VOLUME 07 - NUMBER 02 SUMMER 1971

lhl MagnifiBlnt Amblraanl by Stephen Farber Stephen Farber writes screenplays for Warner Brothers house are opened on the night of the last great ball , and film criticism for The New York Times , Sight and and the camera sweeps us inside-perfectly captures Sound, Film Quarterly, Cinema, and Film Comment. the lu xury of immersion in a world of vanished elegance and grace. Although THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS was not the last film Welles made in America, he never again took The tranquillity savored in Welles ' films is not, admit- on such large , quintessentially American themes as he tedly, the first thing one notices in watching them . The did in his first two films. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS other side of his work, especially pronounced in the deals with the price of technological \"progress\" -the first two films, is the youthful energy of his style. Just contamination of the city and the influence of the au- as one is immediately struck by the tremendous elan tomobile on modern American life, an extraordinary of the March of Time parody or the newspaper party subject for a 1942 movie. Perhaps it seems even more in CITIZEN KANE, the sequence in THE MAGNIFICENT AM- important today than it did to audiences barely aware BERSONS that is most dazzling on first viewing is the of the menace of freeways, noise and air pollution. hilarious , breathtaking scene of the automobile ride in the snow-the staccato rhythm provided by the over- The attempt is impressive, but the film has never lapping dialogue gives the film a burst of exhilaration . struck me as an entirely satisfactory study of the emer- It is the one moment in the film when the nineteenth gent nightmare city of the twentieth century. The dying and twentieth centuries seem to come together, and aristocratic world of the Ambersons is drawn with great when Welles acknowledges his attraction to the ma- affection and complexity, but the urban iii'dustrial world chine, and to the speed and volatility of modern life. that will take its place is only a shadow; the contrast of nineteenth and twentieth century is asserted rather than One we 'i ld also expect the youthful Welles to be eX,Jlored dramatically. Eugene Morgan 's speech abol)t drawn to the figure of the automobile inventor, Eugene the influence of automobiles ( \" With all their speed Morgan , a man with the audacity to take on the future. forward , they may be a step backward in civilization. But the casting of Joseph Cotten as Morgan is curious . It may be that they won't add to the beauty of the world THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is the only Welles film in or the life of men's souls . .. \") has to carry a great which Welles does not appear , and so there is no deal of weight, more than the film can really bear. What representation of the charismatic, superhuman, Eugene talks about is never shown . According to power-mad tyrant (Kane , Macbeth , Quinlan in TOUCH Charles Higham's descriptions 0f the material cut from OF EVIL, Clay in THE IMMORTAL STORY) who provides a Welles' version of the film (The Films of Orson Welles), focus for so many of his films. In THE MAGNIFICENT the original included many mere scenes about the city AMBERSONS the Welles hero is spl it in two-the arrogant, rising around the Ambersons, scenes that might have dO[l'lineering , but childish man of leisure, George Am- effectively corroborated Eugene's bleak prophecy. The berson Minafer (Tim Holt), and the gentle, self-effacing one scene that remains-George's last wal !~ home entrepreneur, Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten). William through the altered, disfigured city near the end of the Johnson , in an article (\"Orson Welles: Of Time and film-is brilliant, an example of Welles' astonishing Loss,\" Film Quarterly, Fall 1967) that still strikes me resourcefulness and economy; thanks to the lucid, as the most sensible, helpful introduction to Welles ' carefully-chosen images and the evocative narration, films, has noted the paradoxical nature of these two in just a few seconds we think we 've S8en more of characterizations: \" George, who stands for the inno- the expanding city than we actually have. Outside of cent age that is dying , is the film 's most objectionable this scene, however, the swelling city is an offscreen character; Gene Morgan , who is helping create the age character, and it needs to be a stronger presence in of noise and crowds and air pollution , is its most lik- the film for the erosion of the Amberson style to be able .\" It's an interesting concept, but too neat a para- fully comprehensible. dox, too schematic. If Welles had played Eugene Mor- gan, the film might have developed a richer kind of Even Welles ' original version may have been slightly tension . Cotten is difficult to accept as a business out of balance in this regard . The Booth Tarkington genius; he's too gentlemanly, almost too fastidious. novel (published in 1918), which Welles follows closely , Welles would have given the character more hardness, gives much more emphaSis to the bewitching nine- energy, and drive; and, if Gene Morgan were a more teenth-century world of the Ambersons than to the complex character, we really wouldn 't need any more industrial megalopolis that Eugene Morgan helps to images of the blemished industrial landscape, because usher in . And judging from Welles' othel 'vork, he seems all of Welles ' ambivalence toward the rise of the modern to be more attracted to the past than to the future . city could be contained within that one charac- His characters inhabit great cavernous houses cut off terization . Welles would have played the role with great from the world , castles that easily turn into mausoleums; spirit, ambitiousness and ruthlessness , as well as with those magnificent, magical houses represent Welles' the elegant charm that Joseph Cotten relies on . He 'intoxication with imaginatively created , self-enclosed might have evoked the excitement of the new industrial private worlds where one can retreat from the chaotic age and some of its truly disturbing implications. A pressures of the present. One thrilling dolly shot in THE stronger actor in the role might have given us an idea MAGNIFICENT AMBERsoNs-in which the doors of the FILM COMMENT 49

of how the thrill of power and technology could be Isabel and Aunt Fanny-are doomed, while Eugene coarsen ing. Then Gene's speech about the profound danger of the automobile would have worked drama- Morgan, who comes from a background similar to tically, instead of didactically. theirs, has found a way of accommodating himself to But if the film lacks sharp dramatic focus , its lyrical portrait of the dying aristocratic world is masterful , the future. He seems freer, healthier, more mature than enhanced by Stanley Cortez's lovely, mellow pho- tography . Many of Welles ' films are set in the past, any of the Ambersons, and he will survive . but THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is a different kind of journey backward in time-a journey back to childhood , It's too simple , then , to say that THE MAGNIFICENT a study of the claustrophobic intensity of family life. The film is full of painful family sepa rations ; the central AMBERSONS is no more than a film of nostalgic reverie , one , as in CITIZEN KANE, is the separation of mother and son . THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS has the power but there is no denying the melancholy intenSity with of a dream formed in boyhood , a spell that can never be broken . Welles pays attention to the perversions wh ich the film dwells on the Ambersons ' decline. Not of feeling within the suffocating cocoon of the family mansion-George's inhuman pride, his destructive, too long ago I saw CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT vaguely incestuous relationship with his mother, the neurotic repression of Aunt Fanny. AMBERSONS as a double feature , and the thing that Welles follows Tarkington closely in all of this, but intrigued me in seeing them together was that while he sometimes extends the novel's implications. The most obvious variation is in the characterization of both films were the work of a very young man, and Fanny, whom Agnes Moorehead makes one of the first truly modern characters in American films , an arche- contain plenty of evidence of youthful exuberance, both type for all those hysterically repressed , neurasthenic spinster heroines of the next decades. This charac- are overwhelmed by images of old age, dissolution , terization is not conceived in conventional , realistic terms. There 's no apparent logic to many of Fanny's and death . Some young artists probably want to deal outbursts-they surprise us and make us uncom- fortable. Even within a scene, her quicksilver shifts of with death because it's so foreign , and they approach emotion are startl ing and alarming . Here is an example of a subtle difference between text and film: The scene tragedy out of intellectual curiosity rather than out of near the end of the film in which George and Fanny argue in the now-desolate mansion , and Fanny sits any genuine sense of weariness and despair. It is true down against the bo iler, is drawn directly from the novel. George tells her to get up, afraid that she may that some of the Gothic scenes of decadence and old burn herself. \" 'It's not hot,' Fanny sniffled . 'It's cold ; the plumbers disconnected it. I wouldn 't mind if they age in CITIZEN KANE have a self-conscious , theatrical hadn 't. I wouldn 't mind if it burned me , George .' \" In the film she doesn 't \" sniffle \" those words , she spits quality that seems slightly adolescent. But I don't think them out in enraged, hysterical laughter; Agnes Moore- head makes Fanny's breakdown truly horrible to that is any longer true in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. watch . No one who has seen the film will forget the intense, frightening close-up of Fanny at her brother's The scenes of Isabel's death, Major Amberson 's death, wake-an image that seems to take us inside her trou- bled mind; her grief contains a fierce, frantic despera- the parting of George and Uncle Jack in the railway tion just barely under control. station, Aunt Fanny going hysterical in the empty old Though Welles never appears in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS , his presence as narrator is crucial to the house, George's last walk home are unusually sharp, conception of the film . THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS contains the most beautiful, pertinent use of narration poignant moments. One cannot account for the film 's I have seen in movies . The narration is not used simply to provide information ; it adds to the sensuous atmo- d istinctive qualities by saying that Welles was simply sphere of the film . The language itself, eloquently spo- ken by Welles, has a rich , lyrical quality that seems be ing faithful to his source . what is inescapable in to belong to the aristocratic past; its literary cadences are part of the vanished courtly style that the film watching the film is the graceful , persuasive feeling mourns. But in an even more important sense, the narration calls attention to the nostalgia that is the film's he has for the material. This film contains some of the subject as well as its dominant mood. We are constantly aware of a voice reflecting on the past, wistfully invoking strongest, most haunting and desolate images in all its mysteries. From the very start the hushed but intense tone of Welles' narration suggests the recreation of of Welles' work. The same mournful sense of loss and a child 's fairy tale. The storyteller, the dreamer who calls up the past for us , haunted by the world he brings regret in much later films like FALSTAFF and THE IMMORTAL to life, becomes a character we want to evaluate along with the others. We want to test his voluptuous nostalgia STORY seems easier to understand . against what we see , and within the film nostalgia is criticized rather than celebrated. For the characters But how does one explain this obsession with ruin who cannot break the spell of the past-George and and decay in a man of 26, who seemed to the world to be the most youthful and vigorous of artists, the \" boy genius\"? The scenes of death in THE MAGNIFICENT AM- BERSONS seem to transfi x the young Welles . Is this the famous \" self-destructiveness \" of the Welles legend, evidence of a morbid, irresistible attraction to deca- dence? I don 't know the answer to that question, and clearly the sources of any artist's work are extraor- dinarily complex . I can only describe what is on the screen : that, among great films, THE MAGNIFICENT AM- BERSONS is the one you remember for the sad , lush , seductive poetry of death . 1111 11 11 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS 1942, RKO-Radio, 88 minutes '\" producer Orson Welles for Mercury Productions; soreenplay Orson Welles ; from the novel by Booth Tarkington; photography Stanley Cortez; art direction Mark-Lee Kirk; editing Robert Wise; special effects Vernon L. Walker; music Bernard Herrmann . CAST Joseph Cotten Eugene Morgan Dolores Costello Isabel Amberson Anne Baxter Lucy Morgan Tim Holt George Minafer Agnes Moorehead Fanny Minafer Ray Collins Jack Richard Bennett Major Amberson Erskine Sanford Bronson Don Dillaway Wilbur Minafer Orsor:rWelies narrator \"' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS originally ran 131 minutes. After firing Welles, RKO cut the film severely and or- dered Robert Wise to shoot some additional scenes. 50 SUMMER 1971

TauBh af Evil by Terry Comito Terry Comito has taught English at Rutgers, and will TOUCH OF EVIL. Orson Welles, Janet Leigh and Joseph Calleia. begin teaching English at Hunter College in the Fall. photo: Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive He is working on a book on Elizabethan romance. One of the crucial changes Welles makes in adapt- ing Whit Masterson 's novel to his own uses is shifting the action from San Diego to the Mexican border.' But TOUCH OF EVIL' S \" Me xico \" is not the place liberal critics think it is . Such critics should have been warned by Janet Leigh 's mistake: she pleads with her husband to \" get me out of here \" (this is not the \" real Mexico,\" Vargas tries to tell her), and thinks she 'll be safe in an American motel. Welles ' \" Mexico \" is not a scene for acting out platitudes about bigotry and social justice; it is a place of the soul , the \" foreign \" place, the night- mare from which a lost Hollywood sweater girl-Mrs. Tony Curtis, the antithesis of all Dietrich 's weary expe- rience-begs to be awakened. To put it differently: \" Mexico \" is not geographical but visual space, a way of experiencing the world. Welles' habitually deep focus means that any place a character may, for an instant, inhabit is only the edge of the depth that opens dizzily behind him , receding along the arcades of Venice, California, like some ba- roque hallucination. The violence of the motion Welles sets plunging through these depths means that \" fore- ground \" and \" background \" no longer serve as static frames for a comfortable middle distance (a \" middle\" both optically and ethically). Instead, all three are points in a single system , through which , just beyond the circle closed about any given moment's awareness , the as- sassin pursues his prey, and through whose sinuous passages the investigator must seek out an unknown evil. Menace lurches suddenly forward , and chases disappear down long perspectives; or we may be con- fronted with more interior searches: a single figure, dwarfed by the geometry of empty streets and arcades, wandering through a landscape of memory, littered with blown papers and the ruins of an abandoned carnival. We may best understand the perceptual world of TOUCH OF EVIL by thinking of it as a labyrinth , in which the viewer too is invited to lose himself: the network of odd angles; the brutally discontinuous montage; the chiaroscuro and intermittent glare of neon; the per- vasive , only halfheard, Latin drums and sudden blasts of fortyish jazz; the overlapping voices and, particularly in scenes in which the depth of field is most in evidence FILM COMMENT 51

ORION (e .g ., Grandi pursuing his \" boys \" and losing his hair- without entering into its mystery. But as Van Stratten piece), the dislocation of sound in space , as if the seen learns in MR . ARKADIN , such labyrinths are places of WELLEI and the heard could no longer be held together in a pursuit as well as of search , places in which the search single coherent world . At a time when this film is still inexorably becomes a pursuit when the mystery closes lauah of Evil praised for its \" love of the film medium ,\" as if Welles down about the hapless inquisitor-as it does about were only an avatar of Norman Jewison , it is important Vargas, smashing w ith impotent fury through the narrow to insist on the rigor with wh ich all the cinematic means barroom where his enemies celebrate their inexplicable converge toward a single end: menace, disequilibrium. triumph , then , without transition , winding through the The middle shot, as Andre Bazin has written , appeals corridors of Quinlan 's jail to find his bride delirious in to the \" natural point of balance of [the viewer's] mental her cell. The peril that must be confronted is finally adjustment. \" 2 The intention of Welles ' style is precisely the nature of the search itself; the puzzle of the laby- to subvert this balance ; by opening upon the vertiginous rinth and its menace are one: the bomb moving slowly ambiguities of space to deny us the safety of the frame through narrow streets. of reference through which we habitually contemplate the world-the plan-Americain of our waking life. Con- Welles' preoccupation with such images may sug- sider, for example, Quinlan 's first appearance. No es- gest why the energies of his art are most fully liberated tablishing shot allows us to orient ourselves before his by the thriller, the roman nair: stories that violate the massive intrusion : first, a low-angled shot of the car autonomy of space and time and reassemble their door opening , then , looming above it, a close-up of fragments in order to satisfy the investigator's taste the great puffy face and huge cigar-not so much seen for conspiracy-or hallucination . Such an enterprise as felt, like the disquieting presences of nightmares . presupposes the breakdown of conventional categories of understanding-moral, social, even psychological ; At those points when the action becomes most things are not what they seem , there is more than meets convulsive (the murder of Grandi, for example, or the the eye. Deprived of their familiar aspect, things portend earlier acid-throwing episode), Welles sets camera and (like the debris Kane leaves behind him in Xanadu) actors moving in opposite directions so that, deprived of any fi xed point of reference , we are pulled into a a significance not yet made manifest: the blind woman vortex of irrational motion , of violent gestures no longer commensurable . The vertigo of such moments is the presiding over Vargas ' telephoned declarations of love exact optical equivalent of the moral hysteria whose and assurance ; the strangely elongated bed in an empty precipitate (as Welles has observed) is the idiotic motel room of an empty motel in an empty landscape ; Quin- keeper, hopping and giggling away over a windswept, lan 's very face , like a mask or an icon. A world of clues featureless landscape: a vast emptiness marked by a (as the etymology of the word suggests) assumes a single ghostly tree and by the shabby buildings where labyrinth . If Welles ' style seems Lhetorical , it is because Vargas ' wife sought refuge in what she soon discovers his characters, like medieval mystics , inhabit a universe to be the very bosom of her tormentors-\" Who do you whose least component is an exhortation , a sum- think this place belongs to anyway?\" mons-for one who knows how to listen-to hidden mystery. In Welles , however , the abyss to which one Welles speaks of this night-man as a \" Shake- is called by all things is not the abyss of God , but spearean fool ,\" 3 but his own sensibility has always Quinlan 's vision of inexplicable violence and universal seemed less attuned to tragedy or comedy than to guilt: \" guilty, guilty, every last one of them guilty.\" melodrama or farce, modes whose dreamlike and in- commensurate gestures create their own space. The I have so far been speaking rather melodramatically night-man 's scenes-or many of those with Akim Ta- and obliquely, because this seems to me the appropri- miroff's superb Grandi-suggest that the special land- ate way to deal with Welles , and in particular with the scape of TOUCH OF EVIL is the unstable place where peculiarly parabolic manner in which TOUCH OF EVIL farce and melodrama converge; or, more exactly, the communicates its intuitions. What the film is \" about\" place where farce is born from the convulsions of is not distinct from what we might call the phenome- melodrama: the \" estranged world\" of the grotesque. nology of its cinematic style . It is, quite simply , about It is here , I think , that we find the most exact and being lost in the labyrinth whose dimensj ons I have comprehensive term for Welles ' dizzying theatrics . The been trying to adumbrate. \" What's that got to do with grotesque: \" a play with the absurd ,\" a sinister game me?\" Janet Leigh asks the whispered menace through that may \" carry the player away , deprive him of his the walls of the Mirador Motel. But when she wakes, freedom\" ever to return to the familiar daylight.' her conventionally pretty blonde face illuminated by blinking neon, it is to open her eyes on the inverted , \" I believe , thinking about my films , that they are farcically leering mask of the strangled Grandi, to based not so much on pursuit as on a search ,\" Welles plunge half naked into a cacaphony of street sounds, has said . \" If we are looking for something a labyrinth jazz, and strident jeering , to watch from her fire escape is the most favorable location for the search .'\" An odd while her husband, oblivious to her cries for help, enough remark , if we care to press it closely . The passes slowly away through the maze of indifferent or labyrinth is the \" most favorable \" place for a search threatening strangers. only to an investigator preoccupied with the tortuous- ness of his own seeking : only if what the searcher really As the film 's center of gravity shifts from the trials wants · is to lose himself, if his real goal is the hall of of Susan Vargas to the figure of Quinlan himself, we mirrors where at last he comes upon his own image begin gradually to see not only the terror and perplexity shivered into a thousand fragments. (For one hallucin- of the labyrinth , but also its moral and psychological atory moment, as Kane passes between two mirrors, dimensions. There is a shift, in other words , from the the camera hovers as if to plunge down the corridor lyric to the dramatic, from passion to action-from a of images , as if to lose itself-and us-in reflected mode of understanding that seeks to come to grips depths more real than the hallway along which the with the \"foreign place\" by submitting wholly to its hunched manikin Kane has become disappears off the darkness, to another mode whose aim is to humanize side of the screen .) The reporter of CITIZEN KANE does the void by placing it in the sequence of choice and not, to be sure, run any such risks; faceless himself, striving that constitutes the histo ry of a man 's life. To a fabricator of public images, he uncovers the labyrinth put the matter crudely: in TOUCH OF EVIL we gradually see that the labyrinth in which innocence loses its way is simply time, Simply the life, a man lives-any man , 52 SUMMER 1971

