;-' of its fidelity to observable life is the uniform -?~ Gabin wears as Mar6chal-Renoir himself once ;;;i. wore it as a pilot in World War I. But every- %-~ where the authentic background detail (to which Renoir paid very close attention) con- -;;;:;;; verts to meaningful participation. One thinks of the ubiquitous "no passage" signs; the con-

:;; 10,MUM.M ...... U-T 44 T".0Om 151, 'rm'.Mr Nil Ar: t7s Ull ...... p:jff. . wi!. trast of the random,casual prisonerformations ji. 'V:FFi! and the strict marching of German soldiers in ...... the background;the posterof prisonregulations IT' which stands between Marechal and de Boel- 'n dieu during their last good-bye. But more im- 1.1vt portant than the profusion of this detail is its M-1 N;H.".. freedom from seeming "made"or set up: the 'I film is a model of relaxed,harmonious style. When a cast has fulfilled, as this one has, '7;A everything its directorcould ask, one can only gij praise or compare performancesin terms not strictly just to the actors. Thus, the rightness of Gabin's performancedoes not quite over- F; come my sense that he is, by comparisonwith !Rw! von Stroheim,a bit dull. Once, on the way from !g the cow shed to the farmhouse,he takes up a hatchet and sinks it cleanly farther into its stump. This little bonus of vitality is worth the Erichvon Stroheim rest of his "art"combined-it is, in fact, his art: an aura of good-natured,robust nonchalance, capable of real but limited sensitivity. And Fresnay, perfect as he may be, chooses or exe- cutes a perfection which cuts him off from too CLASSIFIEDSECTION much. It is really von Stroheim,converting the Prussian mask into a register of extraordinary range, from crude disdain to the most delicate WORLD S LARGESTCOLLECTION OF BOOKS anguish,whose performanceshows the greatest ON THE CINEMA. SEND FOR FREE LIST. depth and control. LARRYEDMUNDS BOOKSHOP, 6658 HoLLY- Renoir's gift for compositionalbeauty, usu- WOOD BOULEVARD, HOLLYWOOD 28, CALIF. ally absorbed in revealing the players at their INQIuIESINVrrED. best, adds real meaning to the film. The fram- ing device of doors and windows so familiarin all his work has special significancein a context CLASSIFIEDRATES: 10# per word. Remit- of escape and illusion. Trying, as he is, to state tance must accompany insertion order. a truth about human possibilityin terms which would be betrayed by dramatic intensity, he finds in the camera'ssteady revelationsa wonderful resource. Perhaps the finest example is BINDERS the series of compositionsat the farm. After the FILM claustrophobic density of the Wintersborn FOR QUARTERLY walls, and the perilous implicationsof its win- Attractive black imitation leather dows; after the bleak, shapeless exposures of Hold eight issues the flight through the mountains, the shelter $3.50 and freedom of the domestic life, multiplied (+ 140 sales tax in Calif.) with one invention after another of door and Periodicals Department window composition,is transposedalmost into that other dimension"where ask is have, where University of California Press seek is find, where knock is open wide." Berkeley 4, California 18

PETER BOGDANOVICH

An Interview with Sidney Lumet

Lumet was a child actor on Broadway, appearing in such plays as MY HEART'SIN THE HIGHLANDS,DEAD END, and THE ETERNALROAD. After the Army, he did some off-Broadway directing, then in 1950 moved to television, where he has directed hundreds of shows, including such two-part "spectaculars" as ALL THE KING'S MEN and THE SACCO-VANZETTI CASE. On the New York stage he has directed Shaw's THE DOCTOR'SDILEMMA, Arch Oboler's NIGHT OF THE AUK, and Camus' CALIGULA. His four films, which have all been made on the East Coast, are TWELVEANGRY MEN (1957), STAGE STRUCK (1958), THAT KIND OF WOMAN (1959), and THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960). Lumet is one of a group of young directors trained in television and stage work (Mann and Ritt are two others) who have been looked upon as likely to bring a new directness and sophistication to film. While the contributions of these men have not measured up to early expectations, their attitude toward film remains an interesting one. The following interview has been somewhat abridged for publication.

Could you say somethingabout the problems dramatically it's always a fuller thing for him of making FUGITIVEKIND? to write a woman protagonist-his great parts They were always the original ones that came have been women's parts. Whatever solutions up in rehearsal or in the initial discussion of the I'd come up with would not work for Tennessee, script which we were all aware of-Tennessee and you can't force a situation, you know, it has [Williams], Anna [Magnani], myself, Marlon to fit organically into what he had in mind and [Brando]-which was that the boy's character into what flows easily for him to write. And disappeared over the last half of the picture. that we never found, and to me it's the failing of This was true of the play [Orpheus Descend- the picture. I love the picture, I think it's got ing] as well. And constantly the problem was some remarkable things in it and some of his how to activate him, how to make him a driv- most beautiful writing. And thematically it's, to ing force in the picture, because it is Orpheus me, the finest of his pieces-thematically. I'm descending, and it's very hard to do Orpheus not talking about the dramatic completion of it. Descending without Orpheus. Do you rehearseextensively before you start Wamsn'tthere anything Williams could do shooting? about that? Yes, I like to rehearse a minimum of two He wanted to. His problem was that he weeks before I shoot. Now that was another started off wanting a play about Orpheus, and problem-Anna has never rehearsed, she's never ::-:--::::-~i:-41 Ix

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done a play. I like to stage it before I start PhotographerBoris Kaufman(with cigar) and shooting, and it was physically impossible for director Sidney L~vmetshooting with Marlon her to work with a table that was supposed to Brando in THE FUGITIVEKIND. be a counter, with two chairs supposed to be a door-she literally could not visualize a set. that you use to focus dramaticattention and so The sheer theatricalprocess is an alien one to on. And it's also a differenceinternally-for in- her, so as a result some of the subsequentprob- stance, I've seen some Shakespeareon TV and lems that came up normallywould have come it's been disastrous. I wonder if the sheer physi- up in rehearsal. cal size of the screen isn't something that auto- You have directed extensively on television; matically rules out tragedy, for example. In what are the biggest differences you found be- otherwords, maybe TV is irrevocablystuck with tween directing for films and television? drama, melodrama-one may never be able to Scale. It's the difference between working do genuine tragedy on TV. on a 21-inch canvas and a 75-foot canvas, and Then you must be against the showing of that's a tremendous difference. That doesn't movies on television. mean that there aren't things that can work in Yeah, it's incredible. It's one of the reasons both-there's a certainlevel of dramathat works I don't think pay-TV is going to be the pana- in everything-but directorially it's a shift in cea that the Hollywood people think it's going the eye; it's a shift in the instruments,the tools to be. Take a picture like Red River-now, I 20 know, nonsense story-line-it's a superb film. screenplays or collaborate extensively with Cinematically it's an extraordinary piece of others on scripts. To date you haven't done work. And what [Howard] Hawks did in terms either; do you think you'd find it more satisfy- of the reality of a cattle drive, it's, to me, on ing to work on scripts rather than just do the the level with what [John] Ford did with Stage- best you can with material you are given? coach. But you see it on television and it's just It's not "either/or." I can't write. And I have shots of cows going by-it's pointless, it's mean- such respect for writers-I don't understand how ingless, it seems as if it's overlong, its majesty two writers collaborate, for instance-so that the is lost. method for myself is one simply of letting them Now what are the differences you found in do their work, then going back into work in directing for the stage and movies? terms of whatever specifics are needed, whether To begin with, they're even farther apart it's structural or dialogue. On Fugitive Kind, than television and motion pictures. To me, for instance, there was a good deal of re-writ- far more things can be interchanged between ing between the original draft and what wound television and motion pictures than between up on the screen. theater and motion pictures. The theater, for Did you have a say in that? all its attempts at realism for the past thirty Oh, yeah. And the working procedure was years, is a totally unreal medium-its essence that Tennessee and Meade [Roberts] brought is really poetic rather than literal. The screen in the first draft, then all of us together talk, can become poetic but, God knows, the ma- talk, talk, talk, talk-back, another draft, talk, jority of the good work has been devoted to talk, talk, talk, talk-back, another draft-I think literal and realistic, representational art. So it's it was the fourth draft we used. an enormous difference-the difference between Boris Kaufman was your photographer on poetry and prose. every film except STAGESTRUCK; how large do What have you found to be your main ob- you feel is his contribution when an evaluation stacle in film work? of the final work is made? For myself the main obstacle is the set-up, Well, Boris is a rarity, because there are loads the film in America. The financial set-up, the of brilliant technical people-and he is brilliant method of making motion pictures, and the technically-but his real artistry comes through method of distribution is one that conspires in the fact that I don't know of another camera- to defeat freedom and good work. And I sup- man who has the sense of dramatic interpreta- pose it's the age-old complaint, there's no solution that Boris has. When Boris and I have tion that I know of. I know every once in a worked together there's never been any instance while somebody just takes a camera and goes where we haven't done something outrageously off into the street, but what if you had a piece new-though they don't jump out at you in the that doesn't belong in the street? What if your films, thank God. The camera becomes another piece needs a sumptuousness and a sensuous- leading actor. There are two basic philosophies ness as part of its dramatic meaning? And, you -and traps-that I think directors fall into: know, documentaries and semi-documentaries one of well-just-let-me-lay-back-and-just-show- are not the only method of work in film. And what's-going-on, just-let-me-record-it, or the as soon as you get past that level, financially converse, the shooting-through-the-crot

citement-certainly in terms of literature and ?:It painting-Los Angeles never. They're isolated in Hollywood, in other words. Yeah, I feel that in order to get some sunlight they went to a completely dead spot. And it's interesting because all the directors that I respect have gotten away from there as fast as they could. Zinnemann hasn't made a picture in Hollywood I don't think in five years, Gadge [Elia Kazan] hasn't made a picture in Holly- wood in seven years. [George] Stevens has, and I think it's showing in the work. How would you explain then the great films that have been made in Hollywood, say in the 'twenties and 'thirties? When you hire the most talented people alive -literally-assembled from all over the world, to work there, of course you're gonna have some good ones. And also good work is possible any place. I don't mean that Hollywood kills work, I just think it makes it tougher to do good work. Now that the autocracy of the major studios is over, do you think the independents have dearth of talent out there. What do you think raised the level of films in America? are the reasons for the cultural desert on the No, because basically they're the same guys West Coast? who just didn't have a chance when the studios This is gonna sound spooky-I think it goes were tight and strong. With all due respect back much farther than Hollywood. That place and affection for United Artists, they're not risk- has no reason for being. It seems to me-as ing a bloody thing; you still come into UA with far as I know-I'm not the most erudite person a star versus a budget. And it is basically the in the world-but all the great centers of art same procedure at Metro. [Sam] Spiegel, every have been centers of other things. They've once in a while-because he'll produce a winner either been a geographical center of the coun- like River Kwai-is allowed to try something off- try or they've been a seaport-whether it's been beat. But he knows full well that he has to keep Venice, Florence, Rome, London, Paris, New returning financial winners. I know I'm very York, Berlin-they've had other functions; the pressured by this. I hope Fugitive Kind makes life of the place has been connected to the main a lot of money because none of my pictures stream of life of that nation, of those people, have made a lot of money and I need one. I and art came as a flower of that. Now, Los know my employment will be directly affected Angeles [laugh], I'm sorry, it's not a seaport, by it. So it isn't really independent production it's lousy land for farming, it's got no reason for -nobody gets together and says, "Hey, lets being. Right now it's got aircraft factories, and make a movie about ..." What's basically maybe in 500 years aircraft factories'll be a happened, I feel, is that because of financial reason for having a city. But up till now there reasons the actors have begun to dominate the hasn't been. It seems to me that it's extremely market completely, and that's a good move only difficult for any creative work to latch itself on because as long as it's a roulette game I'd just to an unorganic place. I think it's interesting as soon see the people who are actually spin- that San Francisco's always had the artistic ex- ning the wheel get the largest share of the 22 dough. I don't think it's accomplished anything What film-makers,if any, have most influ- creatively. I think most of the actors who kept enced your work in movies? saying, "Oh, God, if I ever have my own inde- I don't think any. I have great respect for pendent company, boy, will I do good stuff .. ." about, I guess, seven or eight directors-Jean have turned out the same crap that Louis B. Vigo, Carl Dreyer, Ren6 Clair, De Sica, Wyler, Mayer used to do-only not as well. Zinnemann. Do you think there is a cinematic movement Having been an actor, what do you think a in to Americacoming compete with the French stage performerfinds most difficultin adjusting "New Wave"? to pictures? I don't. I hate to be I No, pessimistic, don't Probably the toughest problem is for him to at all. Rose and I've been Reggie trying for keep a knowledge of the point of development a and a half to done a year get piece that he or the point of transition that his character is a brilliant called Black wrote, piece Monday, at because of the out-of-sequence problem and which is the of a Southern town on story the the working in small sections. So that the first of of schools. And day integration we're growth, the tiny motivating rivulets that go not it it's that just gonna get done, simple. Out into the big stream of the entire character, tend of the nature of the it's very subject matter, to get lost and he tends to become general and be gotta big. The financial problem is getting act attitudes, because his concentration is scat- severe now in terms of extremely getting money tered and he doesn't quite know where he's at. to do a I the that in five picture. think, by way, It's one of the reasons I like the rehearsal pro- it's to be be- years going absolutely marvelous, cedure so, because it gives him a very clear cause we're to have the going financing way idea of the sweep of the man. On every picture are financed: a bunch of to- plays people get except Fugitive Kind the last four days of re- and rise or fall with gether, put up money, you hearsal were run-throughs just like a play or the quality of the piece. a television show. Do you think the recent the What do think loosening of you are the advantagesor dis- Production Code has really helped wide Hollywood advantagesof screen, CinemaScope,stere- films toward attaining greater maturity? and the like? ophonic sound, Oh, no, they're just exploiting it for box office. I think I think they're ridiculous, they're William Wyler's films have always been mature I think pointless, they're typical Hollywood whether he could say "bastard" on the screen or products. And typical Hollywood mentality, not. You know, it's like CinemaScope. They're because the essence of dramatic is any piece using it so that they can start putting on the and it is that people, symptomatic Hollywood screen some of the things they've got in the ads. finds a of way photographing people directly Almost every directoris occasionallyexposed opposite to the way people are built. Cinema- to withering critiquesof his work, and it would Scope makes no sense until people are fatter be interesting to know what a director would than they are taller. answer, what he thinks when he reads such a Why then do serious directorslike Kazan or notice. Stevens choose to work in CinemaScope? There's just nothing you can do because don't there's no choice. They choose, When you're talking from such completely different Stevens does a for picture 20th Century-Fox he frames of reference, you know, has to you just gotta shoot in CinemaScope. On Anne Frank, let it go. And some of the he greatest significances fought for six months trying not to shoot it as well as some of the attacks are in greatest at- CinemaScope and then had to. Spent all his tributed to complete accidents. On All the time with the art director trying to figure out King's Men I read a review which loved the beams and to cut down girders the sides of show and which called me a genius because in the screen, and how to isolate what he wanted. the first scene when Willie Stark was on his way 23 up, talking to the people, I'd shot reactions of movies simply because it takes the longest. I the crowd in the stand, the wildness of the faces mean, to me the ideal set-up would be a picture and so on-and then in the second part, which a year, a play a year, and about three months came on a week later, when he'd been in power of televisiona year-because each one gives you for six years, he was makingan outdooraddress such a shaking-upfor the other, they all help and I played it in the rain with umbrellas- one anotherbecause the problemsare so totally visually it was quite exciting-and how wasn't different. this marvelousthat on his way up he was related Joseph Mankiewiczhas been quoted as say- to the people and looking them in the eye, and ing that he fails to see any basic difference be- here he was now like standingover their graves tween the theater and the movies; what would and they'recovered with umbrellas. The reason you say to that? for it was very simple-I used up all the money Well, I don't agree. He should do a play for extras on the first show and on the second again and see. show I needed a crowd of fifty and I could only What do you think leads a director to say a afford twenty people so I gave them umbrellas thing like that? which spread everybody out [laugh]. So, go I haven't the remotest idea. People say figure. strange things in interviews, myself included. Completefreedom granted, would you rather I'm always horrifiedby them when I read them work in films, television, or the theater? back. I never want to give up any one of them. I guess I'd spend the majority of time in the

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The Festival Scene, 1960

Although some of our readers will be familiar with the recent film festivals from accounts in other publications which appear more frequently, we present below reports on the festivals of Berlin, Karlovy-Vary (Czechoslovakia), Venice, and London, concentrating on critical accounts of the most interesting films from each but also giving a general sketch of the atmosphere for readers who may not have access to earlier coverage. (Similar treatment is given the San Francisco Festival: reviews of films shown at San Francisco may be found in the review section, and comment on the festival as a whole appears in the Editor's Notebook.)

CYNTHIA GRENIER Berlin, Karlovy-Vary, Venice

Certainly 1960 has given film festival followers matically lower the artistic level of the festival. a rough year. Not that each festival did not The first Thai or Mongolian feature film, for turn up at least one or two remarkable films, but instance, has little more than a passing socio- they left an impression of scatter, and one be- ethnographic interest for the film critic. But came acutely conscious that there are always each festival carries a large share of these usu- too many inferior pictures included in the com- ally sincere but inept efforts for the sake of petitions-often for reasons far removed from public relations or propaganda. their aesthetic worth. Cannes came off the best Naturally enough the United States vigor- ultimately [see Film Quarterly, Summer 1960] ously supported the Berlin Festival, particularly with its length-three weeks-being its principal since the Motion Picture Export Association sin. was irked over past treatment at Cannes and The tenth Berlin Filmfestspiel and the twelfth Venice and hoped to demonstrate its power in Karlovy - Vary Mezinarodni Filmovy Festival this area by making the German event outshine should be discussed together; both, although the other two simply on the basis of heavy nominally cinema events, serve quite overtly as American participation. Eric Johnston, Gene propaganda weapons in the ideological struggle Kelly, Cary Grant, Jo Van Fleet, and Tina between the Western and Communist worlds. Louise were flown in for glamor. The U.S. In- Each festival is industriously used by its or- formation Agency presented a series of old ganizers and some of the major participants American film classics and a fancy exhibit on (the United States in the case of Berlin, and the the history of animated cartoons at Amerika USSR for Karlovy-Vary) to help influence Haus. And, to be fair, it should be noted that people and make friends-usually of those from the United States had a better than average Africa and Asia. This results in the presence of national selection of films in the competition, a large number of exotically clad folk who are consisting of Kramer's Inherit the Wind, Kazan's heavily publicized. Their films, however, auto- Wild River, and Disney'sJungle Cats. Genevidve Cluny and Jean-PierreCassel in iiiiiiiii(- LES JEUX DEL'AMOUR, "a pleasantpiece of fluff" directed by Philippe de Broca. ?-IN

l Golden Bear went to Laza- iFv :~:~ top prize Spain's ; I-: ...... tll~n ???? rillo de Tormes of Cesar Ardavin. There was ?eee much talk of hanky-panky between the jury and the Spaniards, the latter reportedly being des- :: ~el perately determined to cop a Grand Prize for their country at some film festival this year. A twenty-man delegation wined, dined, and hard- sold the jury throughout the festival. The Spanish film is a faithful recounting of a famous sixteenth-century picaresque novel with good costumes and an excellent use of period architecture and landscapes. But the casting of a plump, nasty child actor in the lead ultimately spoiled the film. The OCIC (Catholic Film Office) and the Second prize Silver Bear went to the French FIRPRESCI (International Film Critics) New Wave comedy, Les Jeux de l'Amour awarded their prizes, for the first time in their (Games of Love), made by Chabrol's former mutual history, to the same film, The Angry assistant Philippe de Broca. A pleasant piece Silence from Great Britain. This brought on the of fluff, it recounts the problems of a girl trying first and only ovation, and a wild one by the to get her lover to convert his status to that of standards of other festivals. husband, but it hardly seemed like festival, let For critics and public alike had tagged this alone prize material. The film does have one independent British production by Richard At- major asset in the presence of a highly inventive tenborough, Bryan Forbes, and Guy Greene- young comic actor, Jean-Pierre Cassel; at the respectively actor, scenario writer, and director rate he is filming these days, he should be an -as the probable Golden Bear. The story of a international star in about a year's time. worker "sent to Coventry"-given the silent France went on to garner the prize for best treatment-for not joining in a wildcat strike direction with A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) was simply done, well shot, with brilliantly by pale, dark-glassed 26-year-old Jean-Luc accurate, realistic dialogue. Godard, formerly of the Cahiers du Cinema gang. Already tremendously successful in Coming right on the heels of the Berlin Festi- France, the film was thrown together with val, Karlovy-Vary despite its location behind hand-held camera, improvised dialogue, sketchy the Iron Curtain (a fact one is forcibly made script, and has a thoroughgoing home-movie conscious of by the three-hour wait at the look about it. Possibly its success is due to the border while the train is searched with a terrify- novelty of people never having seen such a ing thoroughness) surprises by being a beauti- poorly made film on a public screen before. fully organized, admirably functioning affair. French New Wave favorite Juliette Mayniel The town, about two hours from the West Ger- received a prize for her performance in a Ger- man border, is famous for its waters, and is man film, Kermes, by Wolfgang Staudte. The small and pleasantly Edwardian in character. remaining prize went to the United States for All the festival activity is centered in two large Fredric March's performance in Inherit the hotels on a small square split by a pretty, rip- Wind. pling river. The public received all these awards with The general level of films shown was dis- polite applause, as it had all the films. The tressingly and consistently low with far fewer Berlin public was surprisingly polite and un- exceptions than Berlin, but there was an ex- responsive throughout the whole festival, in traordinarily live atmosphere which gradually fact. grew during the two weeks and more than 26 made up for the poor quality of the pictures. plicated clown-spy in one of the fanciest circuses This atmosphere was largely created by the ever filmed. Visually it looked as if young presence of a sizable number of young film- Brynych had pulled out all the stops: wild makers from both East and West. The term camera angles, plunging shots, the works. "Nouvelle Vague" was rampant, even among Sometimes it seemed pretentious, but on the people from the USSR and other countries of whole one was left with the definite impression the Soviet bloc who had never seen a single that the man had talent. In any case, the whole New Wave film. (Those in the Soviet bloc who freewheeling style was very unorthodox indeed had seen some examples of the New Wave-Les considering where the director came from. Cousins, Les 400 Coups, Les Amants-were The picture brought on a discussion of what pretty disturbed by the lack of uplift and vir- was socialist realism, and whether the time had tuous morality to which they are accustomed in come to alter the term or its definition since, their films. French leftist critic and historian, clearly, a film like Smyk no longer fitted the Georges Sadoul, tried to reassure them in the classic definition. Everyone pushed at this with daily Open Forum discussions by saying that great interest and energy, but ultimately never these young directors could be considered as came to making any concrete statement on it. serving a kind of apprenticeship now, and in Apart from Smyk about the only other film time might come into the progressive camp. He of interest was the Soviet entry, Seriozha, by observed that their pessimism was probably two young directors, which won the Great Crys- temporary and that progressive critics should tal Globe-first prize. Thanks to a genuinely help ease their passage into the progressive appealing youngster who was surprisingly in- camp. Sadly, there was no one present from ventive and subtle for a 6-year-old, the rather the New Wave to comment on this interesting simple story of a little boy growing accustomed suggestion! ) to his new stepfather came off pleasantly and The Czech official entry, Smyk, by 27-year- painlessly. old Zbynek Brynych, surprised almost everyone Curiously, Bridge Over the River Kwai was by being a radical departure from the tradi- shown three times during the festival and had tional forms of "socialist realism." The story a tremendous success. It was played in an line was pretty tricky, not to say downright open-air theater seating 3500. Two of the three confusing, even to Czechs. A bitter young nights it rained. The people just wrapped blan- Czech goes West, gets a plastic surgery job, kets around themselves, pulled sheets of plastic learns spying to the tune of the Colonel Bogey over the blankets and huddled under umbrellas. march, and returns to his native land as a com- The surrounding hillside was filled with people, most of whom couldn't see the screen, and could only listen to American voices which they couldn't understand. Buses brought people from 800 miles away. A reaction like that to one of our films is impressive and a little fright- ening. It shows how terribly hungry people like the Czechs are to get a look at American films, which haven't been seen in Czechoslovakia for more than ten years. The big fireworks of the festival for most people came when a young Polish scriptwriter, Alexander Rylski, adjusted his hornrims on his 31: nose and stated calmly to some two hundred movie people and journalists in the morning wt: Open Forum that he didn't know about them,

From SMYK, by Zbynek Brynych. 27 but he himself hadn't seen a good Soviet movie to go to lunch-western journalists asked the in years, and that Soviet concepts of human Poles whether they mightn't risk getting in nature tended to be far too simple for his tastes. trouble, once back home, for their outspoken- You could feel the shock waves going right ness. "Do you think we're Czechs, East Ger- through the audience. mans, or what-have-you?" they asked. "We're Next morning the head of the Soviet delega- Poles. It's not the same in Poland. Nothing tion, white-haired long-time movie-maker Mik- will happen to us, and we'll be allowed to go to hail Romm, took the floor. Quivering with fury, other festivals. Don't worry about us." And he first described Rylski's film, The Last Night, one believed them. shown the night before, as the banal, third-rate work of a hack. (Unfortunately the Pole's film The Venice Festival, which followed on the seemed interesting but gave little in transla- heels of Karlovy-Vary, wound up with one of tion.) Romm seemed particularly wrought up the biggest, noisiest, and most heartfelt demon- because young Rylski hadn't been sorry Soviet strations ever witnessed at a film festival. The films weren't good. "He didn't even express the announcing of the Golden Lion first prize to wish they might improve!" he fumed. France's Andre Cayette for Le Passage du Rhin This session led right into a Polish press con- touched off a stamping, hooting, whistling, ference held in a fuddily ornate bar. No one screaming twenty-minute protest which com- paid much attention to the sandwiches and pletely drowned out the reading of the other slivovitz being passed around when Rylski got awards. The elegantly clad Venetian audi- up to comment on Romm's attack. He straight- ence chanted in loud rhythm "Vis-con-ti, Vis- ened his yellow leather jacket, smiled: "I don't con-ti," the name of the director they felt was see why Mr. Romm wants to put this discussion being done wrong. The American, Polish, Eng- on a political basis. For me, capitalism and lish, Argentinian, and Soviet members of the socialism are not barriers separating art forms. twelve-man jury in an unprecedented move A film is good or bad. Not socialist or capitalist. publicly disassociated themselves from the de- A bad socialist film is just as bad as a bad capi- cision of their confreres. Even more surprising, talist film." The Yugoslavs and a little group of Soviet juryman Serge Bondarchouk, a talented American, French, Belgian, and Swiss journal- actor and director himself, issued a statement ists broke into enthusiastic applause. Everyone to the press charging that the awarding of the was talking at once. prize to the French director was "an unimagi- This whiff of free speech seemed strangely nably unjust act." This seems to have been a intoxicating. Even those who clearly were the real case of artistic integrity on his part, as it is most orthodox were excited, and many of the inconceivable that Rocco and His Brothers, the Czechs started asking the Poles question after Visconti film supported by Bondarchouk, could question: the role of the people toward art, ever be shown or approved of in the USSR. As existentialism and Marxism, foreign films in a final touch, director Visconti and his producer Poland, why did Polish films have so many un- scornfully refused the special jury prize offered happy endings? With poise, lucidity, and wit them in consolation. the Poles expressed their ideas and defended Although the festival end was exceptionally their positions. Covertly many an admiring stormy, the whole event seemed to be under glance was given them by the representatives something of an evil star from the start this of other Iron Curtain countries. We were actu- year, being held in the shadow of the Olympic ally witnessing the impact of free speech. Most Games and being boycotted by most of the of the people there responded to it like parched Italian movie industry. The boycott came from souls being offered water. the fact that earlier this year long-time and Afterwards-the conference ran on for nearly popular festival director Floris Ammannati had four hours with everyone completely forgetting been ungracefully kicked upstairs to head the CharlesAznavour in LE PASSAGEDU RHIN.

by a painfully realistic fist fight between two of the brothers not only set off a wave of protest whistling from the hall, but inspired at least two ...... lengthy impromptu speeches delivered by outraged members of the audience while the film continued. The reaction to the rape scene, though, was positively subdued compared to that to the murder on a muddy river bank. One felt each of fifteen knife blows sink into the victim's flesh. Screams of "Basta!" went up all over the theater. The scene is probably too realistically violent to be kept in when the film Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in goes on general release, but it evidenced the Rome, and Emilio Lonero, a Christian Demo- skill and mastery of a great director. crat and secretary of the Catholic Office, had Rocco is rather special also in that it is a re- been named his successor. This change in di- markably overt homosexual film. Even quite rection was reportedly instigated indirectly by unsophisticated members of the audience were the present pope, who had been made unhappy struck-and shocked-by the homosexual con- by such festival selections as France's prize- tent of the picture. True, the film reflected winning The Lovers shown when he was Cardi- a kind of Michelangelo-esque homosexuality nal of Venice a few years back. rather than the limp-wrist variety, but it is still Director Lonero, a neat, nervous little man, a little unusual to encounter it in a mass art tried and ultimately failed to please or reconcile form. The three women of the story are treated either his Christian Democrat supporters, his with contempt and/or hatred-pretty Claudia left-wing opponents, or the general public by Cardinale is shown as a kind of cow who entraps selecting a curious mixture of vaguely mealy- one of the brothers into marriage and father- mouthed uplift films together with a collection hood; French actress Annie Giradot as a prosti- of works by noted Italian leftist directors. The tute who loves two of the brothers is treated to majority of the festival films ran from simply rape and murder in such a manner that one unmemorable to downright mediocre. feels that through her all womankind is being The most interesting film of the festival was attacked; the mother, played with a fiercely unquestionably Luchino Visconti's Rocco and lupine vigor by Katina Paxinou, is a smother- His Brothers, promptly hailed by critics as one ingly possessive matriarch-loved and hated by of the best films of one of the greatest living her sons. All the brothers are remarkably hand- directors [for an account of Visconti and his some young men, and several scenes between work, see Film Quarterly, Spring 1960]. A them at moments of high tragedy are shot in a magnificent grand opera of a film running three curious way revealing intimacy and passion; hours and twenty minutes, Rocco has plenty of these, if isolated from the context of the film, faults, but despite them it is a superb example could read as positive love scenes. Of the cast of Visconti's work. Renato Salvatori as brutal brother Simone, who On the night of its showing, one day before sinks down into the gutter as his brothers pros- the closing of the festival, Rocco provoked per, is easily the best. (He is also the only one something of a major outburst. The story, about of all the brothers who appears unequivocably, five brothers and their mother who emigrate irrevocably heterosexual.) Title brother Rocco, from their native farm in Calabria to Milan, has played by the young French matinee idol Alain moments of almost literally unbearable vio- Delon, seems rather too pretty to become the lence. A long, graphic scene of rape followed champion boxer that the plot requires him to be. Spyros Focas, CorradoPani, and Katina Paxinou in Visconti's Rocco AND His BROTHERS.

Very few people unqualifiedly admired the film but just about everyone on the eve of the prize-giving agreed it was the uncontestable Lion. French film which beat out ..... Golden The .-.. Visconti on his native soil was, singularly enough, not popular with the Italian public or the French press. About the only wholehearted supporters of Le Passage du Rhin were the Ger- man critics-hardly surprising, as the general &I " purport of the Cayette film seems to be that during the last war the simple German village folk were pretty decent people. The only bad German in the film is a Nazi party member, easily identified because he always slips on his swastika arm band before slapping around French prisoners of war. Apart from Rocco only two other films really caught the attention of the critics and public, and neither was in the official competition. (It might be observed in passing that both The Apartment and the British entry Tunes of Clory, starring Sir Alec Guinness and John Mills, were let me take it to prison with me?" well received, but both were quite predictable It is interesting to note that the version of the as standard commercial successes.) Shown in film shown in Spain has the family recovering the afternoon Information Section, John Cassa- after a stomach washing. Altogether El Coche- vetes' Shadows tremendously impressed Euro- cito has fine ironic vigor, some marvelously pean critics even though most of them were satiric touches, excellent acting. It is rather like unable to follow the unsubtitled dialogue. a long, healthy version of a sick joke. At festi- El Cochecito had the rather interesting dis- val's end the FIRPRESCI-international film tinction of the Spanish Government's having critics jury-awarded it its prize. refused to allow it to be entered as the official Spanish entry in the competition. During the Ultimately, perhaps, the number of film festi- festival its young director (plump, bearded vals must be brutally reduced. More festivals, Marco Ferreri) and his assistants conducted a unfortunately, do not mean more people seeing simple but immensely effective campaign of good films. On the contrary, they usually mean contacting all the 600 members of the press more people being made too aware of the bad wvithdaily letters, accompanied by detailed dis- films in the world, which are pushed to public cussions of their production problems and diffi- attention through the festivals. If world cinema culties. An old man yearns to have an electric can't produce more first-rate films, then it may wheel chair so he can belong to the friendly prove best to consolidate the top films for one circle of chair-bound paralytics, but his son and or two prestige events which will do credit to his family refuse to indulge this expensive whim the art form, and provide a market place for the and plan to send him to the old people's home. commercial interests which turn out for Cannes The old man pours a can of rat poison into the and Venice. The other hopefully competitive family soup, killing them all off. When the events may be marvelous for national egos and Guardia Civil finally catches up with him on the for the roaming film critic, but probably they lonely road in his wheel chair he only meekly should follow the summary and noncompetitive asks as they head back to Madrid, "Will they pattern set by the London festival. 30

DAVID STEWART HULL London

The London Film Festival, now in its fourth technical and artistic beauty of the film had year, can rightly be called the "festival of festi- even the most sophisticated of British critics vals." During its three weeks Londoners are breaking out in loud praises, and the National able to see the most interesting films of the Film Theatre will present a retrospective pro- Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Vancouver, Edinburgh, gram of Antonioni films early in 1961. Anto- San SebastiAn, Moscow, and Poretta Terme nioni was to be present for the first showing of festivals held earlier in the year. In the relaxed his film in London, but at the last minute sent atmosphere of the National Film Theatre, one a telegram saying the film had been mysteri- is able to view these prize-winners in a more ously "sequestered" in Italy, obliging him to objective light than is usually possible at the stay. Certainly the charge of "obscenity" is other, more hysterical festivals. preposterous, for though L'Avventura is a com- During the period of the Festival, the pro- pletely amoral film, it does not fill any definition grams, three daily, are open to the public at a of "obscenity." It does not seem to be clear who slightly advanced price, but regular members of is in charge of the persecution of the film, but the British Film Institute are allowed a period the Catholic Church is playing a vocal part of priority booking at the usual rate, the most against both L'Avventura and Rocco. There are expensive seats selling for a little over one some rather subtle anticlerical references in the dollar. former film, but one would hardly expect the Twenty-seven films were screened during the Church to draw attention to them. The love 1960 Festival, and a more interesting selection scenes in L'Avventura are reasonably explicit, would be hard to imagine. While some films but hardly more startling than those in the one would like to see were not available (La average American film today, and certainly less Dolce Vita, Kagi, A Bout de Souffle) we did sensational than in some of the latest French see uncut prints of such controversial works as and Italian productions which seem to be of no L'Avventura, Rocco, and The Virgin Spring interest to censoring bodies. previous to public, and possibly mutilated, re- The case of Rocco e i suoi Fratelli is a slightly lease. different matter. Visconti is a social critic whose As was frequently pointed out, 1960 was a protests are hard to ignore. L'Osservatore Ro- year of triumph for the Italian cinema, which mano immediately put Rocco on its list of "ex- seems to have come back to the fore after a cluded" films, in company with La Dolce Vita. decade of unhappy decline. The French New The story of Rocco's reception at Venice has Wave has seemingly returned whence it came, been recounted in the preceding article. Suffice if indeed it existed in the first place. Although it to say here that the film is a nineteen-reel ex- the making of predictions is a notoriously dan- perience that one wbuld not care to go through gerous affair, the Russian entries were of such twice. Rocco is worthy of great respect, a pow- high quality this year that it looks as though erful and often unpleasant work, but it is very 1961 might be a Russian year if the present difficult to have much affection for the film or trends continue. any desire to return to it again. The last hour If this fourth London festival contained one has structural flaws, and it is hard to see why virtually undisputed masterpiece, it was plainly Rocco makes his girl friend return to his no- L'Avventura, by Michaelangelo Antonioni. The good brother Simone; from this point on, the :-: :::::::: ':i:?~i::--'-::i :: :i:::--:i ::::-~?-:liiiii- 'Ii_:i-::::-- :::-- :--- :::::: i:::_--;

Antonioni'sL'AVVENTURA :::i-::?:: -:::i:::::::i-:::::: iii.iL::_-:-?:-.---:::_ ::::::::::::: :~Di: -:.:.7:-:i?ii--:---i- viewer's belief in the story is fatally weakened. I.i~--~l-Fi :: :: : :.::: :::::::::???::r::i::iO:-i-ii- ::::-:::::j:::::: -::::':-:::I:-:::::?:-iii-i-iiliiiiilii:iii`'--:;~-:::::_-:::-:--'':':::ji-:---iii:.::'?ii:::::::::::::::?i-:i::::ii-: Yet the film is impressive, and despite the -::::::~-~:---: ~?8b~:B5aaix?-~~~~-i-;-;:-ii?lisl:aii ::::::::::: :: :i:ii:i:'--:-:?iisii8_i-i:::l::::::::::: ::::::::::--.-:::i-j:i-:j-;?-:i::: crudities of Nadia's violent rape and later brutal :::::--::::-::::?:_:::::: -:-::-::::::.i.?:-:-: :::::-:::-: : ::?:?::::~iiiiiiii?~i-:_:,:,.::,-: -:::::j:--:::'-:::-::..'. ::jr::::::::::-:-::::-::::'~:::i:-:'-.--I:_ii:ic_?:--:;I:$--:I-??::::_ ::::::::-::::::: murder by Simone, one feels that perhaps the :I:?:::::::::r~i--ii?:i::iilA;:-:::I-:::-_-::--:-_: :,::::::ij::: :)::_---:ii::i~: :i:j:iil:i:L::i:3ii?i'iisiiii,-,i--?:,: life of these is i?.'i9iiLiii-siiai?iiilii~ii~ii~ii:ii:::::::-:::-:-:-:-:?:?:?:-::::::-::_-i:-i:iii--:li:::::?l:i? : ::::?-:;?::i::~i:_i--I: unhappily replanted people just I as violent and brutal as these scenes would in- ;?i_-_ :ri:'-:-i,,i:i'i'?:i'':::::-: dicate. One can only hope that American audiences will have the chance to see this film in its full length, and that the great interest that it will certainly create will cause someone to release Visconti's earlier La Terra in Trema, many :;:::-.:::- ways a prologue to Rocco. With Morte di un Amico withdrawn at the last minute, Mauro Bolognini's Notte Brava work, but a far more convincing film. However, found itself in rather formidable company both audiences and critics at London found among the Italian entries. This in many ways Ballad very much to their taste. was unfortunate, for in any other year, Notte Ivan Pyriev's White Nights, based on Dosto- Brava would receive far more attention. The evsky's novella, was a charming and personal story concerns a group of vitelloni and their ad- work which rather predictably failed to make ventures, mostly illegal, in a beautifully photo- much of an impression on the British audiences, graphed Rome. The ingredients of the story which are almost physically repelled by cine- (oversexed post-teens, prostitution, robbery, matic sentiment, even of the most honest va- brutal violence, and homosexuality, plus fash- riety. Despite the chilly reception from the ionable boredom) should prove popular at the majority of viewers, it is hard to deny the charm box office, but such a mess hardly makes a good of Pyriev's re-creation of the misty St. Peters- film despite moments of brilliance. Bolognini burg atmosphere, filmed with a quite proper has a peculiar habit of shooting important studio artificiality which creates the dreamy scenes at such a distance that the participants feeling of the original book. A particular men- are almost buried in the landscape, making the tion should be made of the breathtakingly beau- spectator even less interested in these charac- tiful color photography of Valentine Pavlov and ters than he would be ordinarily. The cast is the wonderful use of background music adapted headed by Laurent Terzieff, an extremely popu- from the works of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and lar young actor who seems in imminent danger others. of falling asleep at any moment. On the debit side, the film itself is constructed The Russians, sticking to more orthodox sub- on a formal day-by-day basis, which, while ject matter, submitted three films of striking neatly functional, breaks into the lyrical mood quality, giving an interesting cross section of of the composition as a whole. recent trends in Soviet film-making, which is The natural question arises of comparison obviously far more interesting than Jay Leyda with Visconti's earlier film on the same subject. would lead one to believe in his recent Kino. Surely, however, the two films are both valid The first film was Grigori Chukhrai's Ballad in their widely different approaches. Ludmilla of a Soldier, which was also seen at Cannes and Marchenko is not as accomplished an actress as San Francisco. This viewer will turn in a mi- Maria Schell, but the others in the Soviet ver- nority report and call it an unconvincing and sion win hands down, particularly A. Popova as mawkish essay in the worst style of Soviet war the wonderful, blind grandmother. films. It was particularly discomfiting to see As thoroughly Russian a film as this White this essay follow Chukhrai's The Forty-First, Nights will probably never be popular in the admittedly a much less ambitious and serious West, for its leisurely pace and gentle senti- 32

ments are not tailored to the taste of audiences original tale couldn't be simpler: a couple meet accustomed to stronger screen fare. But to in Yalta (both are already married), fall in love, those who love Dostoevsky and the atmosphere return home-he to Moscow and she to a dreary of his ghostly St. Petersburg, and to those who provincial center-and what began for him as a are not so sophisticated as to reject sentimen- flirtation turns into real love. Their brief and tality completely, White Nights will be a mem- increasingly difficult meetings become the only orable experience. thing of importance in their lives. The best of the three Russian entries was Heifitz had the incomparable good luck to The Lady with the Little Dog, an adaption get the great Andrei Moskvine (Gorky trilogy; from Chekhov seen earlier at Cannes. It is not Ivan Part II) as his photographer, and in his an exaggeration to call this film a masterpiece, sensitive hands the tone of the tale moves from and I suspect it may take its place in the future the burning whites of Yalta to the dreary grays among the all-time great Russian films. of the snow-covered North, the drab world of Its director, Josef Heifitz, is well remembered frustration and boredom. Alexei Batalov, for his powerful Baltic Deputy, and is definitely, nephew of the famous silent actor Nicolai, steps as Sergei Yutskevitch remarked in his delightful directly from the pages of the story as the introduction to the film (unfortunately miser- doctor-hero, although one wonders why he was ably translated), "a member of the older gener- made up to look like Chekhov. The enormously ation of Soviet film-makers." Indeed, it seemed difficult feminine role is portrayed by Ya Savina, at times as if one was watching a silent film, for fresh from the university in her first film part. Heifitz has caught the delicate half-world of Heifitz apparently worked miracles with the Chekhov's short story, an elusive atmosphere young lady, whose natural talents seem rather that resists the intrusion of human speech. The limited at the present time despite a curiously