\" some kind of a man ,\" everyone being hooked on of time is as irrevocable as the work of candybars ; and something , as Tanya says-and which he builds up around himself, fragment by fragment , until finally there when , just before the end , Quinlan asks Tanya to read is no escape. The gradual enrichment or specification of its central image constitutes the film 's visual struc- his future in her cards, it appears that this too is de- ture; for the sake of exposition , we may distinguish three stages in Quinlan's career. prived him : \"You don 't have any, your future 's all used The first sequence enacts Quinlan 's absorption into up.\" Time has become a single moment, a labyrinth the labyrinthine world of Uncle Joe Grandi (or we should say, \"reenacts,\" for obviously Quinlan is in fact no open only to the junk heap on which (like Kane) Quinlan stranger to its deviousness). \" We 're both after the same thing. \" Quinlan and Grandi confer in the street, while finally dies, his rotting face still cunning , as used up Menzies looks on sadly through a window reflecting their figures, and a church bell rings in the distance. and inscrutable as the debris around him. He was Later, in the cafe , Quinlan protests \" that 'we ' stuff,\" hunched rigidly behind a table as Grandi cringes and \" some kind of a man ,\" Tanya says. Janet Leigh con- scurries behind him; but as Quinlan capitulates and begins to drink, the camera rises to see the two men tinues to suppose that Vargas can \" take me away from as a single unit. here,\" but Welles reserves the last words for Dietrich 's Confronted with Vargas' evidence, Quinlan offers to turn in his badge and is followed out into the hotel 's stylized epitaph , and the last shot for her melancholy deserted lobby. Having been questioned, a career, a life, loses its solidity-the camera constantly circling walk away into the night. 11111111 and probing-and what is left is a dance of silhouettes through empty space: disembodied voices and shad- 1 Vargas, a drug investigator for the Mexican government, ows cast by the dim institutional lighting. And then, and his bride Susan witness the explosion of a car as it passes two scenes later, rhetoric and nostalgia dre gone. Time over the border. The American sheriff, Quinlan , fastens upon freezes into a labyrinth of steel filing cabinets, a tangle the Mexican boyfriend of the wealthy victim 's daughter as his of lies and falsification seen with the hard edge of public chief suspect; meanwhile Susan is being terrorized by \" Uncle record , under a glare without mystery or reprieve . Even Joe\" Grandi, whose brother Vargas had convicted on a drug here, however, Menzies interposes matters that suggest charge. Vargas discovers that Quinlan has planted evidence the persistence of shadows, of a more human chiaro- in order to frame his suspect; alarmed by these accusations , scuro, beyond the range of the Prosecutor's vision ; Quinlan makes common cause with Grandi in order to discredit of the story of his murdered wife, and of his peculiar Vargas. Susan is held captive in an American motel owned intimacy with Tanya (with whom , in his concern , Men- by Grandi and (apparently) drugged, so that Quinlan can claim zies has just been speaking). that both she and Vargas are addicts. But when Grandi, with the still unconscious Susan , meets Qu inlan in a hotel on the In the final sequence, Quinlan's life is recapitulated Mexican side of the border, Quinlan strangles Grandi and as a kind of night journey, a labyrinth threaded over leaves the corpse behind to be discovered, along with Vargas' stagnant waters. All the film's stylistic preoccupations half-naked bride, by the police. Meanwhile Vargas discovers are here in their purest form . The space of nightmare, that Quinlan, obssessed by the unsolved murder of his wife, at once claustrophobic and fragmented, wholly shaped has made a career of falsifying evidence. When Quinlan's best by the network of derricks 8'ld aborted construction, friend , Pete Menzies, discovers Quinlan 's cane at the murder is slashed through by inexplicable lighting ; voices scene, he reluctantly agrees to work with Vargas. Equipped echoing over the canal or metallically disembodied on with a \" bug ,\" Menzies seeks Quinlan out at a brothel where Vargas' tape recorder. And now it becomes clear that he has taken refuge with Tanya, and engages him in a long the dark tangle in which Quinlan is lost-which turns conversation , which Vargas, tracking the two, gets down on into a trap where his mind drifts and wanders without his tape recorder. After he has confessed, Quinlan discovers control-is nothing else than the long obssession of the deception , shoots Menzies, and is about to kill Vargas which he speaks to Menzies. \"Drunk or sober, I always too , when he is himself shot by the expiring Menzies. Vargas think of her,\" he says. \" Or of my job, my dirty job .\" learns that the young Mexican Quinlan framed was in fact guilty and has confessed to dynamiting the car. The \"Mexico \" of TOUCH OF EVIL is, f,nally , Quinlan's world: he embraces the film as the dreamer does his 2 Andre Bazin , What Is Cinema?, trans . Hugh Gray (Berkeley, own nightmare. I have spoken of Dietrich and Janet 1967), p. 32. Leigh as antitheses , but this is itself to imply some basic correspondence. What the pianola summons Quinlan 3 Jean-Claude Allais, \" Orson Welles,\" Premier Plan , 16 (March , to, across the vacant windy plaza, is simply the dream 1961), p. 68. of all he has lost, the negation of the world he has built up around himself along with the layers of fat: 4 See Wolfgang Kayser , The Grotesque in Art and Literature, the nostalgic melody in a world of raucous sounds , -trans. Ulrich Weisstein (Bloomington , Ind. , 1963), pp. 184-89 . the embrace of the brothel's tacky decor in a world 5 Andrew Sarris, ed ., Interviews with Film Directors (New York , of bare rooms and empty arcades. No wonder, then, 1967), p. 532. that Tanya's ageless face , wreathed in cigarette smoke , hovers in the doorway like a figure of memory, a dream TOUCH OF EVIL within a dream, a myth . Not, however, the brittle false- hood represented by Janet Leigh or the abandoned 1958, Universal-International, 93 minutes producer pasteboard showgirl momentarily glimpsed in the plaza's debris. Dietrich's special magic has always been Albert Zugsmith ; screenplay Orson Welles; from the to suggest the human face behind cinema's masks of glamour and romance , the dream saddened by a novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson; photography knowledge of its own evanescence. Her first words are \"We're closed .\" What this face knows is that the work Russell Metty; art direction Alexander Golitzen, Robert Clatworthy; editing Virgil Vogel , Aaron Stell, music Henry Mancini; additional scenes directed by Harry Keller. CAST Charlton Heston Ramon Miguel (Mike) Vargas Janet Leigh Susan Vargas Orson Welles Hank Quinlan Joseph Calleia Pete Menzies Akim Tamiroff Uncle Joe Grandi Joanna Moore Marcia Linnekar Ray Collins Adair, the District Attorney Dennis Weaver night man at the motel Victor Millan Manelo Sanchez Lalo Rios Risto Michael Sargent Pretty Boy Marlene Dietrich Tanya and Joseph Cotten , Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mercedes Mc- Cambridge, Keenan Wynn . FILM COMMENT 53

The IMMORTAL STORY if, as the estimable Mr. Bernstein might say, all you want to do is find things wrong with it. IlIlIartal The sound , at least in the English-language version, is rather bad. The lighting , sets , props and makeup Story have a decided air of cheapness and haste, reflecting the fact that this was , after all, only a television produc- by Charles Silver tion. The continuity and editing tend toward a certain sloppiness, and the acting and mise-en-scene appear Charles Silver heads The Museum of Modern Art's stolid, completely antithetical to the wild Welles we have Film Study Center. His film criticism has appeared in known . Even more damning, perhaps , is the virtually The Village Voice , Take One, and Film Comment. Mr. total subservience to the narrative structure and di::l- Silver is indebted to Michael Kerbel, many of whose logue of Baroness Blixen 's fable . Unlike CITIZEN KANE , thoughts on the film made their way into this piece. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS , THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI , TOUCH OF EVIL and even FALSTAFF, the points here seem Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, to be made verbally rather than visually and, super- A six-years ' Darling of a pygmy size! fiCially at least, they appear to be those of Miss Dinesen , See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, not those of Mr. Welles. Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father 's eyes! But most of what is important about THE IMMORTAL See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, STORY-Or, for that matter, about the vast majority of Some fragment from his dream of human life, other films-is the extent to which the director makes Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; the film an expression of self. In this endeavor, despite all the aforementioned obstacles, Orson Welles suc- A wedding or a festival, ceeds in quite a lovely manner. Careful analysis of the A mourning or a funeral; mise-en-scene of THE IMMORTAL STORY reveals it to be one of the most poignantly personal works in all cinema . And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: As in so many earlier Welles movies , the filmmaker assumes the role of narrator. In no previous film , how- Then will he fit his tongue ever, has Welles' conception of himself been so crucial To dialogues of business, love, or strife; to the essence of the work . He is no mere interlocutor here , for he is telling a story about the telling of a But it will not be long story-a story about a fat old man who tells a story-a Ere this be thrown aside, story, in fact, about Orson Welles. And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; The director immediately asserts his independence Filling from time to time his \" humorous stage \" by arbitrarily switching the locale from Miss Dinesen's With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, Canton to Macao. We are introduced to nabob Clay That Life brings with her in her equipage; and to Elishama Levinsky-the latter a servile and sex- As if his whole vocation less insect whose relationship tothe former parallels that Were endless imitation . of Bernstein to Kane, or (even better) that of Pete Menzies to Hank Quinlan . Just as Menzies is to be stage -William Wordsworth manager for the drama in which Quinlan-Pete 's only from Intimations of Immortality reason for living-will die, so Levinsky performs the same function for his master; both Menzies and Le- Orson Welles' most recent film has predictably been vinsky know that, in doing so, they are setting in motion cited by his detractors as clear evidence of further the machinery of their own destruction. decline. Even from his admirers, THE IMMORTAL STORY has evoked only a minimal defense. One senses that We learn from Isak Dinesen that, when Clay took Welles' friends are asking, with Worusworth, \"Whither possession of the house formerly belonging to his is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory bankrupt and deceased partner (M . Dupont, Virginie's and the dream?\" What follows is offered as a reply father) , he found that everything had been removed to these questions. except the mirrors. When we see the mirrors, we are immediately reminded of the mirrors from that other It's not very hard to find things wrong with THE palatial prison , Xanadu ; and we are not surprised, therefore , to find that the house also contains an Am- THE berson staircase. By comparison with Xanadu , howev- IMMORTAL er, Clay's house is as austere as its owner, and there is every reason to believe that Clay lacks Kane 's flam- STORY. Jeanne Moreau and Norman Eshley. photos: Cinemabilia

boyant past, that he has never really been a participant The Sailor and The Girl , thus playing with the legend in any of the games of life other than those related to \" making money.\" He feels powerful because he is and transforming it into a \" fragment from his dream a recluse . He maintains his feeling of omnipotence, we are told , \" by ignoring that part of the world which [lies] of human life.\" Clay / Welles , now seated in his (direc- outside the sphere of his power. \" And the world , on the whole , seems to ignore Mr. Clay , except for an tor 's?) chair on the porch , says : \" It's all noth ing but occasional gaggle of gossips we see chatting about him on the street, as though they were wagging their a story ... my story .\" tongues over the latest exploit of Georgie Minafer. Until the last sequence in the film , Welles has fol- When Levinsky reads Clay the prophecy of Isaiah, it sparks in the old man the desire to render into fact lowed Miss Dinesen's narrative plan with only the the fictional story of The Sailor and The Girl. Welles ' execution of this sequence carries with it clear conno- slightest variations. (Levinsky's proposal to Virginie, for tations of making a film from the story. Clay's response to the prophecy is: \"Who put that thing together?\" The example , is broken up into several different scenes with old man 's concern focuses on his budget: \"It will in- volve expenses.\" The fable indicates that Clay's intent several different locations in an apparent attempt to is \" to manifest his omnipotence , and to do the thing that could not be done.\" Miss Dinesen almost seems be more cinematic.) But in the fable , the sailor leaves to echo Welles ' assertion that he makes films like TOUCH OF EVIL \" because of the greedy need to exercise , in a shell , which is intended as a memento for Virg inie , some way, the function of my choice. \" The world of THE IMMORTAL STORY is one in which , as Levinsky says , with Levinsky. In the film , he presents it to Clay , solder- \" we go where we are told \" by merchants like Mr. Clay. This is , indeed , the world in which Welles has had to ing the link between them . We next see the shell, fallen struggle for thirty years . from the dead man 's hand, rolling on the porch like The key to THE IMMORTAL STORY lies in the relationship between Mr. Clay and the sailor. The interchange be- Kane's snow-scene paperweight following his dying tween them-visual, verbal , and intensely symbol- ic-reveals to us as inspired and confessional an apolo- utterance, \" Rosebud .\" Like Kane 's sled , the shell, gia as that of Chaplin in LIMELIGHT or Kazan in THE ARRANGEMENT. When Clay first enters the dining room salvaged from the sailor's idyllic island isolation , is a the sailor is already seated at the table . As he crosses to his seat, the massive shadow of Orson Welles falls symbol of lost innocence. The sailor has surrendered upon the boy, blocking out the chandelier's garish golden light. This is paralleled by the shadow of the his virginity to Clay 's drama, and he is now to return sailor falling upon Clay as he returns to his place at the table after threatening to leave, succumbing to to Europe . For the boy , just as irrevocably as for Clay / Clay's bargain , offering up his innocence in exchange for the price of a boat that will return him to that corrupt Kane / Welles, and for Wordworth , \" there hath passed and impure world we designate as Civilization . away a glory from the earth. \" At the beginning of this sequence, Clay treats his sailor / actor as though he were a Hitchcockian bull ; The Wellesian hero , from Kane to Falstaff, is almost he speaks of the youth to Levinsky as if the subject of their conversation were not present. Eventually turn- inevitably vanquished by his illusions. Mr. Clay, who ing his attention to the boy, Clay talks about his con- suming love for his gold, and of his desire to pass it has spent his whole life avoiding them, is finally killed on to someone whom he has \"caused to exist.\" In return the sailor tells Clay of his shipwreck on a desert in the attempt to transform illusion into reality . Clay island where he was completely alone. This tale of solitude intrigues the old man because it so closely does not succeed, for the sailor tells Levinsky that he resembles his own condition , and he remarks on what a pleasant thing it must have been to be \" where nobody will not repeat the story, thus frustrating the old man 's can possibly intrude upon you .\" The sailor agrees and expresses regret at having been picked up by a ship , design. In this , Welles suggests an admission of failure thus losing his sanctuary, his niche in an almost pure state of nature. The boy and the man are irrefutably on his own part, a sense of defeat about his lifelong linked, and it follows logically that we are later told by Welles that sailors (like artists?) are lonely liars struggle to transcend his mortality through his skill at whose stories are dreams of things they do not have. lying. Welles' lies-those cinematic \" ribbons of Clay then \" directs\" his story according to his own rules-in effect, exercising the right of final cut. \" You dreams,\" as he calls them-are to him what Clay 's million move at my bidding ,\" he informs his actors from behind a lace curtain, hidden like the Wizard of Oz, but with dollars are to the old merchant: \" my brain and my heart; the authority of Kane telling Susan Alexander that she'll be a great opera star whether she wants to be or not. it is my life. \" Whereas Charles Foster Kane three dec- Levinsky has suggested to Virginie , whom he as casting director has chosen as the co-star of Clay's production, ades ago could make choices, Mr. Clay moves ineluc- that the prophecy of Isaiah has transformed Clay into a child whose fantasies are establishing the myth of tably toward defeat and death. His very name implies mortality. Thus, it is all too appropriate that the mise- en-scene of THE IMMORTAL STORY should be sombre, static and humorless. Like Mr. Clay , Welles in 1941 had achieved every- thing, and , in its own way, \"the cup of his triumph had been too strong for him .\" As Levinsky reflects , \"it was very hard on people who wanted things so badly that they could not do without them. If they could not get these things it was hard; and when they did get them , surely it was very hard. \" Surely no one has had to struggle more against his own premature deification than Orson Welles. Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the day, a Master o 'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by ... And there must be a part of this tragic being which genuinely feels that his whole vocation has been an endless imitation. Levinsky listens to the sound of the shell and says , \" I have heard it before ... long, long ago. But where?\" The film ends with a slow fade to white. 11111111 HISTOIRE IMMORTELLE [THE IMMORTAL STORY] 1968, ORTF [French television], 61 minutes producer Orson Welles; screenplay Orson Welles; from the story by Isak Dinesen ; photography Willy Kurant (Eastman Color); editing Yolande Maurette, Marcelle Pluet, Fran- Goise Garnault and Claude Farney ; music Erik Satie . CAST Jeanne Moreau Virginie Orson Welles Clay Roger Coggio The clerk Norman Eshley Paul, the sailor FILM COMMENT 55