Ya Savina and Alexei Batalov in ~ g ?.x -_:iii?-i-ii:i~i'- LADYWITH -:riiiiiiiA DOG. :.-.li-i•B::::ri?i-i.l;1Ii:::2i~iiii-iiiii iiii;ii~ii!!'iililli!! iii•!•i

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lop-, 33 beautiful face. The rest of the cast is unbeliev- provincial piano lesson, a spectral dinner party. ably good, particularly the bug-eyed actor play- True, there is a letdown at the end of the film, ing the heroine's servile husband. and Moderato Cantabile is too personal a work But the strongest point of the film is the to be accepted at once, but its spell is so power- director's complete control over this atmosphere ful that it seems likely to gradually build an of boredom and frustration, this world of decay- enormous following. ing nobility wasting away days in drinking, Claude Chabrol, maker of Les Cousins, dancing, and gambling. And in the middle of would be well advised to withdraw Les Bonnes this artificial world, a lonely clarinetist pipes a Femmes from circulation at once if he wishes melancholy tune in a hotel courtyard as white to preserve the high opinion of his talents one snowflakes fall into a gray world, a single brief has had up to this point. This little tale of four image so perfect that it brings a lump to the girls working in an electrical appliance shop is viewer's throat. so badly handled that it is embarrassing and The French submitted four films, but only downright painful to watch. The audiences, one seemed to continue in the powerful spirit quite properly, hated it. of last year's entries: Moderato Cantabile, the The fourth French entry was Francois Truf- work of an English director, Peter Brook. faut's Tirez sur le Pianiste, which this reviewer Adapted from a story by Marguerite Duras (of regrettably did not see. The reception it re- Hiroshima), the film proved the most contro- ceived was quite favorable, and Truffaut has versial of the festival; one thought it either a seemingly retained his position as the finest of small masterpiece or an irritating failure. the young French directors. Brook wrote: "What interested me in Mod- Going more or less alphabetically through erato Cantabile was the story in which on the the other noteworthy films by country of origin, surface a woman meets a man, sees him a few the Argentine director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson times, and then parts with him. Looked at from scored strongly with his Fin de Fiesta, appar- the point of view of a small town, nothing could ently to be called Blood Feast in its American be less scandalous: she gets a tiny bit drunk release. Although audiences in the United and a bit distracted at a dinner party, and she States have been introduced to this talented is seen once by workmen in a crowded bar, and young man only recently through the far earlier that's all. But if you follow the inner life of Casa del Angel (known as End of Innocence in these people, this is the most gigantic, violent New York showings), he will certainly be recog- happening in their lives . . . total, vast, defini- nized as a formidable figure in the future. Fin tive, tragic and violent." de Fiesta is a powerful study of political corrup- The film emerges as an exercise in technique tion in Argentina of the early 1930's as seen as perfect as seen today on any screen. The through the eyes of the grandson of a ruthless viewer becomes drawn into the story almost political boss. The carefully controlled mood against his will, and each scene increases the and sensitive photography put one in mind of hypnotic tension building to the pitiful and certain films of Pabst and Bergman. tragic conclusion. Moderato Cantabile is a love Greece was represented by Michael Cacoy- story in which the lovers never kiss, a situation annis' completely baffling Our Last Spring, which would defeat a less brilliant director filmed in nearly unintelligible English. It is the before he could begin. Yet working with Jeanne only motion picture in this viewer's memory in Moreau and the lesser-known (in America) which the post-screening discussions were de- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Brook has produced the voted to trying to figure out the sense of the most engrossing and personal cinematic docu- story, without even touching on the inade- ment in many years. Every image is caught quacies of script and acting. It is a particular with almost magical skill: a child bringing shame that such a botch should have been made branches to his mother in a frosty forest, a out of Cosmas Politis' powerful novel Eroica, :i:iii-i-i::-i-i:-?i-i::-:-i::-iiiiiiiiii-i:-:i-:__:i:_-i:i:ii:ii_:i

EL COCHECITO: JoseIsbert on left. ~i:-i-ii~i:i- i-is:i;iiisi-?iii~i :::_:?,:: _-i-i:i i:i:ii::-i-:-- ---:-: i-i:i i:i-i-:i-_i:i:i i i-i:i i:Ii~:i'~,lii-i-i-~ii~f-_-i-i:: _~e~Bli~gB~Bi~:i ..:i:i--:-:- :::-:-:-:-::::: and Walter Lassally's beautiful photography could have been better used on else. something :::::::::::i:: There are moments of great beauty, particularly ?::::i:::i the funeral games on the beach, but these scat- i-i:i'ii tered incidents do not make an even adequate film. Bufluel's The Young One is disappointing, si;.iii-i:i:i not even as interesting as the same director's curious Fievre Monte a el Pao, a muddled but i:::::---: intermittently fascinating film, the last screen appearance of GBrard Philipe, now in general In The One at London release. Young Bufiuel ::::-::;?::C times appears to be satirizing himself; scene i~ii::i after scene of senseless sadism appears with monotonous regularity. A man eats a live crab, ing the failure of the individual lives of these a raccoon kills chickens in loving close-up, the hooligans. The film is cold and unemotional, twitching death of a rabbit is carefully recorded, stark and unpleasant. The final bullfight se- a nymphet squashes a large spider (in close- quence, in which the animal is brutally butch- up), and the "hero" steps in what appears to be ered by the unskilled young man, is all too likely a bear trap. The acting almost matches the to be cut by censors (or distributors); without script, and a grating score assaults the ear. it the film is completely senseless. Unquestionably it will do well at the box office The other entry was El Cochecito (The until Lolita comes along. Wheel Chair), certainly the blackest comedy The single Polish entry was a 1959 comedy in recent memory. It concerns the adventures called Bad Luck. The unfortunate hero of the of a perfectly healthy old man who wants a story is played with great skill by Bogumil wheel chair so that he can cavort around the Kobiela, whom viewers will remember as the countryside with his crippled friends. When his mayor's secretary in Ashes and Diamonds. An- family blocks his wish, he quietly poisons them drzej Munk's direction is highly stylized, and and almost gets away with his crime. The although the film frequently misses fire, there humor will appeal to those who find Tod Brown- are some memorably funny moments, notably ing's Freaks to their taste. That the film is even at the beginning. The script has been praised slightly bearable is due largely to the perform- for its none too subtle social criticism, with ance of Jos6 Ibert as the old man, a virtuoso everyone on the receiving end from Pilsudski piece of acting in the great tradition. to Stalin. Unfortunately, a good many of the The United States was represented by Flight, jokes are lost on a non-Polish audience. an embarrassing short feature, and Studs Loni- A new production group called "Films 59" gan, a fresh and most original film. James T. provided the two Spanish entries and demon- Farrell is reportedly furious over the screen strated that there is some life in the Spanish treatment of his book. However, if one dis- film industry after all. The films themselves regards the original source, Irving Lerner's film provide an accurate picture of certain trends in stands up very well and shows clearly the hand the thinking of young Spanish intellectuals, a of a master craftsman working under less than kind of morbidly perverse joy that reflects a sick optimum conditions. The major fault of the society all too clearly. Los Golfos is another film is the leading actor, who stumbles through vitelloni film about some particularly unsympa- the role with deplorable clumsiness. Yet Ler- thetic young thugs who rob in order that one ner's careful direction minimizes these faults of their members can have a go at bullfighting. and manages to make Studs a fascinating char- The "hero" fails miserably, supposedly reflect- acter. A striking Weill-ish score by Gerrald 35

Goldsmith adds the proper note of hysteria to One of the highlights of the entire festival the proceedings. was the screening of a complete subtitled print Lerner was present at the screenings of the of Jean Renoir'sLa Regle du Jeu (1939). The film, which was received with great enthusiasm film had been seen here in April and proved the by large audiences already familiar with his highlight of a special French season. The new lavishly praised Murder by Contract. One subtitlingwould seem to indicate the possibility hopes that Studs Lonigan will be received with of Americanrelease and it will be a treat worth the seriousness it deserves when it is shown waiting for when it finally arrives. generally in the United States.

The Art Film and Its Audiences: I

The problems of distribution and exhibition faced by films which do not fit into ordinary industry patterns were discussed in the Summer 1960 issue of FILM QUARTERLY by a distributor, an exhibitor, two film-society officers, a film-maker, and a critic. As that discussion established, and as anyone who looks into the matter soon discovers, such films (for which no really satisfactory term exists, and which we thus call by the usual name of "art films") do not reach their proper potential audiences in any satisfactory way. Good films sometimes do not get distributed at all; if they do get a distributor, they may not be booked widely; they may be neglected or misunderstood in the press; they may be badly publicized; and too often, thus, they do not receive the attendance they deserve. This vicious circle was described in vivid terms in the earlier discussion.

The article beginning on the next page is the first of a series dealing in positive terms with programs of action which may help break this unfortunate pattern and bring more new films to the people who wish to see them. In the next issue we will present a report on steps being taken as a result of the recent Antioch College symposium, including plans for an American Film Institute and an association of art theaters. Also in preparation is a case study of what has been probably the most consistently successful and quality-minded art house in the country, the Berkeley Cinema Guild. 36

PHILIP CHAMBERLIN

Allies, Not Enemies COMMERCIAL AND NONTHEATRICAL EXPERIENCE ON THE WEST COAST

In Los Angeles recently, one art-house exhibitor house circuit but are impoftant nonetheless. has spent a considerable part of his time or- Still others are serious short films-which have ganizing opposition to alleged "competition" of almost completely disappeared from the com- film programs sponsored by local film societies mercial theaters. Finally, there are films which and universities. He has protested what he has have not yet succeeded in winning a release. called the unfair advantage which nonprofit and These are the films which offer universities and tax-supported institutions have in film exhibi- film societies their greatest potential for creative tion. As a businessman and taxpayer he feels leadership; a potential which is just now on the himself in the position of one forced to subsidize brink of exploration throughout the country. his opposition. His arguments have been heard (2) It will be readily conceded that a busi- before in various parts of the country through- ness in our society must make a profit or dis- out the life of the film-society movement, and appear. Nevertheless, art theaters should be in many cases they have successfully inhibited encouraged to show a wider variety of good development of nontheatrical screenings on any- films than they now do, and to avoid showing thing like an organized basis. The exhibitors, shabby films simply for a quick dollar. Also, to in these cases, feel that any dollar spent at a maintain a consistent policy, art theaters should film society is a dollar lost to their box office. stay away from films which are currently on Because arguments of this sort are having the screens of neighboring general-run houses. some success and because film societies and uni- Most art houses have a potential repertoire far versities have a key role to play in expanding in excess of what they imagine. More knowl- and improving art-film distribution, it has be- edge of films combined with a consistent policy come necessary to establish a perspective and can save many an art theater from the pinch it advance a few facts for the record. now feels. I would like to propose two assumptions with which we can make sense of facts, notions, and As I hope to make clear, a number of factors guesses about art-film distribution. tend to bring such policies into effect in quite (1) University or film-society programs a natural way in any case. And since empirical should be made up primarilyof motion pictures observation suggests that each film has, within which local art theaters cannot or will not run. the range of any given promotional campaign, In most this is cases, precisely what we find its own audience, co6peration between theatri- happening. Universities, certainly, have no cal and nontheatrical agencies should always business in show business. Their obligation is work to the advantage of the art theaters. to educate, to open new doors, to offer what is Here are a few examples of film society-art not otherwise available to the academic and house co6peration to illustrate how a hissing surrounding community. Most film societies and spitting posture is by no means necessary: function in the same way, but with smaller The only art theater in one large West Coast numbers. Both an provide opportunity for the town has been co6perating with the university study and appreciation of outstanding motion in presenting an international film series each pictures. Some of these films have had their semester for the past six years. The university first run and deserve another screening. Others rents the theater for $75 each evening of the have too small a box-office appeal for the art- series and puts on two performances, at 7 and 35

The Art Film and Its Audiences: I

9 p.m. During the first season, average attend- lines of agreement worked out by these two ance stood at five hundred; now it has quad- gentlemen and their respective organizations rupled and performances are sold out in ad- run in the right direction: Well in advance of vance. The average cost of admission for the any announcements, the University submits to series comes to about one-half the regular thea- the exhibitors a list of titles from which its final ter price but only one feature and one short are program will be drawn. The exhibitors thus shown rather than the customary two features have a chance to veto any films they are likely and cartoon. to run themselves. (This has the laudable func- On the face of it, the theater owner seems to tion of forcing the University to avoid its most be holding a rather stumpy straw because the dangerous pitfall-showing films which are soon rental fee includes projectionist and full house to be shown at a local art house-as has some- staff. Yet let the owner's own reasons speak for times been the case in Berkeley, California, his policy: which has several very active art theaters.) Also, the will not undercut local (1) The university program brings hundreds University admission reasonable of people into his theater who do not usually prices-a perfectly plan where auditorium facilities and are attend. These people become acquainted with projection the theater and notice the regular bill. Many of comparable. The theater owners, furthermore, would them ask to be placed on the theater's mailing list. prefer to see the University establish admission by series ticket There are, of (2) The association with the university brings only. course, many economic and educational to such prestige and creates the impression that the advantages a and the of films is also sim- theater management is sincerely interested in policy booking art films-which is true. plified and enriched. Series-ticket admissions should be the (3) The owner discovers at least one or two usual policy for universitiesand societies once their are estab- films in every series which prove to have strong film programs lished. This is one of the of a serious edu- appeal for his regular patrons. Since these films signs cational endeavor. the have passed the test, so to speak, the owner can During build-up period, though, tickets should be avail- safely book them for a run of his own. Very single-showing able for those who are curious but don't want often as a result of a university the screening, to risk the cost of a series or word gets around town that such-and-such a higher society film was a rare experience, and it does excellent membership. The most the Seattle business-far betfer than it might have done encouraging sign among theater owners, however, is their offer to look without the fuse-lighting preview. for ways of deficit the Univer- (4) A full house means a larger concession underwriting any sity of incur-a clear indi- sale-although art theater audiences do not buy Washington might cation that understand the of as much candy, pop, and popcorn as do the they possibility audience with patrons of commercial houses. development through co6peration the University. In Seattle, Washington, commercial exhibi- Early in 1960, a new film society sprang up tors have been resentful for years of University in Santa Barbara, California. Attendance was of Washington attempts to show films. At one impressive and a howl of "unfair competition" point the University was actually forced to dis- immediately went up. This time, though, it was continue film programs or risk curtailment of not the theaters who spearheaded the attack, state funds, so active and hostile had the theater but their friends the merchants. owners become. The films were being shown in the high Recently, however, sanity has seemed about school auditorium. Some of the film society's to triumph, thanks to the initiative of a pro- officers were employed by the local board of gressive executive of Sterling Theatres and the education. Whether or not this was connected head of Adult Education at the University. The with the prompt speculation about the suita- 38 bility of other auditoriums, I do not know, but He simply was not making money during the in any case help suddenly arrived from an un- early part of the week and resolved to try any- suspected quarter. A theater manager appeared thing, even art films, from Monday to Thursday. on the scene with an offer of assistance and After an exploratory meeting, it was agreed that assurances of genuine interest in the society's the film societies could be of great help to the program. He volunteered to help acquire films exhibitor because of their understanding of the and to promote the film series with a special local situation in relation to the art film. The trailer, posters, advertising, and other standard theater owner received help from the societies devices. Since conditions for projecting in the in the form of mailing lists, program sugges- high school auditorium were somewhat less tions, and information for his mailing piece. At than perfect, the switch seemed to be better for no time did the film society people ask for com- everyone. The theater received a generous per- pensation for their services, nor did they receive centage of the receipts, the society's hassle with any. The theater owner soon adopted an art portable projectors was eliminated along with policy exclusively, appended the term "fine arts merchant opposition, and the society is now in- theater" to the name of his establishment, and stitutionalized in the community with a policy now manages to show some first-run features. of twenty-five showings per year. The foregoing "case studies" serve to indicate The case of Santa Barbara also points up the that film societies and universities can be of many advantages of 35mm operation, too sel- value to the art house operator in a variety of dom understood by American film-society offi- ways ranging from a source of knowledge and cers. Theater owners will almost always thaw judgments about films to more concrete sugges- out when a plan is presented for screenings to tions for accumulating cold cash. They rein- be made on a co6perative basis, particularly if force, moreover, the experience of British and it is proposed to utilize their theaters on a slack Continental film society movements in using night-early in the week or just before a mar- theaters for their showings, with the happy par- quee change. Print quality and projection are ticipation of the exhibitors. invariably better with 35mm and program plan- Most American exhibitors hold an atomistic ning from 35mm sources is generally more satis- theory about audiences, which discourages the factory despite the greater number of distribu- development of a reliable, regular audience by tors one has to keep up with. Films on 35mm a theater and is thus in any longer run sense are often cheaper, too, especially if one's audi- economically self-defeating. We know from ence numbers more than two hundred. The many examples such as the Berkeley Cinema ideal, of course, is to have auxiliary 16mm Guild or the Ridgemont Theater in Seattle that equipment for films not available on 35mm. a consistent policy of serious programming is San Diego, California, provides one of the bound to expand the art-film field in any com- best examples of co6peration among different munity whether advanced by a public theater types of film operations. Until this year, San or a private film club. But not enough research Diego had one art theater and one film society. has been done which bears on art houses, film Then, almost overnight, two more film societies societies, and museum and university film pro- began operating in the area. One was formed grams. We don't know enough about the com- on the La Jolla campus of the University of position of audiences, about attendance pat- California and the other ran an impressive series terns, and about ways in which certain kinds in the La Jolla Art Center, much as it had in of motion pictures affect film-going. Within the Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Canoga Park, and past few months, however, film society and uni- Santa Monica. versity people in southern California have circu- At this point, the owner of a second-run com- lated a number of questionnaires which turned mercial house in San Diego approached the up some rather interesting information. While University of California for assistance in plan- the results should not encourage easy general- ning and promoting an art policy for his theater. izing and scarcely qualify as legitimate research: 39

(1) A survey of physical facilities on the who cannot attend all of the art films in their West Coast showed that 12 film societies, 7 uni- area and must, therefore, choose which ones versities, 4 film clubs, 1 museum, and 6 librar- they'll see. One university and one film society ies all agree on the inferiority of their locations find that these are not in their audiences in suf- to nearby art theaters. Only three of those ques- ficient numbers to matter (the average is 8%). tioned believed their auditoriums were superior, (3) Who make up the nontheatrical audi- but even these rated their projection as "de- ence? (We regret we have no data on the art- cidedly substandard." Evidently, thus, audi- theater patron.) The questionnaires show that ences feel that something is derived from the a majority are teachers, doctors, engineers, and films which the art houses are not supplying. other professionals. Sixty-five per cent have Granted that some prices are lower and that attended college, thirty-five per cent have pro- occasionally pressures extraneous to the films fessional degrees. Eighty per cent "value the themselves are brought to bear, these various films highly," nine per cent "somewhat," and agencies generally cannot be competing with eleven per cent failed to check the point on their the theaters in any other sense or they would forms. Eighty-two per cent want to attend an- lose out. Hard seats, poor projection, small other series of similar films. screens, dim and yellow images, chronic pro- (4) Why do people attend nontheatrical pensity to be behind schedule, and lack of house showings? What draws an audience despite staff and conveniences would soon destroy non- physical limitations and no choice of alternate theatrical audiences if they could see the same nights? We guess it is a combination of factors: films elsewhere. convenience (though some drive very long dis- (2) In a representative sampling of approxi- tances to attend), snob appeal through asso- mately one thousand people, one-half of a large ciation with a university, museum, or society UCLA series audience and 61% of the Santa (though many are frightened off by the same Barbara Film Society members say they attend factor), far more information in the brochure public showings of motion pictures less than than theaters provide (which convinces some four times per year. The remainder describe they should attend but others that they should themselves either as art-film devotees (over fif- not), and more chance of learning about the teen films per year) or, as with a tiny minority, film through introductions, program notes, and "attend irregularly" or "occasionally" (five to discussions (which, again, are intolerable for ten films per year). many who just want to enjoy the film.) If these figures are even approximately accurate, the competition argument is without foun- In the last analysis, though, it is probably the dation. "Less than four films per year" sounds films themselves which draw the audience. And like the reluctant father who gets cudgeled into so we come full circle-for the nontheatrical taking the family to the drive-in every so often films are, or should be, precisely the films that and swears never to go again. This man doesn't theaters cannot or will not run. The available attend often enough to be worth competing repertoire of the screen is too vast and too rich for. for competition to be the disruptive factor it is On the other hand, the art-film devotee prob- sometimes thought to be. It will be a tragic ably goes to everything that sounds halfway turn of events for the commercial exhibitors as promising. Here, the issue is not competition, well as the world of the film if irrational war- certainly, but how to produce more people like fare between noncommercial and commercial him and how to keep showing enough good showings is allowed to destroy the very process films. by which new audiences can be created. The The really significant response comes from basis for a mutually beneficial truce exists. It those who attend irregularly or occasionally. remains for forward-looking exhibitors and non- They are the subject of competition: persons theatrical groups to put it into effect. 40

been accorded this courtesy lavishly, as have Rossellini and Stroheim before him. But one who deserves it more, perhaps, has continued Film Reviews to be judged on principles far from his own. The best example of the strictures our critics have put on Renoir is the silly treatment ac- Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe corded Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe. No attention whatsoever is paid the director, except as the on the and (Picnic Grass) Written, directed, pro- fabricator of a "product." Those of our critics duced by Jean Renoir, for Path6. Distribution: who see farthest have remarked on the obvious Kingsley International. With Catherine Rouvel and Paul Meurisse. connections with Partie de Campagne; others have, at best, found some meaning in Renoir's In film criticism we perhaps think too much in attacks on organized technocracy. Only Hollis terms of the oeuvre of Dreyer, Visconti, Bresson, Alpert among the more widely circulated critics or Bergman, rather than of Joan of Arc, La (Saturday Review) has done the film any kind Terra Trema, Pickpocket,or The Naked Night. of justice at all in "allowing Mr. Renoir to have This is no doubt because of the generally ac- his day in the fields." cepted fallacy of consistency, which is expected Briefly, this last theatrical feature by Renoir in our society not only in a person's work but concerns the attempt by a natural country lass also in his life. How demanding and inhuman to fulfill a natural desire: that of having a baby. this criterion remains is brought out by the The visitations of a salesman having proven bafflement of even our most astute critics when futile, she rallies to the cause of a professor confronted with a work which doesn't seem to advocating artificial insemniation for all of hu- "fit." How quick we are to decry the artistic manity, who is also running for the presidency decline of a man whose work does not emulate of Europe with this notion as his platform. To previous successes! We speak of the freedom him it means the solution of the world's social not now allowed the film-maker; but we our- problems; to her, wish-fulfillment. She enters selves attempt to shackle him with bonds in- his employ to be closer to the test tubes, but describably tougher. eventually her desire is granted without resort- One of the reasons for this approach is our ing to them. limited knowledge of the man behind the work. In the course of what for lack of a better term Film-makers are not, by definition, talkers or must be called the "action" of the film, we are writers, and we must, of course, continue to rely treated to much extrovert cavorting alfresco, mainly on their works for knowledge of them. and to the most frenzied, mad, mythical, and But with a little effort it is possible to find other comical orgy yet filmed. The film utilizes every than filmic references for the ideas of the Ros- recognizable symbol to catch a mood with a few sellinis and the Fellinis, the Hustons and the frames only, thus using cliches in the most cre- Kubricks, and it seems to me that such research ative sense. Reminiscent in its social commen- is essential in understanding the real meaning tary of Tati (as it is in its use of color to under- of any important film. line its attack on The Machine), it goes far There are, to be sure, some men who are not beyond the one-dimensional Hulot to a point only in the front line of really important film- where what is said is so much part of how it is makers, but have also been able, over the years, said (instead of the traditional reversed ap- to express themselves in other media or at least proach) that we can take the "messages" as side become known as persons to the extent where effects and become part of the thing itself. an effort should be made by all who take writing For those who see in the 1863 Manet paint- about film seriously to understand first the man ing, from which the title is derived, the essence and then in this context the films. Bergman has of natural peace, it may seem sacrilegious to Paul Meurisseand CatherineRouvel in ,::-:I::::- Renoir's LE DEiJEUNER SURL'HERBE. :::::-::-: have the two so but it seems closely associated, :::-:: i-i-n~a to me that this is a limited view of Manet. i5-i~ii:is :i::r:::::-~i?:::::::~:ir:l: There is no doubt that the is relevant painting ---,:---: 1 in appraising this film, but this is simply Renoir's :::- i-:i i:i-ii:i:::ii-_--iiiiii~:~,-:_ii~:i::-i:?::'`:: ii view of it. (The film was shot at "Les Col- i:.i:i:i:.'::------:--:::-::-':?-:-?-iii:i-iii-::?: ::-':-:?":::": :::::::::: : :: lettes," where Jean Renoir's father, the painter i.:~.~-;::::;:'i~ ~~li':~::: :::: ::::::::::::?:::i-;iii-ii?i:s Auguste Renoir, spent the last years of his life.) Renoir has some basic beliefs about life which he applies in his film work, of course, but first and foremost he avows "I am not consistent." And then, "Man changes with the outside world" and "Art should be practiced in connection with human reality." Also that "to be a that overriding emotional quality which only great artist you must first of all be a child" and the really great films have: in conveying the that nature becomes that which the artist sees. presence of its making. Specifically, he has been preoccupied in recent For some time I have been maintaining that years with the decline in individuality caused films should not be "seen" but "experienced"; by the advancement of technology and has that unless something happens in the viewer's found some solace in his realization that the bowels as a result of his exposure to the work, "northern spirit" of suppression and sterility is the film has failed. The cerebral "experience" giving way, slowly but surely, to the "southern of The Seventh Seal or The Virgin Spring leaves spirit" of laissez faire, slow beauty, acceptance the viewer as cold as the maker, whereas the instead of conquest of nature, and nonconform- unique force of Wajda, Resnais, Welles, Ray, ism-the true humanism of man. Shirley Clarke, and-more than any-Renoir is their ability to the experimental film-maker, upon seeing Le utilize the mind simply as a passage, to play Dejeuner sur l'Herbe said, "This film could only with our standardized perceptions and to force have been made by a person of sixteen or of us to let them through-to the depths of our sixty." Yes, this is a child's film-the film of a being, where words or meanings give way to a true artist, and the film of a man. more direct communication which is the true Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe involves figures sym- language of art. bolizing (perhaps!) various aspects of all men. One great pity for a film of such importance Unconquered by all onslaughts, supreme in her is the fact that the subtitles have been confined joie de vivre, earthy, voluptuous, radiantly simply to transmitting the story line-none of beautiful, and utterly beguiling is Catherine the finesse of the Provengal dialogue, none of Rouvel, Renoir's new discovery, who embodies the fine tuning come across. The titles (not by his spirit. Cleverly, his framework ("story") is Herman G. Weinberg!) are filled with inanities, derived from what could pass as our everyday where the dialogue is filled with life. Here is a life, and Renoir plays Oriental storyteller in in- film which will supply ammunition to the advo- volving us through our own apertures. What cates of dubbing-surely a Renoir-supervised finally "occurs" is as unimportant as continuity, dubbing job would have done more justice to theme, montage, focus, and all the other rigidi- the maker's intention than this secondhand ties of movie-making. At the same time the film sabotage. Le De'jeuner sur l'Herbe is a unique is abstract, in the sense that a painting is an film-a seemingly effortless pleasantry, impres- abstraction of nature, and it is unmatched in sionistic and yet surreal, full of the unexpected some areas: color, frame compositions, stylized as life is, almost facile in impact but lasting in acting (Paul Meurisse, as remote from what one the perturbations it causes. It is in the true expects of the diable of Diabolique as can be sense a demanding film, but it demands nothing imagined, excels), and above all in feeling, in of us save to be ourselves.-GIDEON BACHMANN 42

The Entertainer Suez and a daughter attending protest meetings in Trafalgar Square is in fact a symbolical Directed Richardson. by Tony Screenplayby John drama of bleak political decline. The rest of us Osborne and Kneale. Producer: Harry Saltz- Nigel or not be entertained Laurence man. A Bryanston Film, released Continental. may may by by Olivier as the Entertainer and some con- With Laurence Olivier, Brenda da Banzie, Joan by Plowright,Roger Livesey. sciously grim exposures of the seaside resort which is his working milieu, but as for all that "We've troubles enough as it is without poli- other business, what's the Prime Minister to tics," is the exasperated complaint of Phoebe him? wife of Archie the in the film Rice, Entertainer, Olivier's is a "virtuoso" performance pretty which Osborne and Richardson have John Tony high up on the hog; in it, as in the film as a made from Osborne's In the microcosm of play. whole, it is difficult to separate the intentionally theater the comment have been taken as might phony from the phony intent. Olivier's eye- a to the resounding irony, poignant testimony rolling cajolery, Osborne's shout-wail-and- of these chosen characters to inability carefully whimper dialogue, Richardson's tilted angling understand that are out a moment they living and jump cuts all share a confidence man's ex- in the of the British As shabby destiny Empire. pertise, distributing effects all over the film's it is delivered in the a amid film, throw-away surface without meaningfully differentiating be- the naturalistic clatter of and door- pots pans, tween the sham that is portrayed and the truth slams, and domestic acrimony, the line means it conceals. The climax of Archie Rice's career what it and who hears it exactly says, anyone is one of those classic moments when the gaudy be excused for in may grunting agreement. spell is broken and the masker is unmasked. He to colonialism and the Argumentative references talks about the performer he might have been, welfare state like from keep intruding pages about a model performance he once witnessed: another and those who have script, only may "... an old-Negress, singing her guts out been forewarned of Osborne's or intentions, " (This is a paraphrase; the actual lines seen the where were play, presumably they are much worse.) Then tragedy breaks through more clearly focused, will have any notion that the roof-his son is dead. And while the other this fall uninteresting little vignette about the characters freeze in an endless moment, Archie of a vaudevillian who has a son killed in cheap leans his tired head against the proscenium of the empty theater and, in a thin wail, intones the blues: "I don't care where they bury mah Laurence Olivier in THEENTERTAINER. body . .. 'cause mah soul's goin' to God." It would be granting an unprecedented sophistication to Mr. Osborne, and, for that matter, to Mr. Olivier, to interpret the mood of this embarrassing scene as anything but the exact equivalent of the sloppy reverence it evokes. There are wholehearted performances by Joan Plowright, Roger Livesey, Brenda da Ban- zie, Alan Bates, and Thora Hird in a sort of sliding scale of parts ranging from the obliga- tory overwrought (da Banzie) to the unaccount- ably underwritten (Plowright). The high-pow- 3KV ered talents in control seem to have collaborated on the farthest thing from their minds: Amateur Night at the Royal Court.-ARLENE CROCE ~i~jl:~~~ ~::i:B ~IB

The Savage Innocents -~ ~::;la-BB~ f-;DP?~8'?-;~Bs--~:? Director: Nicholas Ray. Adaptationby Hans Ruesch ri- ~;:-:s~a;~;?4~~.'=~:ie and F. Solinas from the novel the World ~::_::- -~ ~ev _1 Top of by iii:iBi:iiii:::ii-i-iM'-i:-g:ildii Ruesch. Producer: Maleno Malenotti. Screenplay ~~~?B by Ray. Director of photography: Aldo Tonti. ~?'-~B~ Music: Franco Lavagnino. Art direction: Don Ash- ton. Second director: Baccio Bandini. Second i~si: unit ~~ :-::::,: unit photography: Paddy Carey, RicardoPallottini. An Italian-French-British ~~-a-~-~~n?~~~ co-production; distribu- s .-:uBBLR:;6~'~:'~.'i~c~~:1LI _W;-i;'~-:~i:~?:::::;::-:;; ~ii~i~l tor, Paramount. With Anthony Quinn, Yoko Tani, :~~i~r~S::~::~:: 8~iL` Peter O'Toole, Carlo Anna ~~ Giustini, May Wong, ::::~ j Kaida Horiuchi, Marco Guglieimi. THE SAVAGEINNOCENTS: Echoes of NANOOK. The Savage Innocents warrants reviewing not so much for what it accomplishes as for what it attempts. It would appear that this adaptation pass on some Arctic wisdom, before being aban- of Hans Ruesch's novel The Top of the World doned, as is the custom, to Nanook the polar was intended to be a realistic portrayal of the bear. Eskimos who live beyond the reach of the white This is inherently interesting material, but it man's civilization and of the confusion and loses much of its potential effectiveness because disaster that result when the two ways of life the camera lingers over it like a spectator in a meet-each incomprehensible to the other. In freak show rather than allowing it to remain the this age such encounters are inevitable, and legitimate and naturally integrated background stories of them are worth telling, and retelling. to the story. The comparison between Ray's The meetings introduce conflicts which cause film and Flaherty's Nanook of the North is in- anguish from Indonesia to the Congo, and very escapable. For all of its faults, Innocents at- little of this is being recorded on film (Jean tempts a great deal more than the earlier film, Rouch is attempting some of it, in Africa), al- both in dramatic structure and anthropological though it would seem that the motion picture is insight. Ray tries to deal with the interplay of admirably suited to a subject which must bring characters in some depth and is thus committed together people estranged by distance and cul- (or so he evidently thought) to the use of pro- ture. Thus, when a film comes along which fessional actors and actresses. Thus, although deals at all with the subject, especially when several of his scenes seem to be straight out of this is a feature aimed at a mass audience, it has Nanook, they do not work as well, for it is one a prima facie claim to our attention. And when thing to have an Eskimo do what he habitually it fails, as this one unfortunately does, we should does and quite another to have Anthony Quinn try to assess the reasons for failure so that the and his Oriental colleagues go through the same subject area as such is not abandoned by the motions. commercial producers. In the second part of the film, Inuk tangles The story falls roughly into two parts. In the with the white man's civilization. Trekking to first we meet Inuk (Anthony Quinn) and follow a trading post where he can trade fox pelts for him through scenes of local color and some a rifle, he is visited by a missionary. A conflict cultural curiosity. Inuk declines to "laugh with" develops between the savage and the civilized the wife of a friend, but woos and wins his own, innocents which leads to the killing of the mis- in the manner of his people. He hunts walrus, sionary. This should have been a highly illumi- seal, and bear and chews lustily on raw blubber nating scene but it is, unfortunately, treated in to convince us that he is a number-one Eskimo. a very cursory manner. Here, certainly, is the His mother-in-law is introduced long enough to essence of the story and the crux of the conflict 44

that follows. Yet the man who is killed remains lation remains to be done on how their appeal a shadowy figure. The corruptor is never known may be widened without doing violence to the by us as well as is the corrupted. material. How is it possible to make films with After this incident Inuk flees north with his the integrity and perception of, for example, family and the Mounties start out to get their The Hunters, but which can be seen by the man. Get him they do, but in a sled accident large number of people the subject matter war- one of them is thrown into the water, and upon rants, and earn enough in exhibition receipts to being pulled out, freezes before our eyes. The guarantee perpetuation of such productions? surviving Mountie's hands are about to freeze We may note, above all, that the success of also, but Inuk slits open a sled dog and saves this type of film must depend largely upon how the hands by plunging them into the dog's effectively is created the illusion of reality. warm innards. Rather than abandoning his cap- There are two aspects to this, and two polar tor, Inuk decides to return him to the trading approaches illustrating them: one by using in- post. True to his code, the Mountie tells him digenous people, doing what they normally do, that he will have to turn him over to the authori- and pretending that the camera is only an inno- ties when they reach the post. Inuk, true to his cent observer; and the other by creating a story code, comprehends none of this. As they jour- and cinematic style that involves the audience ney south the Mountie develops an understand- beyond disbelief. ing of and affection for the Eskimo and his Innocents attempts both, and fails in both. family, so that when they reach the post his con- The first section tries to establish the nature of science gets the better of his duty. To keep the uncontaminated Eskimo, but it gives us no them from following he insults and attacks them real insight into their way of life, in spite of an and runs off to report that Inuk is dead. Baffled occasional attempt through Disneylike narra- by his behavior, the Eskimos return north. tion, and the portrayal of Eskimo customs makes The division of the film into two parts points them seem merely bizarre. Yet to show the up the dilemma which faces a film-maker who human validity of customs that seem strange to wishes to attack a problem of an anthropologi- us should be one of the prime concerns of such cal nature. How much can he depend upon the a film. And this is not just for social or anthro- exotic quality and folkways of his subject, and pological reasons, but in order to generate the how much must he depend upon a story line? kind of interest called box-office appeal. The How deeply may he probe an alien character, relationships between people of alien cultures whose language is not that of the audience, and are as interesting as those between people in whose culture is complex far beyond possible our own and, if we can be made to understand penetration in the conventional two hours of them, they should be as entertaining. screen time? Is the fragile illusion of reality best established and maintained by using the There are also technical problems in Inno- native people while letting a narrator speak for cents which remind us that what we are seeing them, or can an actor re-create them with greater is not real. The sets, the process screen, the insight? And what of the audience-are they traveling mattes are by and large well handled, better or worse served by being drawn into the but we are not really fooled. The anonymity, theater by a "name" actor now playing an Es- for American audiences, of most of the-actors kimo, when last week they saw him as a bandit and actresses works in their favor, but despite or a private eye? his excellent acting Anthony Quinn will be re- Each subject will have its own peculiar prob- membered as not always having been an Es- lems and each audience its own demands, but kimo. The music is atrocious. if films of this type are not to be abandoned All this is not to say that the film is completely solely to the classroom, the special study group, without merit. It is made with the high degree or (in rare cases) the film festival, much specu- of technical skill we expect from modern crews 45 and from Nicholas Ray, and much of the location matic purpose our eyes soon wander off to ex- photography is magnificent. Although our ver- plore the screen's emptier half-acre, background dict must finally be that the film falls far short textures of lattice, thatch, and leaves. The pho- of its potential, let us still hope that others will tography is distinguished, but slips sometimes be encouraged to try their hand in this impor- into preciosity. In moonlight silhouette, a tiger- tant area. Many approaches to production de- hunter crouching with drawn bow on the branch sign and production techniques remain to be of a tree makes a startling design; but it has also tried. Let us hope that The Savage Innocents a studied elegance quite out of place. The film's will not be the last experiment in this field. lingering delights are all pictorial: vast perspec- -DOUGLAS COX tives of soft-toned rice fields under black ridges of monsoon clouds; a small boy, alone in the forest, sun dappling his wondering face. But The Flute and the Arrow they are few, and too soon passed. The clouds dissolve into a shattering stereophonic storm; Written, directed, and photographedby Arne Sucks- a leopard waits for the boy. Sansom. dorff. English commentary by William Leopards are common. In the space of little A Sandrews Film Studio production. Distributor: more than an hour we see ten clashes with un- Janus. ruly cats. And it is here, in the handling of the between the world of men and the well-fleshed characters: without relationship Solid, them, that films about life in soon lose enclosing jungle The Flute and the Arrow primitive society contrasts most their in a of surface and sharply-and astonishingly-with way parade typicalities The Great Adventure. The farm household and diffuse of "the Arne Sucksdorff pictures tribe." the forest animals of the Swedish film were mu- understands this His new film The problem. indifferent. In The Flute and the Arrow Flute and the Arrow that tually shows, however, limit- and are hostile. A one's cast is not to solve it. An jungle village passionately ing enough open- constant war is set between Muria and wild us the Muria up ing market-day panorama gives beasts and other matters are reduced to mere tribe of central India, en masse. Then the cam- intervals in the fray. The leopards are Indian, era picks out the two people who are our main but it is not only in a physical sense that they concern. Riga is a young woman of inferior are worlds apart from the lynx of The Great Ad- caste, a Hindu from outside the tribe. a Ginju, venture. The an amoral uni- is ostracized for her. "In the lynx personified Muria, courting verse. In The Great Adventure we had the eyes of the tribe," William Sansom's narration pathos of a Nature indifferent to life and death: warns, "theirs is an unpardonable alliance." in The Flute and the Arrow, replete with wicked From what we can see, this quarrel with tribal "tyrants" against whom, at the time of the hunt, opinion worries the narrator much more than the people "rise in revolt," we have the bathos the young couple. Throughout the incidents to of stock jungle melodrama.-ROGERSANDALL follow-the loss of a buffalo, exile from the village, and attack by wild beasts-they alternately Due to the lack of we have had to smile and look sad, but the happy illusion that space, hold until the issue a these faces relate to the action of the story rarely Spring report by Breitrose on the recent seizes us. Ginju and Riga remain intractably Henry Flaherty remote. Festival and the "Film as Communica- tion" held in with Physically, Sucksdorff was close to his people. competition conjunction the San Francisco Film Festival. This will Fine close-ups of Ginju and Riga ornament the next with a number screen. But the width of Agascope and the hues appear time, together of on and reviews of recent of Eastmancolor do not help. The faces make reports experimental in the United States. strong portraits: but since they serve little dra- film-making 45 and from Nicholas Ray, and much of the location matic purpose our eyes soon wander off to ex- photography is magnificent. Although our ver- plore the screen's emptier half-acre, background dict must finally be that the film falls far short textures of lattice, thatch, and leaves. The pho- of its potential, let us still hope that others will tography is distinguished, but slips sometimes be encouraged to try their hand in this impor- into preciosity. In moonlight silhouette, a tiger- tant area. Many approaches to production de- hunter crouching with drawn bow on the branch sign and production techniques remain to be of a tree makes a startling design; but it has also tried. Let us hope that The Savage Innocents a studied elegance quite out of place. The film's will not be the last experiment in this field. lingering delights are all pictorial: vast perspec- -DOUGLAS COX tives of soft-toned rice fields under black ridges of monsoon clouds; a small boy, alone in the forest, sun dappling his wondering face. But The Flute and the Arrow they are few, and too soon passed. The clouds dissolve into a shattering stereophonic storm; Written, directed, and photographedby Arne Sucks- a leopard waits for the boy. Sansom. dorff. English commentary by William Leopards are common. In the space of little A Sandrews Film Studio production. Distributor: more than an hour we see ten clashes with un- Janus. ruly cats. And it is here, in the handling of the between the world of men and the well-fleshed characters: without relationship Solid, them, that films about life in soon lose enclosing jungle The Flute and the Arrow primitive society contrasts most their in a of surface and sharply-and astonishingly-with way parade typicalities The Great Adventure. The farm household and diffuse of "the Arne Sucksdorff pictures tribe." the forest animals of the Swedish film were mu- understands this His new film The problem. indifferent. In The Flute and the Arrow Flute and the Arrow that tually shows, however, limit- and are hostile. A one's cast is not to solve it. An jungle village passionately ing enough open- constant war is set between Muria and wild us the Muria up ing market-day panorama gives beasts and other matters are reduced to mere tribe of central India, en masse. Then the cam- intervals in the fray. The leopards are Indian, era picks out the two people who are our main but it is not only in a physical sense that they concern. Riga is a young woman of inferior are worlds apart from the lynx of The Great Ad- caste, a Hindu from outside the tribe. a Ginju, venture. The an amoral uni- is ostracized for her. "In the lynx personified Muria, courting verse. In The Great Adventure we had the eyes of the tribe," William Sansom's narration pathos of a Nature indifferent to life and death: warns, "theirs is an unpardonable alliance." in The Flute and the Arrow, replete with wicked From what we can see, this quarrel with tribal "tyrants" against whom, at the time of the hunt, opinion worries the narrator much more than the people "rise in revolt," we have the bathos the young couple. Throughout the incidents to of stock jungle melodrama.-ROGERSANDALL follow-the loss of a buffalo, exile from the village, and attack by wild beasts-they alternately Due to the lack of we have had to smile and look sad, but the happy illusion that space, hold until the issue a these faces relate to the action of the story rarely Spring report by Breitrose on the recent seizes us. Ginju and Riga remain intractably Henry Flaherty remote. Festival and the "Film as Communica- tion" held in with Physically, Sucksdorff was close to his people. competition conjunction the San Francisco Film Festival. This will Fine close-ups of Ginju and Riga ornament the next with a number screen. But the width of Agascope and the hues appear time, together of on and reviews of recent of Eastmancolor do not help. The faces make reports experimental in the United States. strong portraits: but since they serve little dra- film-making 46