56 SUMMER 1971

OPHULS An Introduction by Andrew Sarris Andrew Sarris is the film critic of The Village Voice . than as an aesthetic adjunct to his scenarios. As a His interests include sports, sexual politics and literary romantic artist, Ophuls chose to admire Mozart's clas- pugilism. sical serenity without exploiting it inappropriately. Also , Mozart's music is already part of the artistic heritage One problem with culturally ambitious film criticism of La Belle Epoque, and , as such , cannot pursue is its straining for analogies between cinema and the Ophulsian characters outside the opera houses and other arts when , in fact, cinema is not only analogous concert halls within which their destinies are foretold to the other arts , but swallows them whole in the pro- as by the seers of Greek Tragedy . Indeed , it is the very cess. What is mise-en-scene in cinema? The apostles indecorum of interrupted musical performances in MA- of mise-en-scene may argue that mise-en-scene is to DAME DE and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN which cinema as music is to opera . But what happens to this neat analogy between cinematic mise-en-scene and prefigures the ultimate downfall of the Ophulsian operatic music when we consider the fact that so-called heroines. \" background \" music plays such a crucial role in most movies? The metaphorical music of images must then That Ophuls himself did not place an inflated cultural compete with the actual music of the spheres in the price tag on his achievement does not in itself make viewing (and hearing) experience. I believe that Max him less worthy than other more self-satisfied direc- Ophuls understood this problem throughout his career and I believe further that Ophuls has been seriously ators-any more than Mozart 's relative modesty vis underrated precisely because of his perceptiveness . vis Beethoven makes him less sublime , bombastic Even such a dedicated Opfluls admirer as Claude music critics like Bernard Shaw to the contrary notwith- Beylie falls into the trap of irrelevant culture-mongering standing . At the very least, Ophuls is incomparable in by remarking : \" All his life , Ophuls adored Mozart, but the sense that he is completely unlike any other direc- he chose the music of Oscar Straus for his films . All tor. His detractors may prefer Mizoguchi or Renoir or his life he read Balzac and Stendahl , but he never dared Ford or Hitchcock or Keaton or Chaplin or Hawks or adapt them for the screen . All his life, Goethe , the poet Sternberg or Dreyer or Rossellini or Lubitsch or Lang and dramatist, was his favorite author, but only once or Bur'iuel or Bresson or Welles or Vigo or Griffith or did he try to film a work by Goethe , and then he felt Murnau or Eisenstein or Dovzhenko or Pudovkin or that he made a mess of it. \" Pabst or Bergman or Fellini or Antonioni or Visconti or Godard or Chabrol or Truffaut or Resnais or Kurosa- Richard Roud Quotes Beylie (in Roud 's 1958 British wa or Ozu or Becker or Cocteau or Vidor or Ray, Satyajit Film Institute Index) approvingly on this occasion to or Ray , Nicholas or Sirk or Stroheim, but no one can support Roud 's overall contention that Ophuls was say that Ophuls is a minor-league version of someone merely a \" beloved minor master\" with a weakness for more major . To denigrate Ophuls it is necessary to \"novelettish \" subjects. Of Ophuls' fondness for Mozart invent an anti-Ophuls, an imaginary creature who would there can be little doubt. Anton Walbrook 's King of have treated Schnitzler and De Maupassant with more Bavaria in LOLA MONTES compla ins that his deafness bitterness and less sweetness, with more syphilis and prevents him from hearing Mozart's gentle melodious- less circularity, and , ultimately, with more literary fidelity ness , which he prefers to the deafening din of Wagner . and less cinematic fluidity. Perhaps, the one unpar- Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio is performed at donable Ophulsian sin for his detractors has been a the beginning of LlEBELEI. Most curious of all Ophulsian life-long demonstration of the limitations of mise-en- hommages to Mozart occurs in LETTER FROM AN UN- scene on the screen . If your favorite picture is POTEMKIN KNOWN WOMAN with a performance of The Magic Flute or MAN OF ARAN or THE BICYCLE THIEF or GRAND ILLUSION in Italian! or THE GRAPES OF WRATH or comparable works possess- ing all the literary nuance and sensibility of a stone Even so, Ophuls does not employ Mozart as inces- tablet on Mount Sinai , it is easy enough to overcom- santly in the background as , say , Agnes Varda does pensate for this relative primitivism of the cinematic in LE BONHEUR or as Bo Widerberg does in ELVIRA sensibility by repairing to the book shelf to find charac- MADIGAN . Does that fact make LE BONHEUR and ELVIRA ters with more cultivated idiosyncracies, and plots with MADIGAN more tasteful and more profund than LA more calculated intrigues . It is then even possible to RONDE and MADAME DE .. . with their tinkling Straus imagine future adaptations of Proust and James with waltzes? I think not. What Ophuls has perceived is that all their ironies intact on the screen . And then Ophuls Mozart's music , taken out of the classical contexts of comes along to spoil everything with his intimations its own sublimity , would serve as a cultural crutch rather of stylistic irrevocability, of the inability of characters to twist and turn and deceive and dissemble and turn FILM COMMENT 57

MADAME DE. back once the massive machinery of the cinema has Vittorio de Sica and set them into motion on their journeys into time within a rectangular frame . The most idiosyncratic characters Dan ielle Darrieu x from the printed page become archetypal on the with bac ks to camera. screen , and the room for moral maneuver more severely restricted . Hence, the eternal complaint in highbrow photo : Cinemabilia c ircles that the movie is cornier than the book, or more optimistic, or more emotional. For Ophuls, the process LETTER FROM of story simplification is a stylistic necessity. The point AN UNKNOWN WOMAN . of his art is to reveal rather than to conceal , to surround rather than to surprise , to produce an aura of inevita- Joan Fontaine and bility and inexorability out of the apparently accidental. Lou is Jourdan. (Vide the exchange between the General and the jewel- photo : Museum of Modern Art! er in MADAME [)E on the absence of accident in life .) Nothing is really an accident, only apparently . Plot Film Stills Archive contrivances may seem like accidents, but only until LOLA MONTES. the Ophulsian mise-en-scene can transform these ac- center: Martine Carol. photo: Audio/ Brandon cidents into the most economical means of expressing the structure of a society. The fate of a pair of earrings LOLA MONTES. (MADAME DE) or a miscarried baby (CAUGHT) or a throne Peter Ustinov and (LOLA MONTES) is secondary to the stirrings of restless movement provoked by these mini-melodramas. Thus Martine Carol. photo: Audio/ Brandon the Ophulsian mise-en-scene does not transcend its subject; the mise-en-scene really is the subject. As Lola herself says , life is movement. The moving camera of Ophuls therefore does not so much comment on life as constitute it. For Ophuls , the rite of passage is continuous , and it is this extraordinary continuousness that distinguishes Ophuls from the other masters of mise-en-scene with whom he has been grouped: Mizo- guchi, Murnau , Renoir, Rossellini, Dreyer, Welles ; none of whom having as rigorously stripped away every last pretense to pictorial ism as has Ophuls. Ophulsian mise-en-scene can be considered as the most formal kind of screenwriting in that every scene is so constructed as to release its tension through movement, and every movement must justify itself not only through the dramatic psychology of the prime mover protagonist, but also through the sociological information revealed on the visual field during the movement. In a very subtle way, Ophulsian camera movement is an instrument of the most delicate irony in that the wildest emotions are tempered either by the indifferent motions of peripheral characters encoun- tered along the way or by the metaphysical indifference of traversed space itself. It is no accident that Stern- berg 's cinema is memorable for its long banquet tables (composition) and Ophuls' for its lengthy waltzes across the barriers of time (camera movement). (Compare also the time spent at the dinner table in Renoir 's restless THE RULES OF THE GAME and Bergman 's more formally composed SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT .) There are sixty shots of staircases in MADAME DE , but not one of them is dramatically effective in the Hitch- cockian manner of NOTORIOUS and PSYCHO, nor philo- sophically portentous in the Wellesian manner of CITI- ZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Indeed , it is possible to synopsize MADAME DE without once men- tion ing a staircase whereas with Hitchcock's staircases there are intimations of the Fall in the frenzied melo- dramatics of synchronized tracks, and with Welles' coffin-like slabs of steps there are suggestions of the dark at the top of the stairs in the economical expres- sionism of Gothic vertigo . With Ophuls it is movement itself that is emphasized rather than its terminal points of rest, and a peculiarly Ophulsian character has emerged as a consequence of this emphasis . This character is usually a woman afflicted with a secret feeling that makes her too restless to settle down into a pretty picture, a formal composition or a settled

tableau . Ophuls introduces us to this character on the LA TENORE ENNEMIE . sc reenplay Ma x Ophuls and Curt Ale xander, from the play L'Ennemie by Andre-Paul wing, fluttering determinedly toward her doom across Antoine, photography Eugene Schufftan and Lucien a world indifferent to her suffering, past people who Colas; with Simone Berriau , Georges Vitray , Jacqueline Dai x, Maurice Devienne and Catherine Fonteney . unknowingly contribute to her romantic illusions by France. perpetuating the sham and pretense of continental 1937 YOSHIWARA, screenplay A. Lipp [Arnold Lippschutz] , sophistication and cosmopolitanism . Ophuls has cho- Wolfgang Wilhelm , Jacques Companeez and Ma x Ophuls, from the novel by Maurice Dekobra ; pho- sen this world not to indulge it, nor to satirize it , nor to tography Eugene Schufftan ; with Pierre-Richard Willm , condemn it, but rather to place himself outside camera Sessue Hayakawa, Michiko Tanaka and Roland Tou- range at a sufficient distance to maintain an intelligent tain . France. 1938 perspective on the rapturous movements of his own WERTHER. screenplay Hans Wilhelm , Max Ophuls and Fernand Crommelynck, from the novel The Sorrows feelings . 11111111 of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; MAX OPHULS FILMOGRAPHY photography Eugene Schufftan ; with Pierre-R ichard Wilm , Annie Vernay, Jean Galland and Paulette Pa x. (1902-1957 1930 France . DANN SCHON LIEBER LEBERTRAN. screenplay 1939 Emeric Pressburger and Max Ophuls; from the story SANS LENDEMAIN. screenplay Jean Villeme [Hans by Erich Kastner; photography Eugene Schufftan ; with Wilhelm] and Jacot; photography Eugene Schufftan ; Kate Haak, Heinz Gunsdorf, Paul Kemp and Hanelore with Edwige Feuillere , Georges Rigaud , Daniel Lecour- tois , and Paul Aza·l·s. France. Schroth. Germany. 1931 1940 DIE LACHENDE ERBEN. screenplay Felix Joachimson ; story by Trude Herka; photography Eduard Hoesch; DE MAYERLING A SARAJEVO. screenplay Curt Ale x- with Lien Deyers, Lizzi Waldmulle , Heinz Ruhmann and ander , Carl Zuc !' mayer and Marcelle Maurette ; pho- Max Adalbert. Germany. tography Curt Courant and Otto Heller; with Edwige DIE VERLIEBTE FIRMA. screenplay by Dr. Fritz Zeck- Feuillere, John Lodge , Aime Clariond and Jean Worms . endorf, from an idea by Ernst Marischka and Bruno France. Granichstaedten ; photography Karl Puth ; with Anny 1947 Ahlers , Gustaf Frohlich , Lien Deyers and Ernst Verebes. THE EXILE . screenplay Douglas Fairbanks , Jr.; pho- G e r m a n :,'. tography Frank [Franz] Planer; with Douglas Fairbanks, 1932 Jr. , Maria Montez, Paule Croset, Henry Daniell, Nigel DIE VERKAUFTE BRAUT. screenplay Curt Alexander , Bruce and Robert Coote. United States. after the opera by Friedrich Smetana; photography 1948 Reimar Kuntze , Franz Koch , Herbert Illig and Otto LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN [See following Wirsching ; music Friedrich Smetana and Theo Macke- articles] ben; with WiI :y Domgraf-Fassbender, K.arl Valentin, Liesl CAUGHT Karlstadt and Annemarie Sorensen. Germany. 1949 LlEBELEI. screenplay Hans Wilhelm and Curt Alex- THE RECKLESS MOMENT ander, from the play by Arthur Schnitzler; photography 1950 Franz Planer; with Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Magda LA RONDE. screenplay Jacques Natanson and Max Schneider, Luise Ullrich and Willy Eichberger. Germany. Ophuls, from the play Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler 1933 photography Christian Matras; with Anton Walbrook, UNE HISTOIRE D'AMOUR. (French version of lIEBELEI). Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon , dialogue Andre Doderet; with Georges Rigaud, Simone Daniel Gelin, Danielle Darrieux, Fernand Gravey, Odette Heliard , Abel Tarride , Georges Mauloy, Pierre St.§phen Joyeux, Jean-Louis Barrault, Isa Miranda and Gerard and Andre Dubosc . The rest of the German cast were Philipe. France. dubbed in French. 1951 LE PLAISIR. screenplay Jacques Natanson and Max ON A VOLE UN HOMME. screenplay Rene Pujol and Ophuls, based on three short stories by Guy de Mau- Hans Wilhelm . photography Rene Guissart. with Henri passant; photography Christian Matras (LE MASQUE and Garat, Lili Damita, Fernand Fabre and Charles Fallot. LA MAISON TELLIER) and Phillipe Agostini (LE MODELE); LE France. MASQUE with Claude Dauphin , Gaby Morlay, Jean Gal- 1934 land and Gaby Bruyere ; LA MAISON TELLIER with Made- LA SIGNORA 01 TUTTI. screenplay Hans Wilhelm, Curt Alexander and Max Ophuls, from the novel by Salvator leine Renaud , Danielle Darrieux, Ginette Leclerc and Gotta ; photography Ubaldo Arata ; with Isa Miranda, Jean Gabin ; LE MODELE with Daniel Gelin, Jean Servais , Memo Benassi , Tatiana Pavlova and Nelly Corradi . Italy. Simore Simon and narrated by Jean Servais (Peter 1935 Ustinov in the English version). France . DIVINE. screenplay Jean-Georges Auriol , Ma)' Ophuls 1953 and Colette, from her novel L'envers du Mu\"ic Hall; MADAME DE ... photography Roger Hubert; with Simone Serriau , 1955 Georges Rigaud , Gina Manes, Philippe Heriat, Sylvette LOLA MONTES. screenplay Max Ophuls , Annette Wa- Fillacier and Catherine Fonteney. France . demant and Jacques Natanson, from La Vie Extraor- 1936 dinaire de Lola Montes by Cecil St. Laurent; pho- KOMEDIE OM GELD. screenplay Max Ophuls, Walter tography Christian Matras; with Martine Carol, Peter Schlee and Alex de Haas; photography Eugene Schuff- Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Ivan Desny, Will Quadflieg tan ; with Herman Souber, Rini Otte, Matthew v. Eysden and Oscar Werner. France. and Cor Roys . Netherlands. AVA MARIA BY SCHUBERT. 5 minute short. France . LA VALSE BRILLANTE BY CHOPIN. 6 minute short. France. FILM COMMENT 59