Films from the that of Chukhrai's first film, The Forty-First, but San Francisco Festival in Ballad of a Soldier the director is less concerned with visual picturization. In the former color contributed a beauti- In the following section we review, at the work, photography ful but look to the lengths which seem a group of oddly travel-documentary appropriate, the latter is in black and white but films shown at the recent San Francisco Festi- narrative; with a sense of and excitement val. We had hoped also to review EL LAZA- poetry pictorial in contrast with the of the RILLO DE TORMES Guide a totally techniques (Little of Tormes), first film. new and reportedly quite good Spanish film. However, by one of the inexplicableand idiotic Collaborating on the screenplay with Yoshov, quirks of the Festival, our assigned reviewer Chukhrai kept the primary purpose for making was denied admittance to the showing, and the film to make his characters emotionally com- could only have covered it by paying the ridicu- pelling and to create, out of a simple story, lous admission price of $10 charged for that some awareness of the pity involved in human evening. It seems to us foolish to humor Mr. encounters when one cannot take hold of life Levin on such matters. If he is runninga festi- and experience it fully because of war. The val, as one outraged film-goer was heard to irony of the film strikes us with great power mutter, he should run a festival. One of the almost immediately. We see a long, white- necessities, we must evidently point out, is to dusty road winding endlessly through fields of make it possible, and conceivablyeven easy, wheat, and a woman watching the road. A for voice on the sound track tells us serious film critics to see the pictures. impassively that this is a mother watching for her son. We are told that he lies dead far away, honored as the unknown soldier, and then we see the sol- Ballad a dier's last days. Immediately, backward into of Soldier time, we are thrust upon the battlefield where (Ballada o Soldate) Director: Grigori Chukhrai. the hero, nineteen-year-old Alyosha (Vladimir Scenario: Valentin Yoshov and Chukhrai. Camera: Ivashev), panics when he and another soldier Vladimir Nikolayev and Era Saveleva. Music: are attacked by some German tanks. When his Michael Zyv. Mosfilm. With: Vladimir Ivashev, companion is shot, Alyosha flees in terror across Zhanna Antonia Nicolas Prokhorenko, Maximova, the battleground, pursued by a tank. The Kriutchkov,Evgeni Ourbanski. camera moves along swiftly into this bizarre There is no longer any reason to believe that chase, quickly cutting from the figure of the boy the Russian cinema is so confined by govern- to the juggernaut, rising omnisciently above the mental or party restrictions that authentic works field to give us some sense of the futility and of individual artistry cannot be made. Grigori fear in the episode itself and, as Alyosha con- Chukhrai's second film, Ballad of a Soldier, is tinues running across the flat land, the camera an emotional film of exceedingly fine craftsman- in following him suddenly turns upside down ship, unforgettable acting, and lasting effect for a few seconds. upon a spectator. It aims to defy the entire Having caught the extent of Alyosha's wild concept of war, certainly, but in this very simple confusion, the inverted image pulls us relent- story of a peasant youth sacrificed in anonymous lessly into that final moment of desperation combat after briefly encountering first love's which makes Alyosha stop and singlehandedly joys and agonies, there is an undeniable indi- destroy the tank with several accurately placed cation that in Chukhrai Russian cinema now has missiles. The incredibility of this sequence is its counterpart of Autant-Lara. eliminated by its artistry, and one knows at this The theme of youth and love in wartime, point that the camera will be neither predict- thwarted by the surrounding conflict, is also able nor static during the remainder of the film. 47

This brilliant prologue to the main story-which and the girl stand facing each other on the train, covers Alyosha's journey from the front to his gently bewitched by their desires-all of this is mother's farm in Svortsov for a brief leave- a triumph of camera narration. The young heightens the sense of ironic inevitability that people part without a kiss, and quite at the last overshadows the entire work. Despite its mo- moment Shura discloses that her remarks about ments of humor, its momentary contentments, returning to her fiance were untrue. Like Al- its revelations of the tenderer side of human yosha, she will be alone. Already regarding nature, Ballad of a Soldier is sardonic tragedy. Alyosha as a tragic hero, one begins to ache at Alyosha quickly evolves from the frightened this moment-one watches helplessly, and Chu- boy on a bomb-scarred earth to a boyish soldier- khrai understands that this will occur; he wishes hero on a picaresque journey. The kindly Gen- to underscore the terrible consequences of life eral, touched by Alyosha's simple desire to or love held in abeyance, the irrevocability of repair the roof on his mother's house, is shown time and destiny. For the first time in the film, as one of those gruffly sentimental Tolstoyans, one must identify with Alyosha, and, of course, and it is amusing to realize that the Russians the suspense builds from here toward the last see themselves as Hollywood sees them when it memorable sequence: Alyosha's meeting with comes to high military officials. his mother. Ivashev is brilliant as Alyosha. In his face lie A bombing of the train not only dispels the hesitant passions of adolescence; his ex- Alyosha's recurrent memory of Shura walking pressions, uncalculated, by turns cruel or yearn- disconsolately out of his life, but leaves him ing, convince the spectator of extraordinary with only a few hours before he must return talent. As, little by little, Alyosha's leave is to the front. He finds no one at home when he peeled away because of his acts of kindness to arrives, and he starts to leave. Then, after a people along the way home (an embittered tremendous heightening of emotional tension, amputee whose masculine ego makes him loath making us fearful that the mother will not be to face his young wife again; a young girl travel- able to race across the fields from her harvesting ing alone to a city near Svortsov) he faces in time to catch Alyosha, the screen is deliber- home-front adultery and senile curiosity with ately struck into silence as the soldier falls into equal maturity. Ivashev's reactions, particular- his mother's embrace. This becomes a very ly when he is lying to the old man about his powerful and moving experience-humane, un- soldier son, exhibit Chukhrai's ability to get the sentimental, and true.-ALBERT JOHNSON actor to hold an .emotion and place it before us at will. Alyosha's growing love for the shy and ap- prehensive young virgin, Shura (Zhanna Prok- Ein Mann geht durch die Wand horenko), is magnificently shown to us by the camera. The stirrings of innocent sensual love (A Man Goes Through the Wall) Directed by are counterbalanced camera at Ladislao Vajda. Scenario: Istvan Bekeffi and Hans by glances pass- Jacoby. Camera: Bruno Mondi. of seen from the Music: Franz ing glimpses sky, grimy boxcar A in which the Grothe. Kurt Ulrich film. With Heinz Riihmann, youths are traveling, by steel-sharp Nicole Courcel, Rudolf Rudolf of Rhomberg, Vogel, etchings some stairways over the railroad Peter Vogel, Hubert von Meyerlinck, and Hans tracks, the billows of smoke curling against the Leibelt. silhouetted iron railings, or by the tenement building on Semenov Street, where a little boy Comedies based on true whimsy are rare these wafts soap bubbles down the stair well, and days: our own comedies tend to be either situa- Shura reaches out to catch them. tional or slapstick; those imported from England The artful use of close-ups of Alyosha and are predominantly satirical; the relatively few Shura, softly dissolving in and out, as the soldier Italian comedies that we see are combinations E:XV, sticking his head through the wall of the boss's Agi-:-:: -F office, gets his revenge by terrorizing the au- thoritarian boss into grovelling insanity. He walks through a row of shops, stealing a pencil in a stationery store in order to write a message in a jewelry store (signing it "Superman") to tell the proprietor that he has stolen a diamond necklace. He walks out of his prison cell and into the police commissioner's apartment to get more comfortable bedding for his cell cot. These situations are but are Rudolf Rhombertas the painter and predictable, they nicely Heinz Riihmann as Herr Buchsbaum handled and not stretched out to the point of in A MANGOES THROUGH THE WALL. tedium. The technical effects are adequately produced-only once do we see a gummy wall give way slightly to Herr Buchsbaum's pene- trating finger. of satirical and situational; and who else pro- In the character of Herr Buchsbaum, Heinz duces comedies? From Germany, a nation never Riihmann, who is best remembered here as the notorious for its sense of humor, we would "Captain from Kopenick," plays a polite, gentle hardly have expected the sardonic Rosemarie little man who would like to be a big man, but or the firmly mocking Aren't We Wonderful, who is so embarrassed by his sudden talent that much less a whimsical comedy. Yet such ex- he goes to see a psychiatrist to find out what is actly is Ein Mann geht durch die Wand. The wrong. (He is given tranquillizers.) Riihmann film, produced in Germany with German actors, here is every bit as much in character as he was is not, however, an entirely German production: in the role of the blustering Captain. Nicole its director is Ladislao Vajda, a Hungarian, and Courcel, as the pretty neighbor, is not impres- the script is based on a story by the Frenchman sive as an actress (she does not really have much Marcel Ayme. of a part), but she has a fresh-looking face. The The success of whimsy depends on the crea- minor characters are superbly cast, and with tion of one genuinely and originally absurd them a note of satire enters the film. There is premise, which we are made somehow to ac- Herr Buchsbaum's painter friend (played by cept; the sensitive and not overdone working Rudolf Rhomberg), whose only comment to out of its consequences, at which we must be Herr Buchsbaum's pathetic outpourings is a re- amused; and, perhaps, the creation of appealing quest for a loan; the boss, Herr Pickler (played characters, with whom we can sympathize. In by Hubert von Meyerinck), is a caricature of this film we find all three of these essentials. the hysterical tyrant, whose eventual insanity The story is that of Herr Buchsbaum (we we accept gratefully. In contrast to his "misfor- never learn his first name), a petty clerk in the tune" is that of Herr Fuchs (Rudolf Vogel), a government Revenue Office. Frustrated by a pathetic boot-licker who becomes Pickler's fa- tyrannical new boss, by a seductive waitress vorite. When Fuchs reveals to the rest of the whose husband menaces him, and, worst of all, office staff that the reason for his boot-licking is by a pretty French widow who moves in next his poverty and his wife's ill-health, a jarring door to him, Herr Buchsbaum feels that he is note of realism is inserted. Because Fuchs is "up against a wall." (He says as much to his truly pitiable and because we do not despise old professor.) Then suddenly Herr Buchsbaum him in the same way we despise Pickler, he does is given the miraculous power to go through not fit in with the tone of the rest of the picture. walls! From here on, the film explores the pos- The object of satire must remain one-dimen- sibilities of this situation: Herr Buchsbaum, sional, lest we sympathize with him. 49

But it is Buchsbaum, the little man who wants in a world so closely observed that the cutting to be a "superman," who gets most of our sym- edge of its meanness is all around them. This is pathy. He, too, is one-dimensional: but his no "poem," not only tender at the center but soft dimension is kindness. It is because of his kind- all over. When there is lyricism, the tinny tinkle ness that Buchsbaum gets into trouble with of the prosaic is never far off. Pickler in the first place: he is demoted because Take one remarkable scene. The boy has he is incapable of writing discourteous letters. hidden the Jewish girl in an abandoned store- It is kindness that gets him into jail (he will not room. Nearby, in the same house, people are let his innocent painter friend be falsely ar- sleeping, getting and spending, trying to keep rested); and his kindness-of course-earns him going. Outside the German trucks go by and his reward at the end. Herr Buchsbaum at- the loud-speakers, silent now, may bleat again tempts to be wicked and selfish. Mistaking his at any moment. Inside the room, the boy, who neighbor's doctor leaving her apartment for a can only see her at night, asks the girl, "Shall we lover, he decides that decency does not pay, go dancing tonight?" Clumsily, they begin to and that the only way to win a woman is with dance, the dance becoming a waltz, picking up money and jewels. This is the reason for his speed until the room is whirling around them. stealing the diamonds; but even this theft he And then, in that whirl, the two figures are re- commits for her sake, and when she is fright- volving through an open sky, laughing but ened at finding the diamonds in her apartment, apart, each in his separate arc. The pace slows he takes them back and drops them through the down, the room comes back, the boy stumbles ceiling of the store. He also returns the huge on a bucket, tries to embrace the girl, and she parcel of bank notes which he has stolen from breaks away. Love doesn't come all at once, a vault. Herr Buchsbaum is really incapable of and while it grows, the practical, the petty, doing evil or unkindness; and we are therefore meanness in the sense of both cheapness and happy to see our expectations confirmed at the cruelty, closes in on them. end, when Herr Buchsbaum wins the young There isn't a trace of symbolism or conclu- widow after all and is chosen as the new boss sion-drawing in any of this. Dana Smutna, the of the office, since his courteous letters have had girl, doesn't look Jewish, and if she weren't so the best results of any. Human kindness must, beautiful, the boy might not have fallen in love after all, be rewarded by human compensations; with her. His feeling is quite a different thing and to his relief, Herr Buchsbaum loses the abil- from the kindness he gives the Jewish family ity to walk through walls.-HARRIET R. POLT leaving for a concentration camp at the film's beginning. He. watches, with the rest of the tenants, as they go off with a wheelbarrow over the cobbled street, joltingly followed by the Romeo, Juliet, and Darkness camera. He makes no political gestures; it is the villains, the witless, the Nazis Film. Weiss. unwitting Ceskoslovensky Director: Jiri Script: who look the to find Weiss and Otcenasek. Photography:Vaclav themselves, through person Jiri Jan the label. Late in the when the is dis- Hanus. Music: Jiri Srnka. With Ivan Mistrik,Dana film, girl Smutna, Jirina Sejbalova, Blanka Bohdanova, Jiri covered, there is still hope for her. Despite the Kodet, Eva Mrazova,Karla Chadimova. scrambling for food, the mother's sharp-eyed bookkeeping that makes her remodel a cast-off Surely not another boy and girl torn apart by dress for the sluttish new tenant, in the face of the engines of war? Well, yes, but stop. There the pressures that make a sympathetic teacher are ways of doing this, Ballad of a Soldier's way, recite a eulogy to Heydrich, these people are for one, that leave you more conscious of a firm still decent. It's only when the girl's Star of hand on the cutter's scissors than of any irrepa- David strikes them blind that they dismiss her rable loss. Jiri Weiss' way is to put the lovers from the company of "good Czechs" and see her 50 only as a threat. Once she's out of the way, they only beat against it, crying "I won't allow it!"- can get on with the things that matter-hem- one of the most poignant curtain lines ever lines, margarine, examinations, pets. Through heard in a film. For the final scene takes place, cutting sometimes as abrupt as Bardem's in in time, seconds before the one that opened the Death of a Cyclist, Weiss makes a complete film. The storeroom is empty, and a wind blows break between the boy's "normal" life and the through it, ruffling the pages of the girl's book. time he spends with the girl, and Ivan Mistrik's An anti-climax? Perhaps, but if we saw another gifted playing makes him, not a different per- person now, with that familiar reminder that son, but more of a person, in the storeroom. In life, after all, goes on, we could only ask, one scene, a silly girl chatters at him and sud- "Why?"-JOSEPHKOSTOLEFSKY denly he sees her but hears only the loud- speaker and the danger it implies for Hanka alone in the storeroom. In another, the trollop Macario tries to make love to him, and a moment later Director: Roberto Gavaldon. Clasa Films. Sce- arm a Hanka's bare takes pitcher of water from nario: B. Traven. Camera: Gabriel Figueroa. With him in an image of startling purity. Ignacio Lopez Tarso, Pina Pellicer. The film is full of accidents, of objects, none of them standing for something else but all of Macario is based quite faithfully on a story by them taken for what they are and heightened, B. Traven, who wrote Treasure of the Sierra sometimes unbearably. For once, a bird is not Madre-though, if you missed the credit titles, a symbol of the unfettered spirit; while the girl you would never know it. The story is a some- is being hunted, this one chirps at a level too what insipid one concerning a poor woodcutter, shrill to be borne. The script by Weiss and Jan whose discriminating charity is rewarded, by Otcenasek is beautifully constructed, taking full Death, with certain powers of healing the mor- advantage of the mystery story's despised tech- tally sick. Macario (the woodcutter) offends nique of the "plant." The guinea pig left by the the powers of the church, is hounded and cap- departed family is later attacked by the col- tured by the Inquisition, escapes, pleads with laborating whore's dog. A seized student's Death for a reprieve and is refused. (In the drafting tools are offered to a farm woman for final scenes Death is presented as presiding over food; refused, they turn up on his empty desk a cavern full of candles, each of which repre- following his execution, and, after an awkward sents a human life. Macario's candle is burning silence, the teacher makes his oration. The low and he snatches it up and runs away; but apartment house itself has an iron gate that there's not much you can do with a candle everyone takes for granted; once the girl has stump, and the woodcutter dies.) walked through it, it's locked and the boy can Despite Figueroa's camera work, Macario is lusterless, and its images are curiously without power; they set up no reverberations. Indeed, the film is evocative of Mexico only in the way it would have been if made by MGM, using a company of imported actors. The flaw is suiely in the scenario, which has no pungency whatsoever: it is not so much simple as superficial. To put it another way, the simplicity resides not in the peasants' view of life, but in the commercial writer's view of peasants. Along with White Reindeer this reviewer finds it to be one of those 3131gi legends we doubt were ever legendary.-R. H. TURNER