LetterFrom an UnknownWoman by Michael Kerbel Michael Kerbel, a graduate of Columbia University 's line. Seeing that their love is impossible, Lisa leaves. She dies shortly thereafter. School of the Arts, headed the film library at Brandon Films, and is now Director of Promotion for Audio / - Like Madame de . .. , the lovers in LA RONDE, and Brandon Films. other Ophuls protagonists , Lisa does not function in the real world ; she can live only in a self-enclosed world Perhaps the most poignant moment in CITIZEN KANE of nostalgia and illusion . Lisa' s story is told in the form is the one in which Mr. Bernstein tells how a seemingly of flashbacks , as Stefan reads a letter she wrote just insignificant incident of youth can remain in one 's before dying . The entire film has an aura of nostalgia, memory for life. Many years before , he caught a brief of an eternally living past. Lisa sees her life solely in glimpse of a beautiful girl in a white dress. She did relation to the moments when it has crossed Stefan 's, not even notice him, but he has thought of her every but for him , she is not even a memory. Although she month since. Time has passed, but for Bernstein she finally realizes this , her imprisonment in the past re- remains young and beautiful , captured eternally in that mains up to her death. Lisa ends her letter: \" I love one memorable moment. Such an experience probably you now as I have always loved you . My life can be occurs , with varying degrees of intensity, in almost measured by the moments I've had with you and our every person's life. A conversation , a glance, an en- child ... \" Her attitude toward life is best expressed counter which may mean nothing to others involved, in an earlier scene , in which she and Stefan walk can become permanently etched into memory. To through an amusement park covered with snow. Stefan some, this merely takes the form of a vivid, pleasant says that he prefers the park in winter, but does not recollection . To others, like the heroine of Ophuls' know why . Lisa says : \"I t is perhaps because you prefer LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN , it can change the to imagine how it will be in the spring-because if it course of an entire life. is spring then there 's nothing to imagine.\" She is unable to exist outside of her illusions. In LETTER, a woman's whole existence is built around a man without his knowing it. As a young girl , Lisa Ophuls expresses the theme of spiritual immobility (Joan Fontaine) becomes infatuated with Stefan Brand through an elaborate visual pattern, featuring an ironic (Louis Jourdan), the concert pianist who lives next use of camera movement. As Andrew Sarris has ob- door. Although he is hardly aware of her, Lisa begins served , Ophuls ' tracking shots trap his characters in preparing herself for their eventual romance. Her child- the inexorable passage of time . But it seems to me ish illusion gradually becomes an obsession; it prevents that what really distinguishes his use of camera move- her from marrying anyone ~ Ise , even though she and ment is the essential paradox contained within it. While her family move away. A few years later, Stefan finally Ophuls constantly moves his characters forward , they notices her, and they have a brief affair . When he leaves always seem to remain the same. The circular struc- for a short concert tour, Lisa discovers that she is tures , endless repetitions and tread-mill movements in pregnant. Wishing not to burden Stefan , she never his films express the inability of his characters really contacts him, and raises the child without any help. to move at all. The circle is the central metaphor in Nine years later, she marries an older man to provide Ophuls' work. a proper home for her son. However, one evening, she encounters Stefan again; in an instant, she is ready In LOLA MONTES, the complicated pattern of flash- to risk her marriage and her son 's happiness. Intending backs, the circus ring itself and the 360-degree tracking to offer her life to Stefan, she visits him. But he does shots around Lola suggest the theme of imprisonment not even remember her; she is only one girl in a long in an eternal past. LA RONDE , of course , is constructed LEITER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. left, Joan Fontaine and Marcel Journel. right, Joan Fontaine. photos: Audio/Brandon

on the theme of life occurring in cycles . In MADAME an amusing sequence, but it expresses most poignantly DE .. . , the earrings pass from one person to another , then back to their original owner. In LETTER , Ophuls the concept of movement without progress . After they suggests Lisa 's inability to move forward by employing a complex series of repetitions: similar dialog, images have \"visited \" all of the countries , Stefan tells the and situations recur at various points in her life, indicat- ing that she must always remain the same. concess ion 's operator to start all over again : \" We will At the beginning of the film, Stefan gets out of a revisit the scenes of our youth \" (beginning a circular carriage, and climbs the stairs to his apartment, where he reads the letter from Lisa. At the end, he leaves progression even within a static movement). the apartment, descends, and enters the carriage, which will take him to his duel. This provides a symmet- In the same sequence , Lisa asks Stefan: \" Tell me , rical framework for the film 's circular progression and when you climb a mountain , what ·then?\" He replies : many repetitions. (Perhaps here it should be pointed out that by \" You come down again.\" The idea, and the image, of speaking of circular patterns and formal structures I ascension and descent really sum up the entire film . am making the film sound inordinately rigorous, which of course it is not. LETTER is one of Ophuls ' most One remembers most vividly the many scenes of people affecting, emotionally satisfying works. The beauty of Ophuls' method is that it always seems to be spontane- going up and down stairs, on endless journeys to no- ous, even at the moment of its most precise planning . where . Stefan goes up to his rooms at the beginning , One should never overlook the charm, elegance, daz- zling beauty and romanticism of Ophuls' evocation of to read the letter, but it is too late for him to do anything. fin-de-siecle Vienna in this film . But it seems that these points have been discussed elsewhere; it may be time He can only descend again , to face his rendezvous. to stop marvelling at Ophuls' beautiful style, and to try to understand how that style works .) Lisa first goes up to Stefan's apartment when , as a A few examples of the film 's repetitions will illustrate young girl, she tries to get a secret glimpse of his Ophuls' technique. One obvious instance, in which even Lisa understands the irony of repeated actions, belongings. She never advances beyond that emotional is the similarity of the two railway station scenes . In the first, Lisa runs to say goodbye to her lover, after level, although she goes up the same stairs again and their brief time together (the camera tracks quickly as she rushes into the station). As the train pulls away, again (as in the instance mentioned above) . In her final Stefan shouts that he will return in two weeks, but at that moment, their relationship effectively ends. Years visit to his room , Lisa is followed very closely by the later, Lisa says goodbye to her son , who is going away to school. The shots and cutting are the same as before . camera as she ascends. Later, after her moment of As the train leaves, the boy shouts that he will see her in two weeks , and for an instant Lisa senses (ac- realization, she goes back down, but now the camera curately) that she will never see him again . does not follow, seeming to abandon Lisa to her fate. In another (and perhaps the most beautiful) pair of similar images, Ophuls suggests the impossibility of The film 's most significant sequence (and its dra- Lisa 's ever attaining happiness. The crucial moment of her adolescence occurs when she waits outside matic climax) is centered around the grand staircase Stefan's door for his arrival, so that she can declare her love for him. When she sees him entering the of the Opera House. When Lisa and her husband go building with another woman, she hides on a higher step. The camera records this from above her, and up the stairs, their lives are at the most hopeful point; moves around slightly to show the couple entering Stefan's apartment. Disappointed , Lisa descends, Ophuls follows with a graceful tracking shot. Minutes abandoning Stefan for the present. Three years later, after they have finally met, Stefan takes her back to later, a ~ .er seeing Stefan again , she runs down the his apartment. This is the moment she has been waiting for, the consummation of her desires. But Ophuls shows stairs , her life falling to pieces . It is the most powerful their ascension from the same vantage point, and exe- cutes the same slight camera movement. This repetition instance of Ophuls' ironic use of camera movement: suggests the futility and tragedy of Lisa's romantic dream: at her moment of greatest triumph , she is really letting Lisa progress so beautifully up the stairs makes only one girl among many who have gone up those stairs . her descent all the more shattering . In his depiction of their brief romance , Ophuls con- The scene actually begins with Ophuls' tracking tinually suggests the idea of the characters' inability to progress . While in the amusement park, Stefan and back and forth among people entering the Opera foyer; Lisa take a \" ride\" in a \"train ,\" which is actually a stationary car with a rotating painted backdrop. They all the while , his camera moves closer to the staircase , can choose any country to \" visit,\" but of course they are not going anywhere. (Lisa tells Stefan that when where eventually he picks up Lisa and her husband she was young , her father, who worked in a travel bureau, also would take her on imaginary trips .) It is as they are about to ascend . Lisa's narration accom- panying this tracking seems to express most perfectly, and movingly, both the theme of the film and Ophuls' view of the world generally. The apparently aimless camera movement among anonymous people is made clear by Lisa 's words: \" The course of our lives can be changed by such little things-so many people pass- ing by, each intent on his own problems-so many faces, that one might easily have been lost. I know now-nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured-every step is counted .\" 111 11111 LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN 1948, Universal, 80 minutes director Max Ophuls; producer John Houseman; screenplay Howard Koch ; from a novelette by Stefan Zweig; photography Franz Planer; art director Alex- ander Golitzen ; editor Ted J. Kent; music Daniele Am- fitheatrof; assistant director John F. Sherwood . CAST Joan Fontaine Lisa Berndle Louis Jourdan Stefan Brand Mady Cristians Frau Berndle Marcel Journet Johann Stauffer Art Smith John Carol Yorke Marie Howard Freeman Herr Kastner John Good Lt. Leopold von Kaltnegger Leo B. Pessin Stefan, Jr. Erskine Sanford Porter Otto Waldis Concierge Sonja Bryden Frau Spitzer FILM COMMENT 61

.... Gary Carey, who is preparing a film history for Har- court Brace & Jovanovich, will be teaching at New York 's School of Visual Arts this fall. CAUGHT has been called the most American of fv1ax Ophuls ' American films because the spine of its plot- the Cinderella marriage of a poor girl to a multi- millionaire tycoon-touches upon an ever-popular American folk myth , played out against a contemporary New York setting . In outline , CAUGHT may not seem very promising material, but Ophuls frequently worked with even more novelettish material; and the script, as de- veloped by Arthur Laurents, plays into the director's major preoccupation . (It happens to be one of Laurents' major preoccupations, also .) Asking himself \" What are Ophuls' subjects?\" Rich- ard Roud answers (in his monograph , Max Ophuls: An Index), \" The simple answer is : women in love. Most often, women who are unhappily in love or to whom love brings misfortune of one kind or another.\" by Cary Carey CAUGHT'S woman in love is Leonora Eames , former car-hop, charm school graduate, who marries Smith Ohlrig, millionaire. (Barbara Bel Geddes, who plays Leonora , is photographed in a way that gives her an amusing resemblance to Bobo Sears Rockefeller, though this could not have been intended at the time.) Leonora is a simple , not-too-bright girl (in his American years, Ophuls seemed to have an affection for dumb heroines) with a desperate need for affection . This drive is misdirected by her friends into a craving for wealth and attention . Leonora also has the kind of simplistic but rigid morality that can result from a small-town upbringing . She is a \" good girl ,\" unable to maneuvre her morals into the free-and-easy patterns the movies ascribe to the rich and beautiful. Leonora accepts an invitation to a yachting party from a sleazy worm ob- viously pimping for his boss, but she won 't sleep with the boss. She marries Ohlrig presumably because of his billions but soon finds that his billions mean nothing without his love. As Ohlrig lies on the analyst's couch early in the film , Laurents generously bares his character's whole psyche for us. His analyst tells Ohlr ig that his frequent heart attacks are a psychosomatic ploy for sympathy, that he has a power man ia, that consequently he cannot love because he fears being dependent upon another person . Ohlrig denies everything the doctor says and , 62 SUMMER 1971

to prove him wrong , promptly marries Leonora and offshore; he suggested that while the others in the party take one boat out to the ship, he would take Faith out quickly proves him right. Even as one is yawning over the facile Freudianisms with him in a sailing dinghy. In CAUGHT , Leonora is invited to the yachting party which mar Laurents ' motivation , one is drawn into the scene, partially because of the vehemence of Robert not by a girl-friend but by Ohlrig's pimp . (She is , how- Ryan ' s performance as Ohlrig but mainly by the abra- ever, encouraged to attend the party by a girl-friend / sive tension and vicious atmosphere which Ophuls roommate .) Leonora is late for the party , waits alone gives it. At this point, the film comes to life with a kind on the dock until a man , in yachting outfit and captain ' s of dark violence that is , I think , unique in the pastel-tint- hat (no beard) appears in a dinghy , supposedly to pick ed universe Ophuls usually paints. her up. Even with these minor alterations taken into consideration, the resemblance between fact and fic- A case could be made that this new tone in Ophuls ' tion is too striking to put down to mere coincidence. work results from his reaction to the vitality inherent in his typically American subject. But the acidulous There are other similarities, also. Ohlrig's desertion tone, which gives CAUGHT its singularity and its strength, of Leonora for long periods of time, both before and is missing , alas , from his other film nair, THE RECKLESS after their marriage , is a well-chronicled trait of the MOMENT. The explanation must lie elsewhere, and the Hughes mating pattern, once he had wooed and won clue is given by Pauline Kael who (seemingly alone a woman . Franzi, the factotum and pimp whom Ohlrig among all those who have written on the film) has has cajoled away from his job as headwaiter, might suggested that Ohlrig might possibly be a portrait of Howard Hughes. be a Europeanized and below-the-belt portrait of Eddie, the barber whose shop Hughes bought out in order Miss Kael 's suggestion is bolstered by a knowledge to have a professional at the beck and call of his beard. of what happened to Ophuls during the first years of The script even forecasts events which did not surface his unhappy stay in Hollywood . Ophuls first came to in Hughes' life until later. The way Leonora becomes America in 1941 but remained out of work until 1946 a virtual recluse in Ohlrig 's mansion presages the para- when Preston Sturges saw LlEBELEI and \" discovered \" noid seclusion that enveloped Jean Peters after she the Viennese director. At this time Sturges had recently became Mrs. Howard Hughes (in 1957). Though been put under contract by Howard Hughes to produce Ohlrig 's heart attacks seem to have no parallel in a film for Faith Domergue, the latest Hughes protegee . Hughes' life , it is intriguing to discover that the Howard Hughes had met Miss Domergue several years earlier Hughes Medical Institute, founded in 1953, specializes when , as Faith Darn , she was under contract to Warner in research on cardiovascular diseases. Could Ophuls Brothers. He bought her contract and promised to make have been privy to some private knowledge about her a star, but years went by without Miss Domergue Hughes which the world is yet to learn? Or was he facing a camera . Finally she accused Hughes of not using the heart attacks as a mundane metaphor for being interested in her \"career ,\" with the result of the way in which Hughes played dangerous games with Hughes signing Sturges and giving him carte blanche his life via his airplane antics? Or, in this case , is it to develop a property. just a matter of coincidence? Sturges contracted Ophuls as collaborator on the The casting of the film also gains a fillip of extracur- Domergue vehicle , VENDETTA, based on a story by Pros- ricular interest in the light of the Hughes perplex. Robert per Merimee, which Miss Domergue had chosen her- Ryan looks remarkably like a younger Hughes; one is self . When Ophuls arrived on the set, Hughes was in hard put to think of an actor who might resemble him the hospital recovering from an airplane crash . For six more . Since Barbara Bel Geddes does not in any way weeks Ophuls and Sturges shot without interference, suggest any of the women· in Hughes ' life , it is amusing managing to spend $1,000 ,000 before Hughes re- to' discover that she had a real-life, not very pleasant, covered sufficiently to leave the hospital. connection with Hughes. Miss Bel Geddes was being groomed for stardom by RKO when Hughes bought Apparently, Hughes took an immediate dislike to the studio in 1948. One of his first moves as studio-head Ophuls . There is a Hollywood rumor that Hughes never was to strike Miss Bel Geddes, whom he did not consid- referred to Ophuls on the set as anything but \" The er to be star potential, from RKO 's roster. Her appear- Oaf.\" After studying the footage that Sturges and ance in CAUGHT could again be only a case of coinci- Ophuls had shot, Hughes took Sturges to task. (Faith dence , but it is quite pleasing to imagine Ophuls align- Domergue has been quoted as saying that she spent ing himself with the support of an equally aggrieved most of the six weeks marching \" for days and nights party in his game of revenge. through an ammonia fog. It was supposed to be mist, rising from the swamps \"; a wag retorted that the mist All of this may seem like muck-raking, but I think really rose from the script.) Sturges reportedly passed it is pertinent to the film. If Ophuls' experience with the buck , placing all the blame on Ophuls . A few days Hughes is wrapped up in the way in which he handles later, the director was once again at liberty . Ohlrig-as I believe it was-then this experience is central to the film 's successes. It is those scenes in Certainly Ophuls had every reason for taking his which Ohlrig appears (either physically or as an almost acid-tipped revenge on Hughes through \" Smith Ohlrig .\" palpable eminence grise) which break almost brutally Looking through John Keats ' \" unauthorized \" biography through the cellophane kitsch of the rest of the story, of Hughes, I found this account of Hughes' first meeting gain an independent life, and make CAUGHT easily the with Faith Domergue : most fascinating and complex of Ophuls' American films . Here there is an aggressiveness about Ophuls ' One day actress Susan Peters invited Faith to a involvement with the story not only missing from his yachting party at Balboa where at dockside Faith was other American films but antipodal to the faded , nostal- gic moral sensibility of his later French work. introduced to Howard Hughes-a tall, slender man with a several day 's growth of beard and a yachting costume Two scenes in particular are worth noting . In one , topped off by a sea captain 's visored hat. Hughes had rented a yacht. the Sea Ellen , which was moored FILM COMMENT 63