Dana Smutna as Hanka in ROMEO,JULIET, AND DARKNESS. 50 only as a threat. Once she's out of the way, they only beat against it, crying "I won't allow it!"- can get on with the things that matter-hem- one of the most poignant curtain lines ever lines, margarine, examinations, pets. Through heard in a film. For the final scene takes place, cutting sometimes as abrupt as Bardem's in in time, seconds before the one that opened the Death of a Cyclist, Weiss makes a complete film. The storeroom is empty, and a wind blows break between the boy's "normal" life and the through it, ruffling the pages of the girl's book. time he spends with the girl, and Ivan Mistrik's An anti-climax? Perhaps, but if we saw another gifted playing makes him, not a different per- person now, with that familiar reminder that son, but more of a person, in the storeroom. In life, after all, goes on, we could only ask, one scene, a silly girl chatters at him and sud- "Why?"-JOSEPHKOSTOLEFSKY denly he sees her but hears only the loud- speaker and the danger it implies for Hanka alone in the storeroom. In another, the trollop Macario tries to make love to him, and a moment later Director: Roberto Gavaldon. Clasa Films. Sce- arm a Hanka's bare takes pitcher of water from nario: B. Traven. Camera: Gabriel Figueroa. With him in an image of startling purity. Ignacio Lopez Tarso, Pina Pellicer. The film is full of accidents, of objects, none of them standing for something else but all of Macario is based quite faithfully on a story by them taken for what they are and heightened, B. Traven, who wrote Treasure of the Sierra sometimes unbearably. For once, a bird is not Madre-though, if you missed the credit titles, a symbol of the unfettered spirit; while the girl you would never know it. The story is a some- is being hunted, this one chirps at a level too what insipid one concerning a poor woodcutter, shrill to be borne. The script by Weiss and Jan whose discriminating charity is rewarded, by Otcenasek is beautifully constructed, taking full Death, with certain powers of healing the mor- advantage of the mystery story's despised tech- tally sick. Macario (the woodcutter) offends nique of the "plant." The guinea pig left by the the powers of the church, is hounded and cap- departed family is later attacked by the col- tured by the Inquisition, escapes, pleads with laborating whore's dog. A seized student's Death for a reprieve and is refused. (In the drafting tools are offered to a farm woman for final scenes Death is presented as presiding over food; refused, they turn up on his empty desk a cavern full of candles, each of which repre- following his execution, and, after an awkward sents a human life. Macario's candle is burning silence, the teacher makes his oration. The low and he snatches it up and runs away; but apartment house itself has an iron gate that there's not much you can do with a candle everyone takes for granted; once the girl has stump, and the woodcutter dies.) walked through it, it's locked and the boy can Despite Figueroa's camera work, Macario is lusterless, and its images are curiously without power; they set up no reverberations. Indeed, the film is evocative of Mexico only in the way it would have been if made by MGM, using a company of imported actors. The flaw is suiely in the scenario, which has no pungency whatsoever: it is not so much simple as superficial. To put it another way, the simplicity resides not in the peasants' view of life, but in the commercial writer's view of peasants. Along with White Reindeer this reviewer finds it to be one of those 3131gi legends we doubt were ever legendary.-R. H. TURNER

Dana Smutna as Hanka in ROMEO,JULIET, AND DARKNESS. 51

See You Tomorrow Directed by JanuszMorgenstern. Produced by Film ...... Polski. Screenplay by Cybulski and Kobiela. With Teresa Tuszynska,Zbigniew Cybulski, and the students of the satiricaltheater, "Bim-Bom,"in Gdansk (Danzig).

This film attempts the sort of thing films usually don't. Through the tale of a student theater director's longing for the lovely capricious daughter of a wealthy French diplomat, it seeks to construct a strange cinematic fairy tale with somewhat poetic overtones and at the same time Polish young theater people as seen in show the inner life. The method is a very spe- SEEYou TOMORROW(Teresa Tuszynska,center) cial one, introduced by a device which is used again in the ending: the narrator is shown, alone in his theater, speaking his dreams to a puppet of corner or whim the girl, played sparklingly by used in some of the acts. If it is not a complete Miss Tuszynska, is either there or not there, his success, the film nonetheless must be lauded for or no one's or everyone's. Zbigniew Cybulski, an unusual and difficult style upheld most of whom we know as the Jimmy-Dean-type Re- the way. sistance fighter in Ashes and Diamonds, played From the very beginning we are led to expect, the part of the director somewhat ambiguously. by the student narrator, a "certain kind of tale," His Jacek was by fits and starts nervous or in and the camera is suddenly catching water by absolute command of his art in the theater, a moonlight as we still hear his voice on the bumbler to the extreme or possessed of a subtle soundtrack saying, "Sometimes we want to be sensitivity and fertile imagination. None of this away from others, not because we don't desire was inappropriate to the conception of the their company, but because we love them too character, but because (and here we speculate) much." The same water by day is a city canal it was so much like the real-life Cybulski (much by which, abruptly, inexplicably, he meets the was made of the fact that he is actually the girl he spends the rest of the film either pining director of the self-same theater in Poland), it for or chasing after. A morning tennis date the did not seem to fuse here in an effective way. following day proves a bust (he is a miserable Cybulski played the part with occasional deep player) and sets the mood for a good deal of understanding and tenderness, and he played what comes after: she practically deserts our it colorfully: too colorfully. Romeo to flirt gaily with fawning males nearby, Still, if it is anybody's film, it is his. He both at which point the hero departs, but not without makes it and breaks it, having himself a field having had delivered to her a puppet, which day with this one, and having had, one suspects, also provides her with an address where she more to do with the over-all conception and can reach him. tonal effect of the film than anyone else. The From there on the chase leads through inti- girl's fine work tends to get lost in this powerful mate theater performances, melees in girls' exhibition of a single personality. It is unmis- dorms, and a few quiet romantic interludes takably Cybulski who creates, maintains, and sandwiched between more outrageous and mar- changes almost at will the moods of superficial velous scenes; running on the beach or being longing for social status and identity and the their completely natural, unadorned, scatter- more personal and profound longing for sexual brained selves in church or museums. By a turn and emotional companionship. Both play a part 52 in his interest in her and in the film's essential glamor, it merely indicates (as the Italian title continuity and lyrical overtones. The best better suggests) that in 1943-44 there wasn't scenes are those that take place during one too much light in Rome: Germans and Black afternoon date, when they laugh and carouse on Shirts regulated the lives of its people. Rossel- the beach, joke and pout in church (where they lini once more has brought forward the subject go through a mock wedding ceremony), and of the Second World War, to which he has kiss sweetly under a merchant's awning before devoted the best of his efforts since 1944: Open an assembled crowd gathered for shelter near City, Paisd, Germany Year Zero, Europe '51. the church. There are also some very fine (Even Generale della Rovere, of last year, scenes in the theater, where unusual puppet shows Rossellini delving into the ugliness of shows and revues are performed nightly. war.) How justified is his insistence on the There is enough humor to balance the ab- subject? How probable is a second success surdity and sadness of Jacek's position: he sees after the overwhelming truth and sharpness of she is not "tuned in" to him a good deal of the Open City? time she is with him, he sees she is a silly, hope- The plot of Era Notte a Roma is a complex less 18-year-old at times, but her charm and one, moving from the Tyrrhenian village of the gaiety and vitality have put him into a state opening, shortly after the Armistice of Septem- where it doesn't matter. In the end, because she ber 8, 1943, to Rome. There we follow the is not speaking his language and he was listen- hazards confronting three Allied soldiers-an ing to his own, they do not see each other on American (Peter Baldwin), an Englishman the night before she is due to leave with her (Leo Genn), and a Russian (Sergei Bondar- family. Back in the theater, where he hasn't chouk). They are hidden by an alluring, dark set foot for two weeks (squarely in the middle Roman girl (Giovanna Ralli; she won the best- of rehearsal) he tells the end of the story to his actress prize for this role) who is active in the puppet, adding, "That's the way such stories black market though her fianc6 (Renato Salva- are supposed to end, n'est-ce pas?" tore) is a young Communist playing hide-and- Jacek is, of course, both poet and fool. We seek with the Fascist police. When she dis- must admire Cybulski's effort to bring to the covers that the Germans will shoot anyone who screen the kind of irony usually best done in gives refuge to prisoners, she is terrified and fiction. For its unusual style and conception and wants to get rid of them at once. Ultimately, for its convincing air of honesty and truth, not on Christmas Eve, they attempt to steal down to mention the difficult portrayals asked of two the block to a partisan arms factory, where the relative newcomers to the screen, See You To- Russian stays (he is later killed by the Ger- morrow may prove to be a lasting addition to mans) but the other two return, and later com- the film repertoire.-NORMAN C. MOSER plications set in concerning the girl's relations with the Englishman, who finally kills a sinister, crippled former priest who pursues her; as she sits petrified by the immensity of these events, Era Notte a Roma the Allies enter Rome and the crowds cheer in Director: Roberto Rossellini. Scenario: Diego Fab- the streets. bri, S. Amidei, B. Rondi, and Rossellini. Camera: All this is rendered, in the nearly three hours Carlo Carlini. Music: Renzo Rossellini. With: Gio- of the film, in a manner that can only be called vanna Ralli, Sergei Bondarchouk,Leo Genn, Peter prolix-though long, and complicated, it does Renato Hannes Messemer. Baldwin, Salvatore, not provide real profundity or detailed inquiry into the characters' development. Not that the [A Night in Rome replaced La Dolce Vita at director's intentions weren't good or sincere the Festival at the last moment.] Though the (though one might suspect that he capitulated title could be mistaken as an introduction to to the temptation of imitating his better self), 52 in his interest in her and in the film's essential glamor, it merely indicates (as the Italian title continuity and lyrical overtones. The best better suggests) that in 1943-44 there wasn't scenes are those that take place during one too much light in Rome: Germans and Black afternoon date, when they laugh and carouse on Shirts regulated the lives of its people. Rossel- the beach, joke and pout in church (where they lini once more has brought forward the subject go through a mock wedding ceremony), and of the Second World War, to which he has kiss sweetly under a merchant's awning before devoted the best of his efforts since 1944: Open an assembled crowd gathered for shelter near City, Paisd, Germany Year Zero, Europe '51. the church. There are also some very fine (Even Generale della Rovere, of last year, scenes in the theater, where unusual puppet shows Rossellini delving into the ugliness of shows and revues are performed nightly. war.) How justified is his insistence on the There is enough humor to balance the ab- subject? How probable is a second success surdity and sadness of Jacek's position: he sees after the overwhelming truth and sharpness of she is not "tuned in" to him a good deal of the Open City? time she is with him, he sees she is a silly, hope- The plot of Era Notte a Roma is a complex less 18-year-old at times, but her charm and one, moving from the Tyrrhenian village of the gaiety and vitality have put him into a state opening, shortly after the Armistice of Septem- where it doesn't matter. In the end, because she ber 8, 1943, to Rome. There we follow the is not speaking his language and he was listen- hazards confronting three Allied soldiers-an ing to his own, they do not see each other on American (Peter Baldwin), an Englishman the night before she is due to leave with her (Leo Genn), and a Russian (Sergei Bondar- family. Back in the theater, where he hasn't chouk). They are hidden by an alluring, dark set foot for two weeks (squarely in the middle Roman girl (Giovanna Ralli; she won the best- of rehearsal) he tells the end of the story to his actress prize for this role) who is active in the puppet, adding, "That's the way such stories black market though her fianc6 (Renato Salva- are supposed to end, n'est-ce pas?" tore) is a young Communist playing hide-and- Jacek is, of course, both poet and fool. We seek with the Fascist police. When she dis- must admire Cybulski's effort to bring to the covers that the Germans will shoot anyone who screen the kind of irony usually best done in gives refuge to prisoners, she is terrified and fiction. For its unusual style and conception and wants to get rid of them at once. Ultimately, for its convincing air of honesty and truth, not on Christmas Eve, they attempt to steal down to mention the difficult portrayals asked of two the block to a partisan arms factory, where the relative newcomers to the screen, See You To- Russian stays (he is later killed by the Ger- morrow may prove to be a lasting addition to mans) but the other two return, and later com- the film repertoire.-NORMAN C. MOSER plications set in concerning the girl's relations with the Englishman, who finally kills a sinister, crippled former priest who pursues her; as she sits petrified by the immensity of these events, Era Notte a Roma the Allies enter Rome and the crowds cheer in Director: Roberto Rossellini. Scenario: Diego Fab- the streets. bri, S. Amidei, B. Rondi, and Rossellini. Camera: All this is rendered, in the nearly three hours Carlo Carlini. Music: Renzo Rossellini. With: Gio- of the film, in a manner that can only be called vanna Ralli, Sergei Bondarchouk,Leo Genn, Peter prolix-though long, and complicated, it does Renato Hannes Messemer. Baldwin, Salvatore, not provide real profundity or detailed inquiry into the characters' development. Not that the [A Night in Rome replaced La Dolce Vita at director's intentions weren't good or sincere the Festival at the last moment.] Though the (though one might suspect that he capitulated title could be mistaken as an introduction to to the temptation of imitating his better self), 53 but obviously the angry impulse, the desire to the specific dramatic situation. His attempts testify, defend, and celebrate, so tangible and with the language, for instance, or, more often, convincing in Open City and Paisid, are now his mimicry, are always convincing without gone. This change is understandable: men do being histrionic; there is, in fact, in all his in- change, even if they don't or shouldn't forget; terpretation, an immense understanding of the hence, they reexamine the past with different character, the place, the time. Giovanna Ralli eyes, they have learned new things which make does her job well, though her make-up and cos- them able to render their past in a different tumes are often against her. She is to be par- language. ticularly praised for her veracity in portraying But in comparing the early and late Rossel- the change that takes place in the girl after her lini, one immediately sees that the central trait fianc6's death. of his art-his bare neorealism-has been trans- Visually the film has no remarkable merits, formed into a semirealistic style of evocation though the roofs do succeed in acquiring a sort tinged with literary flair. Even his black and of vibrant quality as if conspirators themselves. white now seems brownish and grey. And he is A true magic note, however, is struck when the thus led into what are both historical and artistic three prisoners, after having spent their first mistakes. So, for instance, food and wine are night in the attic unaware of its location, dis- consumed in easy plenty in A Night in Rome. cover the monuments of Rome from the window The dimness of electric light or the total ab- and realize where they are. This is done eco- sence of light is not indicated; the cruelty of nomically, unpretentiously, unexpectedly-as winter, without heat or proper clothing, is far reality itself takes hold of us. too mildly depicted. Though Giovanna Ralli A Night in Rome, then, with its tough life has lovely shoulders and looks well in a black does constitute an interesting replacement for slip, no Roman girl in a cold room would have the Sweet Life of Fellini; it is, however, more so lounged around in that costume. in its intentions than in its realization.-LETIZIA But the more serious mistakes have to do CIOTTIMILLER with the over-all conception and realization. If A Night in Rome was to reestablish the feeling of utter oppressiveness, of choking limitedness in which a human being found himself during A Stranger Knocks the German occupation; if the lives of the three prisoners confined to the attic were to come (En Fremmed BankerPaa) Director: Johan Jacob- forth with the total incapability of movement sen. Scenario: Finn Methling. Camera: Ake Borg- lund and that they must have experienced; if that section JohanJacobsen. Music: Eric Fiehn. With: of Rome was to vibrate with the hectic anima- Birgitte Federspiel, Preben LerdorffRye. Flamingo Film Studio. tion of those days, when communications were scarce, telephones rarely functioned, mail and It is difficult for us to know quite what to expect papers came sporadically, food was never suffi- from Denmark's studios. There is of course cient, and people disappeared one after the Carl Dreyer, but his works of grey psychologi- other; then it is almost completely a failure. cal religiosity and Nordic severity contrast In spite of these and other errors, A Night in sharply with Erik Balling's beautiful film, Qui- Rome succeeds in keeping and projecting a vitoq, and Johannes Allen's recent study of sense of dignity. This is achieved through act- adolescent unrest in Copenhagen, The Young ing, setting, and photography that, if not ex- Have No Time. Despite the undeniable visual ceptional, are always good and expressive. A polish of all Danish films we have seen, they special word must be reserved for Leo Genn, seem to be intensely preoccupied with intro- who displays a vast range of perceptions, in- spective questions of free will, sexual behavior tuitions, inventions, all very well linked with vs. the accepted codes, religious beliefs, guilt 53 but obviously the angry impulse, the desire to the specific dramatic situation. His attempts testify, defend, and celebrate, so tangible and with the language, for instance, or, more often, convincing in Open City and Paisid, are now his mimicry, are always convincing without gone. This change is understandable: men do being histrionic; there is, in fact, in all his in- change, even if they don't or shouldn't forget; terpretation, an immense understanding of the hence, they reexamine the past with different character, the place, the time. Giovanna Ralli eyes, they have learned new things which make does her job well, though her make-up and cos- them able to render their past in a different tumes are often against her. She is to be par- language. ticularly praised for her veracity in portraying But in comparing the early and late Rossel- the change that takes place in the girl after her lini, one immediately sees that the central trait fianc6's death. of his art-his bare neorealism-has been trans- Visually the film has no remarkable merits, formed into a semirealistic style of evocation though the roofs do succeed in acquiring a sort tinged with literary flair. Even his black and of vibrant quality as if conspirators themselves. white now seems brownish and grey. And he is A true magic note, however, is struck when the thus led into what are both historical and artistic three prisoners, after having spent their first mistakes. So, for instance, food and wine are night in the attic unaware of its location, dis- consumed in easy plenty in A Night in Rome. cover the monuments of Rome from the window The dimness of electric light or the total ab- and realize where they are. This is done eco- sence of light is not indicated; the cruelty of nomically, unpretentiously, unexpectedly-as winter, without heat or proper clothing, is far reality itself takes hold of us. too mildly depicted. Though Giovanna Ralli A Night in Rome, then, with its tough life has lovely shoulders and looks well in a black does constitute an interesting replacement for slip, no Roman girl in a cold room would have the Sweet Life of Fellini; it is, however, more so lounged around in that costume. in its intentions than in its realization.-LETIZIA But the more serious mistakes have to do CIOTTIMILLER with the over-all conception and realization. If A Night in Rome was to reestablish the feeling of utter oppressiveness, of choking limitedness in which a human being found himself during A Stranger Knocks the German occupation; if the lives of the three prisoners confined to the attic were to come (En Fremmed BankerPaa) Director: Johan Jacob- forth with the total incapability of movement sen. Scenario: Finn Methling. Camera: Ake Borg- lund and that they must have experienced; if that section JohanJacobsen. Music: Eric Fiehn. With: of Rome was to vibrate with the hectic anima- Birgitte Federspiel, Preben LerdorffRye. Flamingo Film Studio. tion of those days, when communications were scarce, telephones rarely functioned, mail and It is difficult for us to know quite what to expect papers came sporadically, food was never suffi- from Denmark's studios. There is of course cient, and people disappeared one after the Carl Dreyer, but his works of grey psychologi- other; then it is almost completely a failure. cal religiosity and Nordic severity contrast In spite of these and other errors, A Night in sharply with Erik Balling's beautiful film, Qui- Rome succeeds in keeping and projecting a vitoq, and Johannes Allen's recent study of sense of dignity. This is achieved through act- adolescent unrest in Copenhagen, The Young ing, setting, and photography that, if not ex- Have No Time. Despite the undeniable visual ceptional, are always good and expressive. A polish of all Danish films we have seen, they special word must be reserved for Leo Genn, seem to be intensely preoccupied with intro- who displays a vast range of perceptions, in- spective questions of free will, sexual behavior tuitions, inventions, all very well linked with vs. the accepted codes, religious beliefs, guilt 54 and retribution, etc. The stories strive for strict The simple development of intimacy between honesty, and are presented almost starkly and the lovers and the atmosphere evoked by Jacob- unemotionally. In Johan Jacobsen's A Stranger sen's wintry-looking beaches, bristled forests, Knocks, the problematic themes mentioned and damp, rainy countryside, give the film a above are finely distributed through the screen- foreboding quality, although Eric Fiehn's score play and, since a love story is at the center of is unfortunately banal. Good and evil are inter- the action, the approach seems intentionally twined in human passions, guilt is lived with detached, creating a disturbing romance noire. and implacable. A little surprisingly, one feels The film moves slowly and deliberately into that in Denmark the nightmare of past wartime another cinematic experiment in postwar love- deeds lies just beneath the surface of contem- tragedy: it is not as symbolically treated as the porary life. Polish film, The Last Day of Summer, but is Vibeke's recognition of her demon-lover (by linked to it in mood. Vibeke (Birgitte Feder- a tattoo on his arm, once described to her by spiel) is a young widow, living alone in a beach an escaped witness to her husband's murder) cottage on the coast. Her husband was tortured comes during an abandoned act of sexual inter- and killed during the Resistance by Hitler's course, and her scream of anguish is merged Danish collaborators. When a strange man with her cry of ecstasy. The frankness of this (Preben Lerdorff Rye) wanders in out of a sequence, which utilizes a sexual climax as the storm, Vibeke gives him shelter, and, after a moment of dramatic crisis and revelation, has day, the two become attracted to one another. never been equaled, and for the American spec- The man responds to Vibeke's physical beauty tator, at any rate, the scene is startlingly ex- and desires, and the lovers soon yield com- plicit. In contrast to that celebrated fleur du pletely to their passions. This idyll, lasting Malle, Les Amants, Jacobsen's film is a direct about a week, ends in disastrous violence. The antithesis of romanticism. man is not only a fugitive from justice, but he The denouement is unsatisfactory: Vibeke is the torturer and murderer of Vibeke's hus- asks forgiveness of God and her dead husband, band. Upon discovering this, she shoots him. kneeling on a scraggly hillside with the planks

A STRANGERKNOCKS: Preben LerdorffRye and Birgitte Federspiel.