poor, bemused Leonora , swooning prettily on a couch , One wonders, however, whether Leonora's divorcing bemoans her fate while Franzi plays a Strauss waltz (brill ian tly) on the pia no, reassuring her with a drawled Ohlrig and living happily ever after with Quinada would \" darling\" this and that. The scene drips with a decay much more fetid than the moral malaise the director have produced an ending even as dramatically effective attractively invokes in his Schnitzleresque romances . as the one finall y given CAUG HT. The script keeps hinting Later, during a moment of stress, Ohlrig slams into a pinball machine which is the main attraction in the that the baby might have been sired by the doctor and, game room of his Jay Gatsby estate . As handled by Ryan , this is a sublime meeting between actor and prop , though the suggest ion is immediately erased , it is pos- and one is caught short by the violence of the en- counter. It seems, at the time , to be one of those sible that this was the way in which the story had glorious , extraneous little touches that in movies often have more life than the story they are meant to deco- originally been conceived . If so, then this greater com- rate. Later, however, when Ohlrig , while suffering his final heart failure , dies practically on top of it, one has plication might well have given a badly needed fillip a terrible feeling that the pinball machine is meant to be Ohlrig 's Rosebud. But I still like it because it works to the second part of the film . very nicely as a put-down upon the stunted , adolescent concept of manliness propogated by the action and When l,.eonora returns to Ohlrig , the film does perk the \" B\" film (whose conventions Ophuls and Laurents just skirt in depicting Ohlrig). It is also perhaps the most up some , but in the final scenes Ohlrig is too sketch- pertinent comment made on Hughes in any of the films that have supposedly based their stories on the billion- ily drawn and too much the \"heavy. \" (The sketchiness aire 's life-for what else is Hughes except the living embodiment of those bankrupt manly values apotheo- of Ohlrig's characterization in this part of the film might sized in the films of Howard Hawks and his less talented colleagues? well have been caused by the bowdlerization of the Ophuls' famous prediliction for the dolly and the script.) In these scenes CAUGHT begins to look like an tracking shot proves quite sufficient to those sequences inferior version of Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS, with the same which place Leonora and Ohlrig in melodramatic con- frontation on the Long Island estate. The Ophuls style , emphasis on a great, baronial staircase-but with a usually so graceful and elegant and pretty-pretty , here take on a weightier inference: the movements become garage standing in for Hitchcock's wine cellar. Both full of predatory menance . As the camera tracks after her or spins about her, Leonora becomes a woman directors also pare down the huge dimensions of the encaged , metaphorically speaking but to much more chilling effect than the final, clinically explicit image mansions which serve as the films' central settings , of Lola Montes. thus. underlining the imprisonment of their respective Unfortunately, Leonora flies the coop before the film is half over, and Ophuls abandons Ohlrig with her to heroines. A striking example of this occurs in the sec- revert to his major preoccupation. He likes his heroines to suffer as atonement for the frivolity of their youth , ond half of CAUGHT, and it is one of the most impressive but the purgatory chosen for Leonora is charted less by Ophuls' typical romantic angst than by American scenes in the film : Leonora , several months pregnant , do-goodism. She leaves the mansion , installs herself in a cold water flat, gets a job in a doctor's office and has locked herself in her enormous , platformed bed- falls in love with Doctor Quinada while they are treating a case of botulism . Her troubles, however, are not over room ; Franzi (brilliantly played by Curt Bois) is sent because she discovers that she is pregnant by Ohlrig and her sense of morality makes her return to her to fetch her and , as she opens the door and speaks husband. Quinada argues ethics with her, but the moral crisis is circumvented when Ohlrig , finally managing to him , Ophuls ' tailgating camera-movements and Lee to prove his analyst wrong, dies of an honest-to-God coronary. Garmes' superb low-keyed lighting create an engulfing Although James Mason brings a velvety presence feeling of claustrophobia and illness. and his impeccable, brandy-mellowed English accent to the role of Quinada, the character as written is little Even in its weaker scenes , CAUGHT remains an en- more than a tenement Doctor Kildare. The scenes between Quinada and Leonora maintain interest only grossing film . Laurents has supplied excellent dia- because of the charm and warmth of the actors' play- ing. Ophuls himself observed that the film \" goes ·off logue-literate without being either literary or stagey. the rails towards the end \" -evidently the Production Code demanded Ohlrig 's death as well as the miscar- He has also provided several minor characters, all riage of Leonora's child-and James Mason has said nicely nasty, and all appropriately cast. ·The principals (in an interview in Focus in Film , +t 2) : \" It was the kind of story , unfortunately, which according to the rules are excellent. Though Howard Hughes was probably of censorship of the day, you couldn 't make sensibly. • It was about a divorce situation and the rules in America right about Barbara Bel Geddes-she never would have said that divorce was something which could be swg- , gested only by a bad person .\" been a major star-she is a polished actress whose manner, crisp and alert, neutralizes some of the stupid- ity inherent in Leonora 's character. Her work in CAUGHT is by far the best she has done in film . Robert Ryan is superb : uptight, belligerent, repulsive , he skates on stiletto blades across the icy surface of Ohlrig's per- sonality , while managing to suggest that the fac;ade is more than skin-deep. The smoothness of Ophuls' camera movement and editing , the elegance of his compositions, the inventiveness of P. Frank Sylos' set design-all propel one through the film with ease and interest if not utter involvement. And yet, one wishes that Ophuls had maintained firmer footing on the new terrain offered by his villain- ous hero, instead of tracking his sensibility down those tried-and-true paths traveled by his innumerable women in love . 11111111 CAUGHT 1949, MGM, 88 minutes. director Max Ophuls; producer Wolfgang Reinhardt; screenplay Arthur Laurents; from the novel Wild Calen- dar by Libbie Block ; photography Lee Garmes ; editor Robert Parrish ; art director P. Frank Sylos. CAST Larry Quinada James Mason Leonora Eames Smith Ohlrig Barbara Bel Geddes Maxine Rob~rt Ryan Franzi Ruth Brady Dr. Hoffman Curt'Bois Frank Ferguson '4'J\\,,': ~ 64 SUMMER 1971

The Reekless Moment by William Paul William Paul is a student in the Columbia University original than a film like THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949). Film Program . His criticism frequently appears in The THE RECKLESS MOMENT does have some minor novelties in terms of its surface effect: Joan Bennett, whose Villaoe Voice. Forties specialty was languorously sensual women, is The American cinema is a classical art form. It relies cast against type as a repressed housewife, and James Mason is cast against character as a lower-class black- on stylistic conventions and traditional genres to act mailer. But the film 's real originality lies below the as mediators between artist and audience , a way of surface in the subtle changes that Ophuls works in giving objective form to subjective meaning. Conven- a traditional genre, the old cliches he strips away from tions that establish a common language intelligible to it, the new material he adds to it. the most obtuse viewer are a necessity for any popular art form: the works must be immediately accessible on THE RECKLESS MOMENT is a \" woman 's picture ,\" a some level to a mass audience to maintain status as genre whose most distinguishing feature is its abun- popular art. For this reason , the best American films dance of self-pity (see almost any Joan Crawford pic- have a surface simplicity in plot or apparent subject ture of the Forties): as the female protagonist slaves matter accompanied by a textural complexity in theme . away for most of the film sacrific.ing her own life for The surface simplicity makes it easy to dismiss films her lover, husband or children , her sacrifice goes un- for shallowness, especially by critics who view films appreciated by everyone except herself. In its plot more in terms of the conventions themselves , the sur- outline , THE RECKLESS MOMENT provides the usual possi- face of the film , rather than the different ways the bilities for its heroine's sense of sacrifice and self- directors have chosen to use the conventions , the denial : with her husband away in Berlin building bridges subtext. This kind of approach is comparable to analyz- for the Germans, Mrs. Harper (Joan Bennett) finds ing the deus ex machina in a Greek playas a thing herself left alone to face the problems of her teenage in itself without perceiving the widely different ways daughter's involvement with a sleezy, middle-aged gig- in which Sophocles and Euripides used a standard olo. Ophuls counterbalances Mrs. Harper's potential convention. HIs GIRL FRIDAY , as Pauline Kael points out for self-pity with a suggestion of her lack of self- in her recent articles on CITIZEN KANE, might not have awareness. At two key moments involving actions that been particularly original in changing the male reporter determine the film 's plot-her drive into Los Angeles of THE FRONT PAGE into a woman , thereby conforming to confront the gigolo and, later, her discovery of his to a by-then standard convention of constant antago- dead body on a beach near her house-she is shown nism between male-editor and female-reporter. But it's wearing dark glasses, an indication of a metaphorical precisely the rigorously developed subtext of HIS GIRL blindness, her inability to see either the motivations FRIDAY (a level of meaning Miss Kael rarely considers or the consequences of her actions. in any of her writing), combined with a brilliantly unclut- tered surface, that makes the film far superior to any- Like most other melodramas of the Forties, THE thing else in the newspaper-film genre . The similarities RECKLESS MOMENT uses deep-focus photography , but are not as important as the differences which give a in a slightly different way and to a far different purpose . film its distinctive set of meanings. A film like FLAMINGO ROAD (also 1949) in typical Forties style combines its deep focus with stark lighting effects During his three years of activity in Hollywood , Max and unusual camera angles creating an expression istic Ophuls-or Opuls, as he was known here-completely visual style. The style emphasizes the melodramatic accepted the forms and formulas of the American cine- nature of the drama, strengthening the conflicts be- ma. Although clearly the product of a unique sensibility , tween characters and the extravagance of their emo- Ophuls' American work is distinguished from the rest tions . THE RECKLESS MOMENT does the opposite : the flat , of his films by more than simply tne spelling of his name. even lighting of most of the film suggests a continuity Ophuls ' four American films can all be reasonably between foreground and background that minimizes described as genre works; his French films cannot. The the melodramatic conflicts, and the acting style is re- French films are full of shifts in mood , creating a surface strained. Ophuls uses the deep focus to contrast the complexity that makes them seem more immediately FILM COMMENT 65

vast, empty spaces surrounding Bennett's suburban James Mason 's first appearance in THE RECKLESS MO- home-the desolate beaches, the ocean-with the bus- tling, overpopulated quality of the urban settings-city MENT comes a third of the way into the film, his gently streets , bus stations, hotel lobbies. At one point in the film Bennett decides to apply for a loan in order to romantic European provides a necessary counter- payoff blackmailer Mason : as she sits in a large glass booth being questioned about her application for a loan , balance to Joan Bennett's coldly unemotional American we can see an entire family in another booth behind her, also filing for a loan, and, a little later; a man housewife. Mason's attraction to Bennett stems from entering a third booth , about to ask for a loan. Ophuls shows all these other characters not so much for atmo- a greater sense of self: he is able to see himself in sphere as to suggest a sense of life beyond Bennett's immediate drama, to show the larger society that she her, seeing beyond her situation to a common situation has cut herself off from by obsessively burying herself in the concerns of her family . Furthermore , Ophuls uses which gives him a distinctly fatalistic sensibility. \" We ' re this kind of composition to indicate both the universal and particular qualities of Bennett's situation (it 's im- all involved with each other, one way or another,\" he portant that it's a family in the booth behind her): while the specific needs for the loans differ, all the characters tells her. \" You have your family , I have my Nagel sitting in different booths find themselves locked into similar situations : isolated in tbeir needs, cut off from [Mason 's boss in the blackmailing operation]. \" Mason one another. also shows concern for Bennett in the way her family Ophuls also uses the deep-focus compositions to emphasize the objects surrounding the characters. Like does , but with the important difference that he displays LOLA MONTES, THE RECKLESS MOMENT abounds in images of entrapment: characters are constantly mov- both a sense of irony and real feeling : he buys her ing behind bars , cages , columns , furniture , and , in the last shot of the film , the balustrade of a staircase. The a cigarette holder to help cut down on smoking , a gift images of entrapment in THE RECKLESS MOMENT are more psychological than philosophical (the opposite of LOLA of tender and diffident concern that goes unnoticed MONTES): Mrs. Harper is trapped in behavioral patterns over which she has no control. Her behavior is obses- by Bennett. Whereas Bennett's sacrificial act for her sive , her actions determined more by the external ne- cessity of preserving the unity and proper appearance daughter at the beginning of the film is a repression of her family than by thought or personal feeling. Throughout the film she is constantly issuing orders of emotion , an attempt to conceal feelings by conceal- to her son , David, on how to dress and behave , but the orders are issued without any real concern for their ing a dead body, Mason 's sacrifice at the end of the specific meaning . At one point she says to him , \" Roll down your pants and .. .\" In a crucial pause she film becomes an expression of emotion , an act which searches for something to say, then adds, \" . . . button your jacket, David. \" Her hesitation makes the form of finally breaks through to a sense of self-awareness in the statement more important than its meaning , the show of concern more compelling than the concern the Bennett character and her first spontaneous show itself. of feeling in the film: she cries . While the Bennett character hardly seems the \"at- tractive and normally maternal California housewife\" THE RECKLESS MOMENT was the last film Ophuls was that a Newsweek critic in a pan of the film made her out to be , her behavior in the film does not represent to make in Hollywood. While his last four French films an isolated example. Not only does she express an overbearing concern for the well-being of each member gain in ease and lightness over his work in America , of her family, but they do the same to her, constantly asking where she has gone, why she has stayed out certain qualities are lost to his films after he left Holly- so late, advising her to eat more , get some rest, and so on. These repetitions of concern have a chorus-like wood . Class divisions and social structures are con- formality that finally seems to let the characters main- tain distance rather than allowing them to draw closer cepts more central to Ophuls' American films with to one another. There is never any display of genuine affection in the family : instead, spontaneous emotion contemporary subjects-CAUGHT and THE RECKLESS is repressed in formal behavior, and concern for others finally becomes a means of escaping oneself. The MOMENT-than his European period-pieces, which take isolated setting of Bennett's suburban home emerges as a metaphor for the isolation of individual characters, place largely among the aristocracy . There is also a and her trips into Los Angeles , locations teeming w ith other people , represent progressive stages in a journey significant difference in tone between his French and to self-awareness realized in an outburst of feeling . American films : comparison of the Vienna of LETTER The emotional focus of most woman 's pictures is appropriately on the heroine. Zachary Scott in MILDRED FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN with that of LA RONDE in- PIERCE (1945) and Scott and David Brian in FLAMINGO ROAD exist more as projections of Joan Crawford's dicates the extent and quality of the differences. The character than as characters in themselves . While city of LETTER , all filmed on a Hollywood backlot and in a studio , is assumed to be real in accordance with the prevailing Hollywood conventions ; LA RONDE'S Vien- na , also studio-made , is intentionally fake and takes great delight in its artifice. The tone of LETTER is appro- priately gloomy, as dark and somber as most of its settings ; LA RONDE, conversely , has a playfulness, a bubbling lightness and gaiety that, however, never undermines its ultimate seriousness . Strangely enough , Ophuls' French films emerge today as more immediately entertaining than his American ones. The unemotional quality of the Bennett character gives THE RECKLESS MOMENT the kind of cold , almost unpleasant quality which could lead the Times reviewer to call the film \" a feeble and listless drama, with a shamelessly callous attitude. \" THE RECKLESS MOMENT never has a trace of the lightly ironic humor and mixed moods that dominate Ophuls' French films ; instead , the mood is pursued with a ruthless consistency that gives the film an almost claustrophobic intensity. 11111111 THE RECKLESS MOMENT 1949, Columbia, 81 minutes. director Max Ophuls; producer Walter Wanger; screenplay Henry Garson and Robert W. Soderberg ; adaptation Mel Dinelli and Robert E. Kent; from the short story \"The Blank Wall\" by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding; photography Burnett Guffey; art director Cary Odell; editor Gene Havlick; music Hans Salter. CAST Martin Donnelly James Mason Lucia Harper Joan Bennett Beatrice Harper Geraldine Brooks Mr. Harper Henry O'Neill 66 SUMMER 1971

Madame MADAME DE. Vittor io de Sica De and Danielle Darrieu x. ph oto : Audio/ Brandon by Foster Hirsch MADAME DE. Foster Hirsch, who teaches English at Brooklyn center: College, has written for The New York Times and Film Danielie Darrieu x. Quarterly , as well as Film Comment. photo: Cinemabilia In the opening shot, Madame de is pOintedly situated MADAME DE. within a world of lavish material possessions: we see Jean Debucourt the riches of her closet-the innumerab,a gowns and and furs-even before we see her reflected in one of her Danielle Darrieux. many ornate mirrors. She chatters frivolously to herself: photo: Audio/Brandon can this charming, silly woman have any identity apart from her possessions? In the last scene of the film , FILM COMMENT 67 the slowly tracking camera moves through the dark, empty church until it rests before Madame de 's tomb- stone. Except for the grace of the camera movement, these two scenes seem to belong to two different worlds. It is a sign of Ophuls ' brilliance that he has managed to move his film with unshakable poise from the light, airy, high comic tone of that first scene to the dark, sombre quality of the finale . The film is propelled from light to dark , from social comedy to romantic tragedy , by subtle gradations in mood and perspective . In large part , Ophuls accom- plishes this transformation in sensibility by means of his justly celebrated camerawork . The flowing , swirling camera movement is the visual embodiment of the inevitable transience of that world of beauty and honor and refined sentiment through which his characters ceaselessly move . The film 's most famous set piece , the sequence of balls , is an archetypal instance of Ophuls' use of visual style to underscore theme . Ma- dame de and the Baron dance round and round the elegant ballrooms, their own movement both comple- mented and counterpointed by the gracefully enCirc li ng camera. As they dance from one ball to another , their feelings for each other deepen. This carousel of gaiety and awakened passion ends sombrely ; an attendant extinguishes the ballroom lights as Madame de and the Baron glide slowly through their final , solitary dance. The camera follows the servant in one continuous movement as he goes from light to light, and the scene ends in total eclipse when he puts a dark cover over a harp : the music has ceased , the ball is over , the lights are out. This remarkable sequence mirrors the film 's overall progress from frivolity to desolation ; the subtle way in which the ball sequence modulates from light to dark , from the birth of love to the symbolic extinction of ro- mance, traces , in e xquisite miniature , the general movement of the film . The interconnection of all things which is the film 's dominant theme receives its most striking visual em-