...... : 55 of a wooden bench forming half a crucifix. The heterogeneous and unglamorous lot. ("Mother," weakness and rather absurd tidiness of this is queries a village boy, "are those pioneers?") not enough to spoil the power of A Stranger Severin Bjelic brings credibility to the some- Knocks, however. what overidealized pivotal role of the headmas- The performances of the two leading players ter. The scenario is pat, but quite absorbing. are superb, though one may doubt that Rye has Tomo Janic's direction is sometimes obtrusive, the sort of attractions which would so quickly sometimes too cute and sentimental, yet well- move the woman from loneliness to lust. This paced and calculated to maintain attention. is partly a matter of presentation, for the camera The music (Bojan Adamic) is alternately circus- and musical score immediately define him as like and melodramatic and altogether unsuit- an untrustworthy "heavy." Birgitte Federspiel, able. As the narrator cautions at the start, this however, in her manner and appearance, con- is a pleasant film about an unpleasant subject, vinces the spectator that tragedy's weight may and its value is no higher-and certainly no be carried lightly upon the shoulders, and she lower-than good entertainment. evokes a dark, deep side of feminine nature Be Good All Your Life is different in every which embellishes this film with a pronounced way. The outside problems, the "plot"-i.e., the quality of conviction.-ALBERT JOHNSON gradual crushing of a talented boy by the events of a lost lottery ticket, a mix-up in a love affair (not his), his distractedness at school, and his subsequent condemnation by the Disciplinary Committee-are too loose, too peripheral, and not convincing, but the unraveling of a young boy's soul and the almost surreal presentation Black Pearls and of the world as he sees it are done through Be Good All Your Life superb photography by J. Bedel and an excellent musical score by Endre Szervanszki, pre- BLACK Director:Tomo PEARLS (Crni Biseri) Janic. sided over with love by director Lazlo Ranody, Scenario: Jug Grizelj. Camera: Eduard Bogdanic. and acted all Music: Adamic. With Severin Franjo believably around, especially by Bojan Bjelic, Laci a marvelous actor who shin- Tuma, Milivoje Jevremovic, Rajko Jovanovic. Toth, young ingly and simply portrays the 12-year-old Misi BE GOODALL YouR LIFE (Legy Jo Mindhalalig) Darvas. Nyilas. Director: Laszlo Ranody. Scenario: Jozsef The director and the scenarist would have us Camera: J. Bedel. .Music: Endre Szervanszki. focus wholly on this fragile boy, with the china Both these films are about boys: the "black face and the wide, round eyes, so that we once pearls" are inmates of a reform school on a again experience our own youthful frustrations small Adriatic island, and "Be good all your life" -the poetry stealthily written, the young girl is the message of a mother to her poor 12-year- secretly adored, the little bird furtively pro- old son studying on scholarship at Debrecen, a tected, the secret society formed with oaths and Hungarian provincial town. In treatment, how- undying loyalty, the sense of falling farther and ever, the films are wholly dissimilar. farther behind, out of step with the world. Black Pearls is an oversimplified account of If praise is to be accorded careful craftsman- the means a new headmaster chooses to win the ship, expert use of cinematic technique, and love and respect of these rapscallions: granting perspicacious insight into younger humanity, that his methods are telescoped, they are, none- then this film deserves the highest praise. But theless, psychologically valid. The boys them- if, after all, drama is Action, this film for all its selves, led by Milivoje Jevremovic as Sasa, and many merits fails to become an irresistibly force- Rajko Joanovic as Dzo Le Noir, are a suitably ful work.-KENNETH J. LETNER 55 of a wooden bench forming half a crucifix. The heterogeneous and unglamorous lot. ("Mother," weakness and rather absurd tidiness of this is queries a village boy, "are those pioneers?") not enough to spoil the power of A Stranger Severin Bjelic brings credibility to the some- Knocks, however. what overidealized pivotal role of the headmas- The performances of the two leading players ter. The scenario is pat, but quite absorbing. are superb, though one may doubt that Rye has Tomo Janic's direction is sometimes obtrusive, the sort of attractions which would so quickly sometimes too cute and sentimental, yet well- move the woman from loneliness to lust. This paced and calculated to maintain attention. is partly a matter of presentation, for the camera The music (Bojan Adamic) is alternately circus- and musical score immediately define him as like and melodramatic and altogether unsuit- an untrustworthy "heavy." Birgitte Federspiel, able. As the narrator cautions at the start, this however, in her manner and appearance, con- is a pleasant film about an unpleasant subject, vinces the spectator that tragedy's weight may and its value is no higher-and certainly no be carried lightly upon the shoulders, and she lower-than good entertainment. evokes a dark, deep side of feminine nature Be Good All Your Life is different in every which embellishes this film with a pronounced way. The outside problems, the "plot"-i.e., the quality of conviction.-ALBERT JOHNSON gradual crushing of a talented boy by the events of a lost lottery ticket, a mix-up in a love affair (not his), his distractedness at school, and his subsequent condemnation by the Disciplinary Committee-are too loose, too peripheral, and not convincing, but the unraveling of a young boy's soul and the almost surreal presentation Black Pearls and of the world as he sees it are done through Be Good All Your Life superb photography by J. Bedel and an excellent musical score by Endre Szervanszki, pre- BLACK Director:Tomo PEARLS (Crni Biseri) Janic. sided over with love by director Lazlo Ranody, Scenario: Jug Grizelj. Camera: Eduard Bogdanic. and acted all Music: Adamic. With Severin Franjo believably around, especially by Bojan Bjelic, Laci a marvelous actor who shin- Tuma, Milivoje Jevremovic, Rajko Jovanovic. Toth, young ingly and simply portrays the 12-year-old Misi BE GOODALL YouR LIFE (Legy Jo Mindhalalig) Darvas. Nyilas. Director: Laszlo Ranody. Scenario: Jozsef The director and the scenarist would have us Camera: J. Bedel. .Music: Endre Szervanszki. focus wholly on this fragile boy, with the china Both these films are about boys: the "black face and the wide, round eyes, so that we once pearls" are inmates of a reform school on a again experience our own youthful frustrations small Adriatic island, and "Be good all your life" -the poetry stealthily written, the young girl is the message of a mother to her poor 12-year- secretly adored, the little bird furtively pro- old son studying on scholarship at Debrecen, a tected, the secret society formed with oaths and Hungarian provincial town. In treatment, how- undying loyalty, the sense of falling farther and ever, the films are wholly dissimilar. farther behind, out of step with the world. Black Pearls is an oversimplified account of If praise is to be accorded careful craftsman- the means a new headmaster chooses to win the ship, expert use of cinematic technique, and love and respect of these rapscallions: granting perspicacious insight into younger humanity, that his methods are telescoped, they are, none- then this film deserves the highest praise. But theless, psychologically valid. The boys them- if, after all, drama is Action, this film for all its selves, led by Milivoje Jevremovic as Sasa, and many merits fails to become an irresistibly force- Rajko Joanovic as Dzo Le Noir, are a suitably ful work.-KENNETH J. LETNER 56

Mein Kampf Riefenstahl's legendary Sieg des Glaubens or Tag der Freiheits [see the Fall 1960 issue of Erwin Directed by Leiser. Produced by Tore Sjo- FQ]. Unfortunately, the footage devoted to the berg. indescribably horrible existence of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the war eventually to the San Francisco International According becomes so overwhelming as to vitiate the effect Film Festival brochure, most of the footage in of the film as a whole. this Swedish was documentary taken from Rus- It is unfortunate that the film's sian and producers material-"long delicate negotiations overlooked the existence of newsreels of Hitler's secured the Mein contains much prints." Kamnpf 1924 trial (re-edited by the Nazis, with a com- a deal of it unavail- fascinating material, good mentary, in 1930), and the memorable news- able in this or country, available only in the reels of Horst Wessel's funeral from Blutendes vaults of the of The Library Congress. film Deutschland (now available, with a fictional covers the of the Third with some history Reich, re-creation from Hans Westmar, from the Mu- still of Hitler's life. photographs early seum of Modern Art Film Library). Mein The most scenes include Van Der interesting Kampf, despite its unbalanced structure, will Lubbe's trial, the trial of the after conspirators remain for many years a fascinating document, the on Hitler's life in and attempt July 1944, of the greatest interest to students of some of blond history, telephoto close-ups youths which even more than to the student of film must be to have come from Leni propa- presumed ganda.-CHRISTOPHERBISHOP

medium. But it is the most powerful, ramified, and useful so far devised; and it rests upon a long and honorable tradition of film-making. Book Reviews Though its days may perhaps be numbered, Kracauer's contribution in codifying it more coherently and explicitly than has ever been done before is a major one. And the book's Theory of Film: The Redemption of practical usefulness, as a focus of film thought Physical Reality, by Siegfried Kracauer. and a handy sort of landmark, will surely prove (New York: Oxford University Press, immense. 1960. $10.00.) Everyone with any interest at all in film must read the book; and there is little reason to give Kracauer's extraordinary book is, or ought to any extended account of its contents here. Its become, the bible of neorealism. It is the most general position is, however, that film is not an elaborate and carefully worked out theoretical "art" in the usual sense, but rather a means of book on film to appear since Spottiswoode's seizing on what Kracauer variously terms "the Grammar (published in 1935); and it summar- flow of life," "camera-reality," and the like. izes, thoroughly though not eloquently, the view The good in films arises when the film-maker of film which has been dominant for some dec- realizes this and subordinates himself to this ades and came to its climax in postwar Italian peculiar nature of the camera; the bad arises film-making. when he tries to incorporate "artificial" tech- This is not, of course, the only basic theoreti- niques or ends more proper to the stage, novel, cal view that can be taken of the film as a and so on. 56

Nothing that Kracauer says along these lines Is the epistemological and aesthetic issue is new, so far as I can determine; it is familiar contained in the above term "seems" a trivial or doctrine, to which hundreds of writers have academic one? I think not: on it, I maintain, made contributions in the past. In Kracauer's arose not only a watershed in philosophy but hands, however, it takes on a substance and one in film history as well. And observe what form never before attained. And there are odd Kracauer does in this connection. After the surprises. Those who do not know the Kracauer above-quoted phrase, he goes on to illustrate who wrote Orpheus in Paris (a biography of by saying: "In Limelight Chaplin knowingly Offenbach) will be amazed at his gentle han- avoids such a finale [an "ultimate solution"]. dling of the film musical, surely the most arti- He concludes with a shot which reintroduces ficial of all film genres. And countering the the flow of life: the camera moves away from rather dogged argumentation of the book (it is the death scene in the wing toward Terry who hard reading, no question about it) one finds is performing on stage." delightful asides which, though they never dis- Good. Now a man who had never written a play really wicked doubts, at least demonstrate shooting script or watched carefully the actual that the author's concern for theory has not production process might say that the camera dimmed his delight in the medium. Every movement in this scene can be construed as reader will probably groan as some favorite "indefinite rambling." (The familiar ending of film goes through the Kracauer meat-chopper; the Tramp pictures is a similar case.) But but the results are almost always acceptable. surely it is anything but indefinite and anything (There are, however, a certain number of fac- but rambling: it is, in fact, articulate, purpose- tual errors in the book, which seems odd con- ful, artful. sidering the long period it was in preparation.) The troubles with Theory of Film seem at And after finishing Kracauer's book one be- first glance minor. Its use of examples is some- comes uncomfortably aware that his method of what cursory and general, for instance. Well, argument has this consistent defect: so anxious one might think, so it must be in a book at- is he to believe that all filmic virtue springs tempting to provide a real theoretical overview from nonart, from nonformativeness, from sub- of the film. Yet on second thought, one suspects mergence in the world, that he cannot bear to that if Kracauer had attempted to deal in real look closely at any given scene. For indeed, detail with even one film the entire theoretical even in the hands of the early Rossellini, every balance of his argument would have been put given scene has some kind of form; it is not an in serious jeopardy. Not fatal jeopardy, to be accident. It is part of the "indefinitely ex- sure: in its basic lines, its fundamental assump- tended" world, linked to all that world by tions, the theory is a useful and workable one. visible and not so visible links; but it is only a But, obviously, it is not general enough; and, part. And the ordering of the relation between not paradoxically at all, its theoretical limita- that part and what we please ourselves to think tions become apparent precisely through the of as the whole is precisely the province of the way in which Kracauer handles the actual fabric director who creates the film. And to under- of films. stand how this ordering is accomplished re- He speaks many times in phrases like "the quires very detailed analysis. camera's ingrained desire for indefinite ram- In sober fact Kracauer's aesthetic scheme is bling." (He sounds sometimes like Dziga- too simple to cope with the actual strategies of Vertov, but more often like Zavattini.) And in film artists-or even with the most extreme pro- a general way we all know what this means: grammatic neorealist statements, such as Zavat- we like, these days, things that seem real; and tini's proposal for Italia Mia, through which ele- if the camera seems to capture the real un- ments of control and artifice peep in every awares we are especially pleased. paragraph. 58

It seems to me that the real and extraordinary from which poetry, fiction, and art have drawn virtues of the film spring precisely from the in the human past, in favor of what he likes to tension between their tendency to seem inert, call "actuality." These are concessions which, part of the great indefinite web Kracauer writes on the record of Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, of, and their created form. It is this dialectical Resnais, Bufiuel, film has no need to make. But play of order and chaos that provides film- of the strategies of these men we still have makers, in an enormous variety of ways, with almost everything to learn, and perhaps Theory the energy that makes of film a potential art of Film will do its greatest service, in the long form. Kracauer, by concentrating so intently run. by reminding us of this.- on one side of this counterpoise, inevitably ERNESTCALLENBACH neglects the other; yet without it his side would soon cease to interest us.* I do not mean to imply that Kracauer is against "stories" and the like; and his classifi- cation of story types is a useful one. But he is The Three Faces of the Film: The Art, edgy about such matters, and largely confines the Dream, the Cult, by Parker Tyler. himself to saying (there is a certain amount of (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960. redundancy in the book) that those akin to the $6.95.) flow of life are good, while those which deal in drawing rooms or the prearranged emotional One's first reaction to the film criticism of dance of the stage are bad. True. But what of Parker Tyler, of which this volume is a collec- the exact ways in which the potentially good tion, is almost inevitably on the level of style. materials are handled? Here we find ourselves He is a complicated writer, as any dip into the on our own again; Kracauer gives us the word, book will show: but does not make it flesh. (Sometimes almost "If it was true in 1950, it was probably meant literally: of Brief Encounter-which he likes-he to be true now. Yet one opines that this allega- notes that it "clearly shows that films with a tion, on the corollary evidence, is, and was, contrived intrigue may well be episodic in false. Real murder has taken place within the spirit." And his discussion of the Roman pros- professional colony of Hollywood as elsewhere titute episode in Paisan, while surely correct in in the world, but exactly because of that fact, its conclusions, is curiously insufficient in rely- discretion forbade that the rough stuff of Sunset ing on dicta such as "All these chance occur- Boulevard should bear any tangible resemblance rences defy chance.") to it." Kracauer's work is thus in one sense an ad- In this case, as in most of Tyler's contribu- mirable and largely conclusive book: it lays tions to film criticism over the years, what he is down the line on the film and reality in a general saying is more often than not perfectly sound. way. Few, even of those most interested in But readers feel that he is trying to make film new theoretical developments, would deny that criticism seem like a more esoteric affair than much of this general position must be retained. it really is. Neophytes in film criticism some- Theory of Film is indeed a landmark. But like times conclude that Tyler is an obscurantist; old all landmarks it raises the question "Where do hands sometimes conclude that he plays foolish we go from here?" The direction is known, I games. think, to no one. But perhaps we must start by Such reservations noted, however, one must regaining some of the ground which Kracauer recognize that Tyler is acute, usually to the has given up. Surely it is not necessary, as he point, and concerned with aspects of film art does, to abandon those realms of experience that receive far too little attention from other * I explored this issue as it appears in questions of documentarystructure in "The UnderstoodAntagonist and Other Observations,"FQ, Summer 1959. 59 writers. Since he is interested in film largely as Jay Leyda's monumental study of the Russian a modern expression of myth, though he does film has been eagerly awaited for many years not seem to be a Jungian, he has written far by students of the cinema, whose appetites had more about experimental film-makers than do been whetted by the bits and pieces that ap- most critics, and he approaches films generally peared in various books and journals. Now that from a viewpoint almost diametrically opposed the work has at last made its appearance, Kino to Kracauer's. (His manner of analysis is also proves, for the most part, to be well worth wait- usually more concrete.) Sometimes, in his ing for. writings about experimental film-makers, we The author arranges his material in well or- suspect that his kindness has overcome his judg- ganized chapters, more or less year by year, in- ment. But in the present collection there is cluding material of a general historical nature little of this; most of the pieces are drawn from as well as that purely cinematic. To this reader, the cultural quarterlies, and they deal with the most interesting part of the book is the sec- Rashomon, Cocteau, Dead of Night, Chaplin, tion devoted to the prerevolutionary cinema, a Miracle in Milan, and other perfectly "present- subject that had been little explored until this able" items. volume. Although some may ask if it is worth also writes art and some of Tyler criticism, spending over a quarter of the book on this the erudition he doubtless to deploys advantage period, it nonetheless makes fascinating read- in that field does not seem in the altogether apt ing, and is certain to raise considerable curiosity film connection. But this is to if easy forgive: about these films, which would seem to be he early sees more ramifications than are there, too far more advanced than be as- often other critics do not see might casually the ones that are sumed. also Leonid his there. Leyda gives Andreyev due as of the new art form in book should be read in proper champion Ideally Tyler's con- a when it was fashionable to be with Both men have period hardly junction Kracauer's. ideas; one. There is also an often humorous section both write Both are seriously. crotchety writers, on Tolstoi's clashes with the infant as must be to write film criti- industry. perhaps anyone over the names of the cism these And both have a Looking prerevolutionary days. maddening actors and one is at knack of of which actresses, again impressed formality, self-consciousness, the number that became stars in is a reflection of a hidden fear all film popular Europe probably and America in the next decade. critics have: that they might better be spending The rest of the book has its and downs. their time at something else. They can both be ups In such a certain facets of the pretentious and woolly, and like all of us they lengthy study, are certain to interest the author more do not think hard and clearly enough. We do subject than but if a few are not yet have the urbane, wise, candid, direct others, chapters weak, one, "Witnessed Years, is Dur- critic who will write weekly (or quarterly!) of 1934-1937," superb. this studied film films as V. S. Pritchett, say, writes of fiction. ing period, Leyda technique in the Soviet met most of the But maybe we are getting to the place where Union, leading of the and was in Eisen- he would find readers if he came along.-ERNEST cinema figures time, CALLENBACH stein's unit during the making of the ill-fated Bezhin Meadow at Armavir. In this chapter, the author handles his material with consum- mate skill, providing interesting material on a most confusing period. His reminiscences of Kino, a History of the Russianand Soviet Eisenstein are fascinating, but even more so are Film, by Jay Leyda. (New York: Mac- his reportings of the squabbles behind the millan, 1960. 32 pp. plates. $9.50.) scenes, the inevitable battles of creativity with bureaucracy. 59 writers. Since he is interested in film largely as Jay Leyda's monumental study of the Russian a modern expression of myth, though he does film has been eagerly awaited for many years not seem to be a Jungian, he has written far by students of the cinema, whose appetites had more about experimental film-makers than do been whetted by the bits and pieces that ap- most critics, and he approaches films generally peared in various books and journals. Now that from a viewpoint almost diametrically opposed the work has at last made its appearance, Kino to Kracauer's. (His manner of analysis is also proves, for the most part, to be well worth wait- usually more concrete.) Sometimes, in his ing for. writings about experimental film-makers, we The author arranges his material in well or- suspect that his kindness has overcome his judg- ganized chapters, more or less year by year, in- ment. But in the present collection there is cluding material of a general historical nature little of this; most of the pieces are drawn from as well as that purely cinematic. To this reader, the cultural quarterlies, and they deal with the most interesting part of the book is the sec- Rashomon, Cocteau, Dead of Night, Chaplin, tion devoted to the prerevolutionary cinema, a Miracle in Milan, and other perfectly "present- subject that had been little explored until this able" items. volume. Although some may ask if it is worth also writes art and some of Tyler criticism, spending over a quarter of the book on this the erudition he doubtless to deploys advantage period, it nonetheless makes fascinating read- in that field does not seem in the altogether apt ing, and is certain to raise considerable curiosity film connection. But this is to if easy forgive: about these films, which would seem to be he early sees more ramifications than are there, too far more advanced than be as- often other critics do not see might casually the ones that are sumed. also Leonid his there. Leyda gives Andreyev due as of the new art form in book should be read in proper champion Ideally Tyler's con- a when it was fashionable to be with Both men have period hardly junction Kracauer's. ideas; one. There is also an often humorous section both write Both are seriously. crotchety writers, on Tolstoi's clashes with the infant as must be to write film criti- industry. perhaps anyone over the names of the cism these And both have a Looking prerevolutionary days. maddening actors and one is at knack of of which actresses, again impressed formality, self-consciousness, the number that became stars in is a reflection of a hidden fear all film popular Europe probably and America in the next decade. critics have: that they might better be spending The rest of the book has its and downs. their time at something else. They can both be ups In such a certain facets of the pretentious and woolly, and like all of us they lengthy study, are certain to interest the author more do not think hard and clearly enough. We do subject than but if a few are not yet have the urbane, wise, candid, direct others, chapters weak, one, "Witnessed Years, is Dur- critic who will write weekly (or quarterly!) of 1934-1937," superb. this studied film films as V. S. Pritchett, say, writes of fiction. ing period, Leyda technique in the Soviet met most of the But maybe we are getting to the place where Union, leading of the and was in Eisen- he would find readers if he came along.-ERNEST cinema figures time, CALLENBACH stein's unit during the making of the ill-fated Bezhin Meadow at Armavir. In this chapter, the author handles his material with consum- mate skill, providing interesting material on a most confusing period. His reminiscences of Kino, a History of the Russianand Soviet Eisenstein are fascinating, but even more so are Film, by Jay Leyda. (New York: Mac- his reportings of the squabbles behind the millan, 1960. 32 pp. plates. $9.50.) scenes, the inevitable battles of creativity with bureaucracy. 60