\"4' bod ime nt in that breathtaking dissolve in which the torn thinking which prompted Dumas fils to kill off his Camille pieces of Madame de's love letter melt into the snow of the following scene. The image suggests the con- and Sir Arthur Wing Pinero to do the same for the tinuum of human experience: summer flows into winter, frivolity deepens into passion , and passion becomes second Mrs . Tanqueray . All three stories contain the desolation . same preposterous implication that a once-frivolous Like that letter-become-snow, and like the swirl of movement at the ball , everything in the elegant fin-de- woman cannot quite transcend her past. Ophuls con- sifw/e world which Ophuls creates is in flu x; nothing is frozen within the frame , the moving camera seems ceals the sentimental cliche by giving the film its shim- to animate all objects within its range . That fluid move- ment, with its implications of underlying restlessness , mering, sensuous surface. Lou ise de Vilmorin 's novella betokens the evanescence of the characters' emotions and of their wordly society. on which the film is based is set in 1938; on film , any The sense of the relentless forward movement of suggestion of contemporary decor-or, for that matter, time against which the events of the film are enacted is suggested not only by the craning , tracking camera , of contemporary sensibility, would cruelly expose the but also by the bris k pace at which the story is told . Ophuls ' ex position is exceedingly economical : consid- story's sappy conception. Ophuls wisely substitutes for er , for instance , that efficient sequence in which Ophuls relates the history of the general 's mistress in Constan- Madame de Vilmorin 's modern setting and austere, tinople ; with a few shots, he tells us about her gambling excesses and her sale of the earrings, and at the same tight-lipped prose style the sumptuous fin-de-siecle time he creates a vividly atmospheric backdrop. Ophuls' atmosphere is lush and heavy throughout the film , but milieu which serves as a cushion for his lush-and yet his narrative technique is lean: there isn 't a gratu itous shot or movement. The characters are caught up in precise-romantic sensibility. the restless flow of events ; they are actors in a drama which they are powerless to control. This feeling of Ophuls needs those sweeping staircases, those in- the rush of events in time is also palpably rendered near the end of the film in the speed with which the numerable gilt-edged mirrors, those vast spaces of the duel is provoked and fought: the characters are victims of some external force-chance, fate, time-which pro- General 's palatial residence, those resplendent pels them toward destruction. ballrooms with their magnificently caparisoned figures , The quick development of the characters' senti- ments matches the rush of external events. Madame in order to blunt the mawkish conception of a woman de evolves from a shallow young thing into a passionate woman who dies from the loss of love. (The transition who dies for love . He needs his elegant milieu to explain is made believable , of course , by the subtle perform- ance of Danielle Darrieu x, the most charming of ac- his characters ' sensibility. The refinement of his char- tresses .) The General and the Baron also undergo changes. Because of their adherence to a code of acters' emotions, the formality with which the marriage honor, however, the men are less vulnerable than Ma- dame de. It is because she disobeys the soc ial code of the General and Madame de is conducted , the gen- that Madame de loses the Baron 's love. Unlike the men, she places love above honor, and she lies to the Baron tlemanly code of honor which governs their existence- about the earrings . The Baron's world is regulated by a more severe code than Madame de 's, and he in- these would seem outrageous in an earthier conte xt. terprets her casual lie as an indication that she does not really love him. Ophuls earnestly believes in these aristocratic char- Like the characters, the earrings too are subject to acters and their social forms ; he betieves in this world the universal flux . At first, Madame de is anxious to sell the earrings-she cares for them least of her pos- in much the same way that Henry James believes in sessions. When , by chance, the Baron buys the ear- rings and gives them to her, the earrings become for the world of his leisured sophisticates, for whom calling her a symbol of their love , and she is willing to risk scandal in order to be able to wear them . cards and afternoon teas and discriminating percep- The basic ingredients of the narrative-the catalytic tions define the limits of existence. But Ophuls, like importance of the earrings, the coincidental passage of the earrings from Madame de to the jeweler to the James, looks at his aristocrats with a kind of sympa- husband to the mistress to the Baron and then back again to Madame de, the chance meeting which brings thetic detachment. An almost puritanical disapproval the Baron and Madame de together, the failure of love which leads to death-are all frankly melodramatic. One of the splendid surface of this world competes with of the pleasures the film affords , in fact , is derived from Ophuls' ability to fashion sentimental , and even rather his nostalgic attraction to it. And it is this combination foolish, material into a context which makes the im- probable coincidences and the death of Madame de of attraction and disapproval which provides the dis- seem not only inevitable but tragic . And th is is quite an accomplishment, when we consider that the tance necessary to undercut the flamboyant emotion heroine 's death represents the same level of moralistic and the Dumas-fils mentality. Ophuls' paradoxical atti- tude provides the proper emotional temperature. Wise- ly , Ophuls doesn 't try to approach the sentimentality with overheated romanticism , nor does he try to under- cut it with Brechtian distancing. He achieves exactly the right balance between emotion and understatement, and it is a very fragile matter: too much passion and the film becomes ludicrous, too much detachment and the film becomes a satire . The beautifully poised balance of MADAME DE partici- pates with the swirling images and the taut pacing in seamlessly linking the film 's light and dark strains, its social comedy and its tragedy of failed romance. Ophuls' famed style-his tone, his camera movement, his pacing-resolves the film 's potentially contradictory tensions , and it is this immanent sense of resolution which is the final measure of the film 's incomparable grace . 11111111 MADAME DE 1953, Gaumont, 105 minutes. director Max Ophuls ; screenpla y Marcel Achard , Max Ophuls and Annette Wademant; from the novel by Louise de Vilmorin ; photography Christian Matras; music Oscar Strauss and Georges Van Parys. CAST Louise (Madame de) Danielle Darrieux Andre (The General) Charles Boyer Baron Donati Vittorio de Sica Jeweler Jean Debucourt The General 's Mistress Lea de Leo Nurse Mareille Pierrey 68 SUMMER 1971

ARTFORUM I•n September... Special Issue on Film ARTFORUM for September 1971 will be a special issue entirely devoted to film . It will, through presentation of largely cu rrent work, bring to the attention of the visually sophisticated ARTFORUM audience the fact that the work and preoccupations of film makers and of artists involved in sculpture, painting, environmental projects and performance, are in a process of convergence. Through critical texts, interviews and ample documentary material , ARTFORUM will make clear that ignoring the importance of this convergence would be tantamount to having ignored the revolutionary potential of American painting as it was developing in the late forties and fifties . To that more general public preoccupied with the development of film here and abroad, it will provide perspective on the growth of an American cinematic avant garde and its roots in the visual arts of our time. Like the special issues on Surrealism and the New York School , The September ARTFORUM will become a landmark reference work on this historically important development. Advertisers can reserve space (before August 1st) by contacting Paul Shanley, ARTFORUM Advertising, 29 East 61 Street, New York 10021 . (212) 421-2659 Subscribe Now Please enter my subscription for Mail to: o one year $15 o two years $25 o three years $35 ARTFORUM, P.O. Box 664 Namlee_______________________________________ Des Moines, Iowa 50303 Street______________________________________ City and State:________________________Zip,____ $,~_ _ Enclosed Deduct $1.00 for payment now.

- PAYNE FUND STUDIES OF MOTION PICTURES He has published articles in The Journal of Popular AND SOCIAL VALUES Culture, The Canadian Review of American Studies, and American Quarterly. Published by Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970 An important, but neglected aspect of American MOVIES AND CONDUCT (1933) social and film history is the controversy which raged BY HERBERT BLUMER in this country during the period roughly between 1907 Hardcover, $9.00: 280 pages. and 1940 regarding the \" problem of the movies\" and their effect on American life . There is a rich primary MOVIES, DELINQUENCY, AND CRIME (1933) literature available , as yet untapped, which lends BY HERBERT BLUMER , and PHILIP M . HAUSER graphic credance to the existence of the deep-seated Hardcover, $7 .50; 254 pages. fear then prevalent that the 'movies' were responsible MOTION PICTURES AND YOUTH (1933) for everything from juvenile delinquency to the spread BY W . W. CHARTERS of socialist doctrine. One can scarcely open a magazine Hardcover, $4 .00 ; 78 pages. published during the twenties and thirties without find- CHILDREN'S ATTENDANCE AT MOTION PICTURES (1935) ing an article or letter attacking , or in some cases BY EDGAR DALE defending , the motion picture and its 'stars. ' Also the THE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES OF CHILDREN TO more specialized publications in the field of social THE MOTION PICTURE SITUATION (1933) welfare, city management, religion , psychology, sociol- BY WENDELL S. DYSINGER and ogy , and criminology all evinced the professionals' CHRISTIAN A. RUCKMICK concern with the role that the motion picture played Two titles in one volume: Hardcover, $7.00 ; 240 in American life. With literally thousands of such articles pages. to choose from they range widely in quality and bias , THE CONTENT OF MOTION PICTURES (1935) yet a close examination soon reveals that the majority BY EDGAR DALE lack objectivity entirely and tend towards personal and Hardcover, $7 .50 ; 256 pages . highly subjective speculation on the topic of the 'ef- HOW TO APPRECIATE MOTION PICTURES fects ' of the motion picture. (1937) BY EDGAR DALE Not all of these articles , nor a great number of books Hardcover, $8 .50 ; 262 pages. on the same subject, should be lightly dismissed . As OUR MOVIE MADE CHILDREN (1935) early as 1916' attempts were being made to \" scientif- BY HENRY JAMES FORMAN ically\" assess the importance of the motion picture, Hardcover $9 .00 ; 304 pages. and to sociologically map out the interrelationship be- GETTING IDEAS FROM THE MOVIES (1933) tween audiences, the new entertainment form and BY PERRY W. HOLADAY and GEORGE social behaviour and attitudes .' D. STODDARD Hardcover $4 .00 ; 116 pages . The reason for this great concern lies in the dramatic MOTION PICTURES AND STANDARDS OF growth of the motion picture as an entertainment form . MORALITY (1933) Starting from absolute scratch in 1896, the motion BY CHARLES C. PETERS picture had already become by 1906 the greatest paid Hardcover, $9 .00 ; 290 pages. attendance entertainment form in the history of man- MOTION PICTURES AND THE SOCIAL kind . This growth was so sudden , so slipshod in organi- ATTITUDES OF CHILDREN (1933) zational development, so overwhelming in its appeal BY RUTH C. PETERSON and L . L . THURSTONE to millions of Americans , that it was almost impossible THE SOCIAL CONDUCT AND ATTITUDES OF to ask it to stand still long enough to assess what MOVIE FANS (1933) changes it had made in the social fabric of American BY FRANK K. SHUTTLEWORTH and MARK life. With greater industry organization and more for- A . MAY malized marketing procedures after 1909, the new Two titles in one volume: Hardcover, $8.00; 248 phenomenon was thrust under the public microscope and minutely examined in order to determine the rea- pages. sons for its great popularity. It was also obvious that CHILDREN'S SLEEP (1933) any activity which occupied so much leisure time and BY SAMUEL RENSHAW, VERNON L. MILLER and mental energy was bound to have some effect on the DOROTHY P. MARQUIS American people. For over thirty years this examination Hardcover, $10 .00 ; 278 pages. would continue and , in turn , some of the greatest minds in the world would be drawn into the resulting con- REVIEWED BY GARTH S. JOWETT troversies . Garth Jowett is writing his Ph .D. dissertation at the Although work still continues today in attempting to University of Pennsylvania , where he is also teaching. assess the impact and effects of mass media in general , for all intents and purposes the culmination of the search for the \"effects of the movies\" was reached in the 1930's with the publication of the series of studies under the umbrella title of ' 'Motion Pictures and Youth, \" known as the Payne Fund Studies . These thirteen stUd- ies were published between 1933 and 1936 and still form the most concentrated and important investigation ever made on the subject. This study was the brainchild of the Reverend Wil- liam H. Short, the Director of the Motion Picture Re- search Council , who was interested in \" the vast influ- ence of the motion picture in shaping attitudes and ' Ray Leroy Short , A Social Study of the Motion Picture. Unpublished Master's Thesis, 1916. Iowa State University. 70 SUMMER 1971

social values ,\" 2 and who \" succeeded in interesting the Picture Commission .) Payne Fund , a foundation devoted to the welfare of There is some unsubstantiated evidence that Rever- youth , in financing a nation-wide research into the degrees of influence and effect of films upon children end Short did intend the Studies to form the bulwark and youth .\" 3 The task of actual investigation was given of an attack upon the industry that would result in some to a group of social scientists-psychologists, sociolo- form of organized control.' (Short had previously been gists, and educators-who were under the general the author of a number of articles critical of the movies .) direction of Dr . W. W . Charters of Ohio State University . Perhaps greater circumstantial evidence is provided The actual field research was conducted over the by the appearance of a volume entitled Our Movie Made four-year period from 1929 to 1933, and the first volume Children (1933), by Henry James Forman , which was was published in 1933. a \"popular account\" of the findings conta ined in the thirteen studies, written by a journalist with a decided The initial purpose of such a unique and immense flair for the dramatic and a definite point which he was research undertaking was \" the development of a na- intent on making clear-that the motion picture industry tional policy concerning motion pictures.\" Later this needed outside regulation . was amended to \"provide a broader understanding of the total effect at home and abroad of motion pictures .\" Throughout Forman's book the emphasis is placed However, the foreign investigations were dropped be- on those findings in the Studies , and from earlier stud- cause the investigators felt that they were not equipped ies, that indicate the harmful effects derived from to handle this aspect, and the studies were then de- attendance at the movies. The author continually plays signed \"to provide data for answering completely or on the fact that the majority of American films have in part a wide range of separate queries\" relating to as their central theme \" Love \" or \" Sex \" or \" Crime\" the effects of motion pictures on the youth of America. or combinations of these . He also notes that \" social goals\" of a desirable nature are ignored while less The limitations of space prevent a detailed summary desirable social characteristics (such as \"illicit love \" ) of the findings of each of these studies , and in any are played up. This volume must not be confused with case the significant conclusions were conveniently hundreds of similar volumes which appeared before summarized in the volume entitled Motion Pictures and and since, for, although not one of the original Studies, Youth , by Professor Charters . In discussing the overall it was prepared with the full co-operation and backing plan of the studies, Charters developed a formula , of Dr. Charters and The Motion Picture Research which in simplified form stated : Council. Given the weight of this authority the book received a wide and on the whole favorable reception . It General Influence x Content x Attendance = Total was reprinted at least four times , received reviews in major literary and popular magazines and was widely Influence discussed in the newspapers (where its reception was much cooler-newspapers had to worry about shrinking To arrive at this formula Charters reasoned that, \" if advertising revenue in mid-Depression). It was unfortu- the content is known and the number of visits of chil- nate that the publicity received by Forman 's book obs- dren has been computed , the total influence of the cured the important findings of the Studies themselves. pictures will be in general a product of these three This fact was not lost on many social scientists , and factors.\" The formula as thus computed is subject to reviews in the professional journals were able to distin- much criticism and it was never fully applied in the guish between the scientific work and Forman's attempt final assessment, but the individual studies were there- \" to select only those features of the reports which give fore designed to measure the effect of motion pictures grounds for mass movement to reform the movies.\" , as such upon children , and to study the content of current attractions and children's attendance at com- The publication of Forman 's volume signaled only mercial movie theaters. that the battle had begun, and eventually the \" answer\" to the findings of the Payne Fund Studies came from The results made known in their published form a rather unexpected source in the form of Professor provided few surprises but did lend 'scientific ' weight Mortimer Adler, the noted neo-Aristotelian philosopher, to many of the claims and counter-claims that had been who in his book Art and Prudence (1937) used the made in the past. They also destroyed, although not Payne Fund Studies to demonstrate his argument that with any finality, many of the myths that had sprung \"scientists\" should not, and cannot, really judge the up regarding the massive and overwhelming role of moral or political consequences of an art form such the movies as a cause of juvenile delinquency. Unfortu- as the motion picture undoubtedly is. Adler's massive nately many of the findings are contradictory and am- critique is ponderous and yet contains glimmers of truth biguous and are open to different interpretations de- in its rather stolid pages . Unfortunately the critique is pending on the pre-conceived bias. There is however marred by Adler 's obsessive desire to inflict upon all no denying that overall the studies had a somewhat scientists the philosophic teachings of St. Thomas hostile attitude toward the current motion picture in- Aquinas as the model to follow, and his unmistakeable dustry and its socializing role in American life . It is bias against all social scientists makes him an eminently difficult to determine if the Motion Picture Research unfair judge of this type of research . In many ways Council had deliberately set out with a desire to set Adler shows himself to be ignorant of the workings of the stage for the imposition of \" industry guidelines,\" fields such as psychology and sociology and he resorts but it does seem highly likely that this was the case . Throughout the twenties there had been increasing ' In a personal letter to this author, Professor Mark A . May, one public clamour for more respectability in the movies , of the original researc hers invol ved , and the author together w ith and the Hays Office was hard pressed to defend the Frank K. Shuttleworth of The Social Condu ct and Attitudes o f Movie industry and prevent the imposition of Federal cen- Fans, stated : \" There was time ... when Mr. Sh o rt ... threatened sorship. (Among the more interesting of these were to withhold my study from publication.\" (The Study was not strongly the Hearings held before the Committee on Education, enough against the industry.) Ma y continued , \" That man , ... w as House of Representatives, April-May , 1926. See H.R. really out to damn the movies straight away to hell! \" (Letter dated 4094 and H.R . 6233-Bills to create a Federal Motion November 5th , 1970 .) ' Henry James Forman , Our Movie Made Children, (N.Y ., 1933) , ' Kimball Young , \" Revi ew of the Payne Fund Stud ies \" in the Americ an page 4. Journal of Soc iology, September, 1935. ' Ibid., page 4 . FILM COMMENT 71

to personal and abusive attacks on the authors of the Entitled \" Authoritative Statements Concerning the Studies. One reviewer of Adler's book was forced to Screen and Behaviour\" it is a twenty-six page compila- conclude , \"( It is) difficult to believe that his criticisms tion by the M.P.P.D.A. of statements which refute all were not motivated by personal animosity and vindic- claims which link motion pictures with socially deviant tiveness .\"· behaviour. Unfortunately this document has no issuing date on it, but most of the statements reprinted are So difficult were Adler's arguments to follow by the from the period 1933-34, so this date can be assumed. untrained philosopher, and so impressed was the in- The introduction is a mild attack on the Motion Picture dustry with the \" massiveness\" and prestige of Adler's Research Council for fostering data detrimental to the attack, that Raymond Moley, formerly Assistant Secre- movies. As a counter-measure this document offers a tary of State in F.D.R .' s cabinet, was asked by repre- series of statements taken from newspaper editorials, sentatives of the motion picture industry to write a brief, reviews, research studies and other comments which comprehensible book outlining Adler's thinking . This are \" contributing constructive criticism to the better- slim volume appeared in 1938 under the title Are We ment of the screen .\" l> It is presumed that this document Movie Made?-an obvious attempt to cash in on For- was widely circulated to interested groups. The publi- man 's title . Moley's work proved to be a faithful distilla- cation of Moley's book in 1938 was the last big salvo tion of the main thrust of Adler's argument with much fired in this battle , for the coming of the War , and then of the philosophic undergrowth removed. the excitement over the arrival of television obscured the furor surrounding the movies. Today the fears about That the motion picture industry must have been media socialization have all been transferred to televi- disturbed by the published findings of the Payne Fund sion, while the motion picture has been allowed to Studies , and particularly by Forman's book is patently develop along its own, less restricted path . obvious. Unfortunately much of what went on was behind closed doors and the information has never In spite of Adler's attack , the Payne Fund Studies been made public. We do know one major reaction , should still be considered important today, although because in a later book , The Hays Office, Raymond the ''scientific \" validity of some of the individual Studies Moley gave us a glimmer of the consternation caused is still somewhat suspect. It is unfortunate that they by Forman 's book. have been neglected (as has the whole aspect of the social influence of the motion picture in American life) , Hays accurately foresaw the uncritical reviews, the for they are a rich source of material for those interested denunciatory speeches and the clicking of tongues that in the history and content of American films prior to would follow its (Our Movie Made Children) publication. 1930. Reading through all of the thirteen studies would He knew that in the long run only the analysis of experts not be recommended to any but the most ardent schol- could dispel the myth of the book 's scientific basis. ar, but all interested in any phase of motion picture history would benefit from any examination of the But the imminance of the uproar, combined with series. (Note: One of the studies, Boys, Movies and the fact that letters complaining of particular movies City Streets, by P. Cressey and F. M. Thrasher was were coming into the Hays Office by the hundreds, apparently never published although summaries of the provided the immediate excuse for the summoning of the M.P.P.D.A. (Motion Picture Producers and Distribu- main findings are discussed in Motion Pictures and tors Association) Board of Directors in extraordinary Youth, by Charters and the popular summary by For- s e s s i o n .' man.) Moley then relates what took place in Hays Office Some of the studies are more valuable than others, on the fateful day of March 6th, 1933 when during an and those of particular interest to film historians are all-night session \" the Magna Carta\" of the industry was Movies and Conduct, by Herbert Blumer; Children 's signed by the industry 's leaders and which was \" a Attendance at Motion Pictures, by Edgar Dale ; The reaffirmation of their responsibility to the patrons of Content of Motion Pictures, by Edgar Dale; The Social their business. \"· The Production Code' which was Conduct and Attitudes of Movie Fans, by F. K. Shuttle- agreed upon that night was to last for over twenty-five worth and Mark A. May; and of course the volumes years and placed an artistic \" clamp\" on American films, by Charters and Forman. the effects of which are still felt today. These studies provide information that is virtually Exactly how much influence the Payne Fund Studies unobtainable elsewhere. The entire series of Studies had in forcing self-regulation on the industry is impossi- should be available on the shelves of every university ble to estimate, although their catalytic action must now offering courses in film study. Their availability as part be considered as a major factor. It is a fact that their of the reprint series \" The Literature of the Cinema\" findings were being used by the proponents of the packaged by Arno Press represents a major move Neeley-Pettengill bill in 1936 as the spearhead of their forward in film scholarship , and should do much to bring attack upon the industry before the Interstate Com- about the belated development of film studies which merce Committee of the House' o examine the important subject of the social impact of the motion picture. An interesting document exists in the Museum of Modern Art Film Library clipping files which attests to MOVIES AND SOCIETY hardcover, the industry's fear of the Payne Fund Studies' findings. BY IAN C . JARVIE Basic Books , Inc., New York , 1970; ' Paul G. Cressey , \" A Study in Practical Philosophy,\" in the Journal $10 .00; 394 pages; Bibliography. of Higher Education, June, 1935. REVIEWED BY GARTH JOWETT ' Raymond Maley, The Hays Office, (N.Y. 1945), page 78 . In a year when film books became a glut on the ' Ibid, page 78 . market. and the scholar / fan was hard-pressed to keep ' While the actual Production Code had been worked out and accept- ed by the Directors of the M .P.P.D.A . on March 31 st, 1930, and \" Authoritative Statements Concerning the Screen and Behaviour, ratified on June 6th, the truth of the matter was that it was not document issued by the M.P.P.D.A. in the files of the Museum enforceable, and \"bad\" pictures continued to flow from Hollywood . of Modern Art Film Library . The true strength of the Code stems directly from the reaffirmation agreement signed amid the uproar caused by the imminent publica- tion of Forman 's book and the subsequent momentous campaign by the Catholic Legion of Decency for cleaner films . \" Ibid., page 87 . 72 SUMMER 1971

up with the latest item from the publishers , this book The section on the sociology of the audience is the by Professor Ian C. Jarvie might be overlooked . If this least successful. Perhaps the lack of really meaningful should happen then it would be most unfortunate in- data does much to explain the author's difficulty in deed, for in this impressive scholastic work lies a key arriving at any new synthesis. This absence of primary with which to open many new and exciting doors in source data , particularly of a quantitative nature , is one film scholarship. This book deserves to be read , digest- of the great mysteries of film scholarship and a definite ed and even criticized by all film scholars, ('fans ' may hinderance to the furtherance of film research , as find it rather hard going ,) if only for the approach taken Jarvie's own problems indicate. The chapter on West- to the basic subject matter. Somehow it is inconceivable ern and Ganster films in the section on the sociology that this subject has been neglected up until now, but and nature of the film ex perience is masterful and it has . .The author correctly comments in introducing contains many unique insights into the continued pop- his work that the previous attempts to devise a \" sociol- ularity of these two genres of popular culture. ogy of the cinema\" have failed , mainly because they were not about the sociology of the cinema, but con- The final section on the sociology of evaluation , (i.e . cerned themselves with analyses of audiences, film criticism) is the one most likely to raise the ire of those content or the emergence and decline of specific critics who will see here the spectre of a pseudo- genres. This then can be considered the first major science impinging on their own aesthetic bailiwick and work that systematically examines all aspects of the react accordingly. Actually the author takes care not cinema as a social institution , and thus earns a distinc- to offend on the personal level, but he correctly takes tive place of honour in the academic disciplines of exception to the overwhelming tendency toward 'elitist' sociology and cinema studies. It is hoped that Professor film criticism . He favours a more functional ist approach, Jarvie 's book will start a much needed trend in the one that starts with the pre'mise that the cinema serves direction of a closer examination of the motion picture a useful social purpose , and that almost all films are as a social and cultural force . created (manufactured?) with this objective in mind . There are sure to be valid quarrels with this viewpoint, The strength of the book lies in the analytic structure but in the end it can only lead to a healthier state for the author has chosen to deal with his topic. (Note: all schools of film criticism . The British title of this book is Toward a Sociology of the Cinema-a far more accurate indication of the aim One of the most valuable aspects of the book is and scope of the book, but perhaps too pretentious the tremendous annotated bibliography of one hundred for American standards .) Jarvie 's primary objective is and thirty-seven pages that it contains. This lists almost to examine the cinema as a social institution . In sociolog- every important book, article and pamphlet worthy of ical terms the central aspects of social institutions recognition by film scholars , and is an indication of are the functions they perform and the structures that the obvious sincerity and intense scholarship with carry out these functions. It is this framework around which the book was prepared. Although the annotations which the author has constructed his analysis. Basically are quite personal they are also astute, and make this there are four divisions readily discernible in the institu- magnificent bibliography almost worthy of the book's tional structure of the cinema: Industry; Audience; Ex- price alone. perience; and Evaluation . Each of these divisions has been examined before, particularly the last, but never One final note: This book should be must reading have they been analyzed so systematically or wholis- in any course of studies dealing with film and society. tically. This multi-faceted examination of 'film and soci- However, the publishers could perform a valuable ser- ety ' while not the definitive work on the subject, is a vice and make the book immensely more useful as a worthy goal for others to aim at in subsequent studies . teaching tool if they bring out an inexpensive student edition as soon as possible . In the section on the Industry, the author examines the creative interaction necessary to produce a motion .THE FILMS OF ROBERT BRESSON picture, and vividly illustrates the absurdity of any con- EDITED BY IAN CAMERON cept that visualizes the finished 'motion picture as the Praeger, New York, 1970; hardcover, $4.95; soft- product of but one individual , i.e. the director. Complex- cover, $2 .50 ; 144 pages , illustrated. ity of organization seems to be no real barrier, but in fact it can even be a help, especially in the commer- REVIEWED BY ANDREE HAYUM cially-oriented world of American film making . The complex infrastructure can act as a guarantor of com- Andree Hayum is a professor of art history and film petent adequacy for a finished product with wide popu- at Fordham University at Lincoln Center. lar appeal, and substantial economic benefits. Jarvie's own reasons for the great success and popularity of The Films of Robert Bresson , edited by Ian Cameron, Hollywood films are bound to meet with some opposi- was published by Praeger Press in 1970 and forms tion , for he sees in the industry 's financial orientation part of their series on directors. These moderately a strong motivation to present the best in technical priced volumes , available in both hard cover and pa- perfection and an incentive to produce films far superior perback, are handsomely designed, combining text with to those found in any other country . There is no doubt stills from the films. There are eleven essays-two on that whatever the basic motivation , in its heyday, these LE JOURNAL D' UN CURE DE CAMPAGNE , one on each of slickly produced offerings were the major source of the other films including the latest, UNE FEMME DOUCE , entertainment for two generations of people throughout and a general introductory essay. Also included are the world. The author's use of the few case studies a filmography, a bibliography, and a short interview with available on film making (Lilian Ross ' Picture; Dore Bresson on LE PROCES DE JEANNE D ' ARC . While the Schary 's Case History of a Movie; etc. ,) in this section monograph hardly represents an exhaustive treatment puts these interesting, but previously fragmented docu- of Bresson's works, it is aptly timed , for 1969-1970 ments into a new and more valuable perspective, and marked the occasion of the first retrospective of Bres- should do much to cause their re-evaluation in other son 's films at the Museum of Modern Art, the inclusion than anecdotal terms. of his first color film in the New York Film Festival , and the more· frequent commercial showings of his films, at least in the New York area. Amedee Ayfre's introductory essay, \" The Universe FILM COMMENT 73

of Robert Bresson ,\" was originally published in France doctrine, and ritual are perverted and profaned . The in 1964, the same year as Susan Sontag 's essay , \" The donkey, Balthazar, is baptized ; the marriage ceremony Spiritual Style of Robert Bresson\" (not included in this in UN FEMME DOUCE is civil ; both Mouchette and the collection) appeared in the U.S . At that time , both heroine of UN FEMME DOUCE commit suicide . At the writers attempted to plot out the general characteristics beginning of UNE FEMME DOUCE the heroine tries to pawn of Bresson 's style, thereby serving to familiarize a a crucifi x . In AU HAZARD , BALTHAZAR one is caught by largely untutored reading audience. Sontag tackles this surprise when the lovely voices heard Singing in the through discussion of recurring themes, charac- church choir turn out to belong to the evil Gerard and terization of the aesthetic atmosphere of the films, and the darkly clothed members of his gang . comparison of Bresson with other artists, notably Coc- teau . She supports her generalizations by referring to Of Bresson's nine films, four are based on fictional individual films , including specific sequences and single writings, two on written , historical accounts. Thus, the shots. artist's choice of source and his mode of adaptation are important areas which could shed further light on Amedee Ayfre , instead, structures his essay accord- his style and its development. Especially since it is ing to four categories which subsume the films under through the written and spoken word that Bresson their headings, for instance, \" abstraction and reality\" forges a link between what are usually considered or \" loneliness and commun ication .\" Although there are problems of form and those of meaning. The only essay some interesting comments, such as a comparison to concentrate on the relationship of te xt to film is Andre between Bresson 's style and Cubist aesthetics, a sense Bazin 's \" Le Journal d 'un Cure de Campagne .\" Bazin of vagueness results from the lack of trenchant analysis describes Bresson's use of literature as a \" fact \" for of any single work, and the total disregard for the fact his film form. Bresson does not visually interpret the that the works he is dealing with are films rather than written word, but rather creates a dynamic flow of short stories or novels. images and sounds with the te xt as a scaffold . Important here is Bresson's way of instructing his actors to deliver This brings me to a criticism of most of the essays lines by merely \" saying \" them . Bazin notices that this in the book ; they usually fail to give the reader an idea kind of delivery has a different effect from one which of what the films look like. The most obvious offender emphasizes expression. But he could more precisely is Phil Hardy who , while mentioning that UNE FEMME characterize its mesmerizing nature , one which causes DOUCE is in color , never attempts to describe Bresson 's the perceiver to respond to the abstract rhythm of its use of color . Charles Barr, in his essay on MOUCHETTE , sound apart from its meaning. succeeds in evoking Mouchette ' s personality and sen- sitively describes the film's narrative details; but such Since Bresson's use of te xt for film is bound up with description can and should be reinforced by attention basic aesthetic issues such as the relationship of image to formal properties. He could have mentioned the to sound , film as linear and rhythmic unfolding , and strong contrasts of light and dark in this film , and the modulation between concrete fact and abstraction , it abrupt cuts wh ich cause shots to seem jammed onto is not surprising that the styles of his films taken from the screen . For these characteristics help to effect the atmosphere of the rough , rugged, hostile world Barr texts and those which are not are closely related. Thus describes. So too , it should be noticed that the extreme Daniel Millar's essay on PICKPOCKET, one of the films close-ups of landscape, with leaves and branches filling unrelated to a text, could tie more descriptive of the the frontal plane, give the viewer an aesthetic equiva- film 's narrative form. For instance, in my view, the use lent for the dense, unresilient environment that sur- of \" interior monologue \" in PICKPOCKET and other films rounds Mouchette and stunts any potential for her by Bresson , has several interesting effects . In most spiritual growth. sound films the visuals bear the burden of being con- tainers for the dialogue. \" Interior monologue\" liberates To concentrate on form seems essential when con- the visuals since it runs parallel to them and we can fronted with the exquisite control of composition of contemplate them in a particularly intense way . For this single shots, the rhythmic succession of images, and reason , some of the remarkable pickpocketing se- the modeling of sound track in all of Bresson 's films. quences resonate in our visual memories. Moreover, But this in no way negates the fact that emphasis should while the \" interior monologue \" is in the past tense , also be placed on the significance of these works. Here, (Bresson does not make use of the flashback , so far some of the essays fall short as well. Raymond Durgnat as I can recall , until UNE FEMME DOUCE) , the visuals writes about LES ANGES DE PECHE and LE JOURNAL D ' UN accompanying the \" interior monologue\" demonstrate CURE DE CAMPAGNE and is satisfied with presenting a it in a visual present tense . Thus past and present are plot synopsis which seems fitting for an opera program . linked in an inevitable unity and traditional dramatic Daniel Millar, in discussing LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOUL- suspense is undercut. The existing suspense involves OGNE , engages in a kind of \" structural \" iconography anticipating images and sounds as they move towards which remains at a primitive level. He mentions Bres- a solution. son's use of \" documents,\" \" flowers,\" \" animals,\" and other groups of objects , in this and other films . Not I have reserved for last, mention of Leo Murray's that this is wrong , but such an arithmetical approach two essays on UN CONDAMNE A MORT S' EST ECHAPPE and to interpretation hardly does justice to the overall sig- LE PROCES DE JEANNE D 'ARC , which seem to me the finest nificance of a single film and the way in which objects , in the book . Murray 's choice of these two films is events, characters, and themes enrich and elucidate interesting since they both rely on historical accounts one another in Bresson 's filmic output as a whole . for their sources. Murray describes images, sequences, sounds, use of music , with impeccable care. He com- I feel , for instance, that in analyzing the last three bines obvious sensitivity for the medium with a delicate films , AU HASARD , BALTHAZAR , MOUCHETTE , and UNE FEMME understanding for the context and meaning of Bres- DOUCE , particularly in contrast to earlier films like LES son 's world . This kind of careful and patient scrutiny of the works and lucid description of them is the most ANGES DU PECHE , LE JOURNAL D ' UN CURE DE CAMPAGNE , appropriate way a critic can reveal his admiration for an artist; and in the case of Bresson , such writing is and UN CONDAMNE A MORT S 'EST ECHAPPE, it is important particularly effective since it evokes an equivalent to to point out that general moral and spiritual disintegra- the director's own filmic style. tion is punctuated by Bresson with references to a deteriorating Catholic world, where Catholic values, 74 SUMMER 1971