There is particular interest, too, in Leyda's complete statistics on almost every film dis- account of the rise and fall of Boris Shumyatsky, cussed in the book, including cast and produc- a powerful portrait of a sinister figure which tion credits, exact length, release date, and so helps to explain some of the capricious changes forth. Undoubtedly this will be an enormous in Soviet film policy during his regime. aid to the film student and program-note re- While the "big three" Soviet directors have searcher of the future. been discussed elsewhere in detail, and are also The only other volume of similar scope is covered quite thoroughly here, it is a pleasure Babinsky and Rinberg's The Soviet Film In- to find information about other masters, particu- dustry (New York: Praeger, 1955), an impor- larly Abram Room, whose Bed and Sofa Leyda tant work which is still useful, concentrating brought to the United States.* This neglected more on the actual mechanism of Soviet film figure is fast finding his proper place among the production than on the films themselves. To- most important and interesting of Soviet di- gether, the two books provide a complete view rectors. of the Russian and Soviet film production On the debit side, it is frustrating to note the scenes. [For a survey of contemporary Soviet lack of more detailed information on films that film criticism, see the comprehensive article by have not had much discussion in the West: Steven P. Hill in Film Quarterly, Fall 1960.] Lieutenant Kije is an example, for it must have The photographs at the end of Kino are some- been a better than average film if it stimulated what peculiar, but of great interest, particularly Prokofiev to write one of his most sparkling the carefully selected stills from prerevolution- scores. It would have been more rewarding to ary productions, candids of Eisenstein at work, have included further discussion of such un- and some of the discarded scenes from Potem- known works than to dwell at such length on kin. These photographs provide a valuable sup- already familiar material. plement to the written material, far more than Another weakness of the book is its almost simply the usual compilation of familiar shots. complete disregard of the post-1950 cinema, In a long-range estimate, Kino will certainly which is covered in a literal "Postscript" of eight be of great value as the first thorough history pages. Although the view is held in some quar- of the Russian cinema by a man who knows his ters that virtually nothing of importance has subject better than any other Westerner. Al- been produced in the Soviet Union in the last though it has small faults, it is a staggering ten years, a number of interesting films should achievement, and one that will not be super- have been examined here in more detail, if seded for many years to come.-DAVID STEWART only because information about them and their HULL makers is extremely hard to find elsewhere. Kino is hardly a book that one would want to read rapidly from cover to cover, but it is so well organized and smoothly written that it is a 16mm. Terms Used in Production of Non- pleasure to browse through, a little at a time. theatrical Motion Pictures. University Film It might also be noted that the documentation Producers Association. (Vol. 12, No. 2 of the is really superb, the book having been brilliantly U.F.P.A. Journal; available from 1885 Neil researched. Avenue, Ohio State University, Columbus 10, In the long run, the most valuable feature of Ohio.) A glossary, or specialized dictionary, Kino might well be the exhaustive credits at the can be an important item in a profession neces- end of the book. This section gives virtually sitating considerable technical communication * A copy of this masterpieceresides in the vaults of the Museum of ModernArt, apparentlyonce intended for the circulating collection, but now mysteriously awaiting its day of resurrection. In the meantime, a duplicate print can be viewed at George Eastman House in Rochester. 61

between its members. This one, though it con- La Dolce Vita: Babylone An 2000 Apres Jesus- tains fewer terms than the glossary in Raymond Christ, by Federico Fellini and Lo Duca. Spottiswoode's Film and Its Techniques, is cer- (Paris: J. J. Pauvert, 1960.) An elegantly tainly more up to date, and contains generally printed photo album. a more useful selection. The UFPA Glossary is lacking in explanation of terms such as "apo- The Effects of Mass Communication, by Joseph chromatic" and "orthostereoscopy," but rich in T. Klapper. (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, understandable clarifications of commonly mis- 1960. $5.00.) An analysis of research on the understood terms such as "A and B rolls," and effectiveness and limitations of mass media "Cueing." The UFPA list is in some ways more (television, radio, comic books, and newspa- useful than earlier ones compiled by the Society pers) in influencing the opinions, values, and of Motion Picture & Television Engineers be- behavior of their audiences. cause it is purposely couched in phraseology Film edited A. which will encourage quick and easy reference. Notes, by Lennig. (Madison, Wisconsin: Wisconsin -JOHN DRISCOLL Film Society, 1960. Pa- perback, $1.45.) To be reviewed in our next issue.

Listings Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman, translated from the Swedish Lars Malmstrom and Animation Art in the Commercial Film, by Eli J. by David Kushner. (New York: Simon & Levitan. (New York: Reinhold Publishing Co., Schuster; 1960. $6.95.) 1960. $6.00.) To be reviewed in our next issue.

Conquete du Cinema, by Georges Sadoul. Marilyn Monroe: A Biography, by Maurice Zolo- (Paris: Gedalges, 1960. 10 NF.) A popular tow. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1960. general survey of film history. $5.75.)

dons the Carolina accent of Col. William Travis Entertainments for one which suggests that he wishes he were back in that room at the top. Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie creates something of the trapped idealism of that fighter. The Alamo is too long, too dull, too THE ALAMO. If anything were needed to prove sentimental and, at crucial times, historically in- that neither a $12 million budget nor an all-star accurate. Despite the declared budget, we some- cast suffices to make a great motion picture, John times see the same men being killed over again. Wayne's The Alamo now stands as abundant proof. Wayne himself writes the epitaph in one of the Indeed, given a story as heroic as any in the annals film's most accurate lines. "This may sound like a of war, Wayne's irregularshave managed to flatten Bible-beater yelling up a revival at a river-crossing it as successfully as Santa Anna's forces did the fort camp meeting, but that don't change its truth." itself. Where one should cry in this picture, he The truth is a hard, thin one-that some good men wants to laugh; where he should feel pain, he is died bravely here. Wayne's fattening diet has only embarrassed. Frankie Avalon jumps up to changed it beyond all recognition. rock a bit with a band that just happens to be in the mission, while the Mexicans lie waiting in the IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. A dark. One can only wish they would attack, if melodrama about a murderer of little girls, pro- merely to get Frankie. Wayne plays Davy Crockett. duced in Switzerland by Lazar Wechsler from an His bulk and his brute force say nothing new here original story by Friedrich Duerrenmatt, with an except that Crockettwas a sentimental stumblebum. internationalcast (Heinz Ruhmann, Michel Simon, Under the mounting strain, Laurence Harvey aban- Roger Livesey, Gert Frobe). A waste of talent in 62 more than one instance. Anyone expecting the and Sennett would have been cheered: this film Duerrenmatt touch should read instead his novel has caught his spirit. Fists fly, smack-to a complete The Pledge, based on the same material, but with absence of pain. Laughs come "fast and furious" a twist that might have made a good movie. to negate any importance of ensuing dialogue. There is a dog to remind you of Teddy; he partici- NEVER ON SUNDAY. Jules Dassin's latest film pates in a burlesque of the bathtub scene in The for the art-house circuit is a comedy of Greek Lovers. Dishes, furniture, kegs, barrooms are waterfront manners. A prostitute (Melina Mer- thrown, demolished. At the end, everyone is im- couri) does business only with people she likes, and mersed again and again in deep Sennett pools of then only six days a week. She is perfectly happy mud. Just the thing to outrage those aesthetes who until an American tourist-philosopher (Jules Das- will find it crude, vulgar, adolescent, and horribly sin) comes to Greece in search of a clue to the de- American. cadence of contemporarysociety. He is certain that the prostituteherself is the image of modern Greece, SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO. Dore Schary's mindless of her ancient heritage. It is inevitable play about Franklin D. Roosevelt's triumph over of course that the philosophershould lose the argu- infantile paralysis has been transferred almost in- ment in such surroundings,but we were hardly pre- tact to the screen with the play's original director pared for such an odd performance from Dassin (Vincent J. Donehue) and star (Ralph Bellamy) himself-all blue jeans and sneakers, unsettled and and with Mr. Schary serving as producer. Although unsettling. Melina is only as convincing as she was the camera moves outdoors occasionally, no one is in Dassin's earlier He Who Must Die. Michael fooled: this is still a play, and Donehue's direction Cacoyannis used her better in Stella, and he had rarely overcomes that fact. Ralph Bellamy's some- presented the young men of the waterfront before what larger-than-lifeperformance as FDR, although in Girl in Black. Dassin's handling lacks any edge impressive in its simulation of the physical aspects which might have opened up the subject, and as of the disease, seems a bit too calculated before the the story progresses,the joke itself wears ratherthin. close eye of the camera to be as effective as it was on stage. Greer Garson, triumphing over a gro- NORTH TO ALASKA. Henry Hathaway has di- tesque job of make-up, brings dignity and warmth rected, and John Wayne, Fabian, Ernie Kovaks,and, to the role of Eleanor Roosevelt, but Schary's rev- somewhat less successfully, Stewart Grainger have erent portrait of the Great Man, tinged with his acted North to Alaska as if Mack Sennett had been particular brand of wholesomeness and sentimen- at the sidelines. It is a pleasant memorial of a sort, tality, has heart but little spirit.

Production Report EDITEDBY RICHARD GERCKEN

The Yugoslav New Course principle by the Republic ("state") gov- This organization is officially con- ernments, these enterprises like many cerned with disputes amongst the mem- in contemporary Yugoslavia operate as bers, relations of the film producers to independent entities, although in a con- the federal government, and relations After World War II the infant Yugo- text over which government and party of the film enterprises in one republic slav film industry was nationalized by exercise great influence. to the governments of other republics. the Tito regime, as were the industries Thirteen of the 21 produce films--9 It also is concerned with obtaining cred- of the other East European countries. of them general theatrical films and 4 its from the banks for the various film However, because of the general de- special types dealing with news, sports, enterprises and handling promotion and centralization and experiments with etc. The remaining 8 make and main- sale of Yugoslavian films abroad and of "workers' control" undertaken in Yugo- tain sets, scenery, and perform other foreign films in Yugoslavia. slavia since the break with Stalin in technical services. Each of the six re- There is a Federal Film Censorship 1948, the Yugoslav industry now pre- publics has at least one of these enter- Commission which reviews all films that sents a somewhat novel pattern, and prises. They all belong, however, to the are produced. Its decisions are binding one which has not previously been de- Yugoslav Association of Film Produc- only with regard to foreign films and for scribed to Western readers. ers, called Udruzenije Filmski Vroiz- the Republic of Serbia, which has no There were 21 individual enterprises vodstva Jugoslaviji. Its officers are censorship board of its own and relies or "firms" concerned with film pro- elected by representatives of the enter- on the federal censorship decisions. Ex- duction in 1959. Though organized in prises. cept for Serbia, censorship boards in the 63 various republics have the final say theless they can and do influence the of Culture in the Republic where the about domestic films. There have been amounts of funds available and if nec- film enterprise in question is located. two or three cases in the last year where essary could intervene if film-making Nonartistic employees belong to a anion the Federal Censorship Commission has were to get seriously out of hand. Prob- of film workers which negotiates wage said "No," but Censorship boards of ably more important are the indirect contracts for them. Croatia and Slovenia have said "Yes." political influences through the League The average salary to a director is So far as I can determine, there have of Communists and the Socialist Alli- 600,000 dinars for a film whereas the been no cases where films have been ance, which are broad, front-type organ- average star earns 400,000 dinars for censored formally on political grounds, izations. Generally speaking, the party each role. The contracts invariably pro- one reason being, according to Jovan does not interfere in film-making from vide for increases in remuneration de- Ruzi6, the Secretary General of the As- any specific ideological point of view. pending on the number of people over sociation of Film Producers, that the The party's ideological commission, how- 700,000 who see the film, the exact film-makers themselves are very care- ever, has devoted some attention to mild amount and the exact proportion be- ful on this score. On the other hand, criticism of the film industry generally- ing worked out in each contract. A por- the film producers claim that the cen- thus far without much effect. tion of the proceeds of sales abroad of sorship board has been prudish. On sev- The Socialist Alliance has a commis- Yugoslavian films go to the directors, eral occasions the Association has pro- sion which deals with communications scriptwriters, photography directors, etc., tested these rulings to the Republic generally. It is able to exert influence but not to the actors. Government authorities and in at least in two ways: through its members and Generally speaking, the federal au- one case succeeded in over-ruling the through the fact that the Socialist Alli- thorities concerned with films tend to board (in the Republic of Bosnia and ance controls in some way or other most think there are too many film-making Herzegovina). of the motion picture theaters in Yugo- enterprises to be economical, but since The only trouble that the Association slavia.* There are also activs of com- each republic decides on its own enter- has had with foreign films was four or munist party members in each of the prises and wants to have the prestige five years ago in connection with the film-producing organizations. It should of making it own films (even though film Humoresque, which was banned, I be stressed that film organizations are subsidies are often required-some, how- gather, on grounds of indecent exposure. run very much as artistic-economic en- ever, coming from the federal govern- About three-quarters of the films shown terprises without interference from the ment as prizes) there does not seem to in Yugoslavia are American films. The party organizations, but, of course, the be anything that can be done about this. federal authorities complain about this party members try to make their wills The field of film acting is quite over- in vain both on the grounds of foreign- felt as individuals, and since they oc- crowded in Yugoslavia, and many of the exchange difficulties and exposure to cupy many executive positions, they have actors protest that there is a lot of "negative" Western ideas, but since the some success. Nevertheless, Yugoslav- favoritism on both political and per- final decision to buy a foreign film or ian films have been remarkably free sonal grounds. Generally speaking, the not is in the hands of individual enter- of crass ideological propaganda. average star thinks that 400,000 dinars prises, i.e., outside the government, not Each film-producing enterprise has a as a salary is too small. One film star I too much can be done about it. The Workers Council elected by its employ- talked with received this for a seven- government is, of course, able to control ees. The Workers Council is elected by month period. This made her salary to some extent-but by no means ab- all employees, including manual work- almost 60,000 dinars a month, which is solutely-the amount of foreign ex- ers. There is also an Artistic Council about 50,000 dinars a month more than change available. The popularity of elected by the nonmanual workers. The the average salary in Yugoslavia. The foreign films and the growing domestic Workers Council is concerned primarily film stars have been reflecting a very film industry has, however, forced the with financial matters. The Artistic split personality because the more politi- government to require that a certain Council decides on what films to pro- cally indoctrinated ones have tended to minimum percentage of all films shown duce, who are to be the directors and imitate American stars but at the same be Yugoslav-made. In the period 1953- actors, what kind of salaries are to be time complain about the crass manner 1957, 16 films were co-produced by paid them, what kind of sets are to be of American acting and movie-making Yugoslav and foreign film enterprises. used, etc. These things are subject to generally. There are acting schools in Of these, only two involved Soviet-bloc approval by the Workers Council. This Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Sara- nations. Yugoslav film industry spokes- often involves conflicts between the two jevo and a general film school in Bel- men are highly desirous of co-producing groups, because the Workers Council has grade. films with American companies. Thus a tendency to take a dim view of what In general, thus, the situation reflects far, there have been none, although one it considers expensive artistic extrava- a great degree of decentralization in film, Miss Stone, involving the story of ganzas. (Local arbitration boards settle Yugoslavia and is not like the situation an American missionary kidnapped by disputes if they become really serious.) in the Soviet Union or the satellites, Macedonian revolutionaries in the early Actors and directors are considered where there is more direct control both 1900's, was originally worked out in con- to be free agents in Yugoslavia, as a by the government and party with a junction with an American firm, only to rule not being attached to any film constant emphasis and insistence on so- have arrangements fall through at the enterprise. They make contracts for cial realism. The Yugoslav film indus- last moment. the production of one film only. Where try is not as free as it looks, but it is While direct government interference there is a dispute over these contracts, comparatively much freer than those is at a minimum, there is a good deal it is settled by a commission of four elsewhere in Eastern Europe.-FRED of indirect influencing of film produc- members, two of, whom are named by WARNER NEAL tion. There is, as a part of the Fed- the Yugoslavia Association of Film Pro- [Mr. Neal, author of Titoism in Action, eral Executive Council, a Secretary for ducers and two by the Republic Council most recently visited Yugoslavia in the Culture and and each of the summer of 1959; he is one of the best Education, * republics has a Council of Culture. Either owning or influencing through known American authorities on the Tito While these have no direct authority to social management, i.e., Citizen Coun- regime. At present he is teaching at the cils. interfere in the making of films, none- Claremont Graduate School.] GOTHAM BOOK MART 41 West 47th St., New York 36, N.Y. AUDIOFILM CLASSICS Academy Award Diary, 1928- A wide selection of 16mm films for 1955 film societies, colleges, universities, $2.50 and all groups interestedin the history KINO: A HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN and artof the motionpicture, including: FILM. BY JAY LEYDA $9.50 BRINK OF LIFE EISENSTEIN. BY MARIE SETON $8.75 DIABOLIQUE HOLLYWOOD SCAPEGOAT: BIOGRAPHY OLYMPIA OF ERICH VON STROHEIM. BY PETER PATNER PANCHALI NOBLE $6.25 CANGACEIRO stock of new and books Large out-of-print LADY C(ATTERLEY'S LOVER and magazines on the film and theatre RAINO-MON MAGNIFICENT SEVEN CINEMAHISTORY Plus experimentalfilms, silent classics, and short films. America's Leading Specialist WRITEFOR FREE1960 CATALOG: FREE CATALOG Cinema Guild, Inc. Audio Film Center 10 Fiske Place 2138 East 75th Street Dept. 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