In the book 's lead essay , Amedee Ayfre suggests is a competent brief introduction to Eisenstein 's art and that criticism which puts value on the auteur above thought. Chapter 3 is an interesting but inconclusive all sometimes distorts and exaggerates its case , but discussion of cinema as a system of signs . Chapter that in dealing with Bresson , it \" is the pure and simple 2, a correlation of the auteur theory with structuralist truth. \" The title of his essay- \" The Universe of Robert methods , is the section with teeth and , by any estimate , Bresson\" -reflects Ayfre's conviction that Bresson 's the most ambitious and important. impact as an artist arises not only from a given film but from the coherence of his total oeuvre. The equation central to Chapter 2 is that between That this is the case, indeed , raises a fundamental myth and cinema, or more precisely, between the question about the conception behind the organization proper analysis of myths and the proper analysis of of this volume and whether it suitably fulfills the task films . It is a structuralist axiom that myth does not of characterizing an artistic personality like Bresson. depend upon style or syntax. Wollen quotes Levi- For its eleven essays are written by seven different Strauss : \" Its substance does not lie in its style , its writers , a factor which brings to mind an early formula- original music , or its synta x, but in the story which it tion by the Gestalt psychologist, Von Ehrenfels . De- tells. Myth is language , functioning on an especially scribing what he noticed to be a primary aspect of high level where meaning succeeds practically at 'tak- cognition , he said that if twelve people are each provid- ing off' from the linguistic ground on which it keeps ed with one note of a twelve-note melody, the knowl- rolling. \" (Structural Anthropology, page 206) Applying edge possessed will necessarily be of a different order this formula to cinema, Wollen rejects style as the from that where one person knows the whole twelve- unifying element in a director's work , or as itself a note phrase. Thus too , the characterization of Bres- repository of meaning. He proposes instead that a son 's artistic career wou Id be more effectively ach ieved director's career be analyzed in terms of \" a core of if it were treated by one critic who , by virtue of being repeated motifs,\" as folk-tales and myths are analyzed ; the single perceiver, would be forced, not only to ana- this means analysis in terms of story , or more specifi- lyze each film , but to draw relationships between them cally, the structures of stories. To illustrate his method , and reveal their development. Wollen discusses the work of two directors, Howard Hawks and John Ford. This lengthy section , moreover, Regrettably, the motives underlying such a poly- takes the Wollenian method beyond explication and authored monograph , not unusual these days for film into evaluation : \" My own view is that Ford 's work is books , would seem to be other than intellectual , for much richer than that of Hawks and that this is revealed this arrangement facilitates relatively rapid publication by a structural analysis; it is the richness of the shifting and entry into the already flooded market. The inclusion relations between antinomies in Ford 's work that makes of several older and by now celebrated essays, such him a great artist, beyond being simply an undoubted as the ones by Andre Bazin and Amedee Ayfre , under auteur.\" (Signs, page 102) the same cover , may-with all due respect-serve the same purpose. Even if they were not added merely to The discussion of Ford traces permutations of \" the efficiently complete the volume , but rather to display master antinomy\" between garden and wilderness the editor's respect for the history of film scholarship through three films , MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE and criticism , I would still question this mode of paying SEARCHERS , and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE. homage. For it shows little faith in the committment There are scattered references to other Ford films, but of young film scholars to assume that an article written none is analyzed in detail. This is a serious weakness , in a foreign language, and appearing in an \" obscure \" omitting two-thirds of Ford 's career-his silent period journal like Cahiers du Cinema, will not be read. Further, and his pre-war sound films-and picking and choosing the repeated inclusion of critical \" war horses\" implies among the final. third , omitting such central films as little confidence in the talent of contemporary critics and , perhaps more importantly, in the power of the WAGONMASTER , THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT , THE QUIET MAN , film-artist's work to bear the strain of critical reevalua- tion-something which could only be fruitful in the case SEVEN WOMEN , and the cavalry trilogy. Wollen does make of an artist whose works are as complex and beautiful some interesting points about the films he selects, but as those of Robert Bresson . whether these are dependent upon the structuralist apparatus he introduces is far from clear. Indeed the SIGNS AND MEANING IN THE CINEMA reverse is true : Wollen's conclusions rest upon unac- BY PETER WOLLEN knowledged considerations such as style and emotional Indiana University Press, Bloomington , Indiana, response of the director; factors exc luded by his struc- 1969; hardcover, $5 .95 ; softcover, $1 .95; 168 pages , turalist theory itself. An example will suffice. Wollen stills. finds in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE \" an uncomplicated passage from nature to culture, from the wilderness REVIEWED BY BRIAN HENDERSON left in the past to the garden anticipated in the future .\" (Signs, page 96) This theme is present in the film but Peter Wollen has written a handbook of intellectual not, strictly speaking, at the level of plot. It is there-in fashion. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema-that is spite of literal plot-because the emphasis of Ford's certainly the direction of the future; but what of the direction puts it there. In the final scene of the film , present? Has Wollen transformed film-critical dis- the resolution of its plot, Earp is a) out of his marshal's course? Has he, more modestly, applied structuralism clothes , back in his ·cowboy's clothes; b) no longer and linguistics usefully to cinema? We know there has marshal of Tombstone; c) on his way out of the town been considerable structuralist attention to cinema in (back to California to see his parents) ; d) saying good- recent years, including essays by Levi-Strauss and bye to Clementine (though hoping perhaps to see her Barthes, but this body of work is not yet translated . again). At the level of structure, that is, of story taking Until it is , Wollen's book must stand on its own; and off from style and syntax , Wollen 's description is simply stand , for better or worse , as the only structuralist false: \" Wyatt Earp's transition (is) from wandering cow- analysis of cinema available in English. boy, nomadic, savage, bent on personal revenge, un- married, to married man, settled, civilised , the sheriff Aside from pictures , the book is 90-odd pages long , who administers the law.\" (Signs , page 96) The fact is divided about equally into three chapters. Chapter 1 that Ford's stylistic emphases and his emotional re- sponses to his material create a new film , taking over FILM COMMENT 75

flOCKS from the script someone else writes , even though he successful movies and doing the same. To an older ' view, within the modern tradition , the may not change a line. ThUS-long after we have for- gotten the final scene and exactly what happens in substance of modern art is precisely its style , its music , it (plot), we remember the extraordinary sequence in and its synta x-not story. There is Malrau x' s familiar : which Earp takes Clementine to church and dances \" The distinguishing feature of modern art is that it never with her in what can only be called a John Ford ritual tells a story. Sartre gives a more precise formulation consecration-of town-building , of domesticity, of re- in his essay on THE SOUND AND THE FURY : \" A fictional spectability, etc. Ford creates this indelible effect technique always relates back to the novelist's meta- through his slow, stately pacing, through his direction physics . The critic 's task is to define the latter before of the actors, through the use of music, and through e'Jaluating the former. \" (Literary Essays, page 79) Writ- his lyrical , ennobling shots-none of which is required ten in 1939, Sartre 's essay is a premature refutation by the story itself. By contrast the direction of the final of Wollen 's critical position: scene is perfunctory-until the very end when Earp is already on the way back to his horse: through ghostly Why has Faulkner broken up the time of his story music (\"My Darling Clementine\" ) and a gently receding and scrambled the pieces . . . The reader is tempted camera, Ford exalts the figure of Clementine far beyond to look for guidemarks and to reestablish the chronolo- her place in the story and far , far beyond the personal gy for himself: presence of the actress playing her. This is an instance of what might be called Ford 's \" Ann Rutledge com- Jason and Caroline Compson have had three sons plex\"-an overload of emotion, disproportional to plot and a daughter. The daughter, Caddy, has given herself significance, which enters Ford 's films at certain scenes to Dalton Ames and become pregnant by him. Forced of parting , especially of leaving behind a girl one loves. (Examples include YOUNG MR. LINCOLN , and the grave- to get hold of a husband quickly . . . yard scenes in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE .) Far from fitting neatly Here the reader stops, for he realizes he is telling into structural models, Ford 's films lead us into the another story. Faulkner did not first conceive this or- vagaries and imprecisions of personality, of the man derly plot so as to shuffle it afterwards like a pack of behind the camera . What Wollen 's analysis omits is cards; he could not tell it in any other way (Literary precisely John Ford-how Ford responds to the image Essays, page 79) he is creating and how this enters into the image itself. To translate modern art into its \" story\" is to tell another Even for Eisenstein \" the emotions attached to the story . Perhaps Ford is not a modern artist in the sense author's relationship to the thing portrayed \" (Film Form , that Faulkner is-his position in cinema is closer to that page 153) are crucial. What Wollen deals with are of a classic-but Wollen 's translation-into-story program certain scripts or plots that Ford worked with. It is true results in equally great distortion of him . (indeed we that Wollen distinguishes between scripts as a priori have seen that Wollen himself does not follow his texts and the completed films themselves, which Wollen program in his critical analyses .) likens to \" performances\" which must be constructed a posteriori; but this does not get at the difficulty. After To the older view, style is substance . A fictional a director has acted on a script. perhaps changing technique relates back to a metaphysics. Different lines and scenes, adding, subtracting, etc., a new plot styles, literary and cinematic , translate as different or story may be abstracted from the finished film-a world-views . To Sartre this relation is what is interesting transcript rather than a script. These are in fact the in art; it is central also to Eisenstein and Andre Bazin , structures which Wollen addresses. Our point is the the two great aestheticians of the cinema. Eisenstein's inadequacy of such structures, apart from style and essay \" A Course in Treatment\" says it clearly: \" (S) ocial, emotional response, as the basis for criticism and ap- economical, and ideological premises determine every preciation . [Emotion is as alien to structuralist myth- slightesttwist of form.\" (Film Form, page 90) Both Eisen- analysis as style and personality . Levi-Strauss says In stein and Joseph von Sternberg prepared treatments Totemism (Boston, 1963): \"( I)t is not present emotions , of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Eisenstein 's pro- felt at gatherings and ceremonies, which engender or posed film and von Sternberg's actual film are opposite perpetuate the rites, but ritual activity which arouses in every important respect except plot: technically , the emotions.\" \" Actually, impulses and emotions ex- dramatically, stylistically, and ideologically. A Wollenian plain nothing: they are always results, either of the analysis, taking off from story, constituent plot ele- power of the body or of the impotence of the mind. ments , etc ., would have to treat them as the same ; In both cases they are consequences, never causes.\" that is , it would miss everything of importance. At another point in the argument, Levi-Strauss says derisively: \" Some claim that human societies merely We must be very clear : the method criticized here express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings is that of Wollen, not that of \"structuralism\" itself (if common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, there be a single such method). Indeed , Levi-Strauss or revenge . . .\". (Page 71)] specifically exempts poetry from his \"take off from syntax \" formula . \" Poetry is a kind of speech which The root difficulty in Wollen 's book is the application cannot be translated except at the cost of serious of methods of myth-analysis to the most individualized distortions; whereas the mythical value of the myth is achievements of cinema . There is nothing so imper- preserved even through the worst translation.\" (Structu- sonal as myth, whereas the entire effort of auteur anal- ral Anthropology, page 206) Our position is that the ysis is d irected toward the discovery of personality in work of great directors lies far closer to the untranslata- cinema . Conversely, the notion of authorship itself is ble individuality of poetry than to the universal currency alien to structuralist myth-analysis. The auteur theory of myth . and myth-analysis are utterly incompatible. There is a mythic dimension to films but to get at it one would MAN OF ARAN have to use statistical methods, taking all the films of a given era and / or genre and computerizing their BY PAT MULLEN structures; or perhaps taking the most commercially The MIT Press, Cambridge and London , April 1970; original edition copyright 1935; hardcover, $10.00; paperback, $2.95 ; 286 pages; illustrated with pho- tographs and maps. REVIEWED BY JACK C. ELLIS Jack C. Ellis is Professor of Film at Northwestern University and President of the Society for Cinema 76 SUMMER 1971

Studies. He is currently completing a book on John just after he was hired by the EMB . From time to time Grierson himself visited the location on Inishmo re, the Grierson. largest of the three Aran Islands, while the film was Along with less creditable reasons, the writing of being shot. On one such occasion Grierson was nearly harpooned by Tiger King , the man of Aran of the pic- this review was delayed while its author tried to find ture , \" after a tactless remark during an alcoholic ex- his copy of the earlier edition-evidently borrowed and pedition ,\" as Paul Rotha and Basil Wright put it in thei r not returned , as we say . One thing about book thieves , manuscript biography of Flaherty from which Arthur they invariably show good taste. Shelved in its former Calder-Marshall constructed his The Innocent Eye . vicinity, for no particular reason , a copy of Pete Martin 's Calder-Marshall's title comes , of course, from a Grier- Hollywood without Make-Up remains . It will no doubt son phrase of tribute to Flaherty. Mullen recounts the be moldering in its place years from now, uncoveted Grierson-Tiger King encounter in riotous detail , dis- by whole generations of students . Man of Aran, on the creetly om itting names. other hand , is a fine book: warm and humorous and revealing about the making of the film and its makers. Though not one of the regular members of the British It is only right to have it back in print, and a new copy documentary school, Flaherty felt close to Grierson's to replace the old . young men and they to him. One must also remember that, American by birth, Flaherty had spent a consider- Exactly the right kind of book about a Flaherty film , able portion of his life within the British Empire : Canada too. Flaherty was said to speak rarely about films, his and then British Samoa, prior to Britain itself. Through- own included , or even about filmmaking . Instead he out the Thirties he headquartered in London when not talked much and with unique eloquence about the off in Aran or India filming. Perhaps the only sad result people he made films of and with . Understanding this of MAN OF ARAN was the strain it put on the relationships well, the late Richard Griffith made it the organizing between Flaherty and his British friends and (to a de- princ iple of his commendable The World of Robert gree) students. The more doctrinaire leftists among Flaherty, which quoted exclusively the book under them righteously attacked MAN OF ARAN for its avoidance review for the chapter on ARAN . For Flaherty , making of the social and economic vicissitudes that were end- films was a way of life and one gets the impression ing the very life on Aran which Flaherty was celebrating. that he kept at it in each case until the money ran At that point Grierson came to his old friend 's support out, that he would have preferred to stay on in the and smartly rapped the knuckles of his own followers Far North, the South Seas, the Aran Islands, and the for not understanding what Flaherty could and could Louisiana Bayou , shooting his legendary miles of foot- not be expected to do and wherein lay his greatness. age. (Incidentally, he disliked editing and confessed The criticisms do seem paltry and one now more easily to having little feeling for it. Unlike the British documen- accepts Grierson 's longer view, after the film has es- tarians, camera rather than shears was his chief forma- tablished its timeless value. tive tool and with the added complexities of sound he always worked with a skillful editor. When asked once Like the film , the book Man of Aran has continued what was the hardest part of making a film he is said to mellow with age . In an oblique and disarming way to have replied \" Finishing it. \" ) it may give a fuller sense of the charm as well as the genius of Flaherty than anything ever written about him . Pat Mullen 's book quite properly gives us more than Certainly it is the kind of writing that Flaherty , himself a log of the production on which he worked as a a master raconteur, would have approved and enjoyed. combination cicerone, informant (in the anthro- pologist's sense), and assistant director. It gives us a LEI lEAS feeling of the place and of the people, and of why Flaherty would have been attracted to Aran in the first To the Editor: place. The initial unknowing step toward the realization Aside from the gaffe of presenting Sternberg 's cam- of the film was taken on an evening in 1931 when Frances Flaherty telephoned John Grierson at the Em- eraman , Paullvano , as Jules Furthman in the still which pire Marketing Board Film Unit in London . The Fla- emblazons Richard Koszarski 's article on Furthman in hertys had been in Berlin for months waiting (the young The Hollywood Screenwriter issue of FILM COMMENT, Fred Zinnemann with them) for permission and val uta a lame start for anyone so interested in the \" facts ,\" to make a film in the Soviet Union about the Russian there is the matter of his imputing a witlessness to me woman. They had been living on Frances's savings and because (since \"we historians must keep our wits about she appealed to Grierson to find some work for Bob us \" as he says) he disagrees with my filmography in before the funds were exhausted. Out of that phone my book on Sternberg. I would urge those interested call came the slightly schizophrenic but by no means to read the quote from Thoreau on the subject of unworthy Flaherty-Grierson collaboration , INDUSTRIAL collaboration , wh ich precedes the filmography , and BRITAIN . After Flaherty had finished shooting for INDUS- also the brief statement explaining that this filmography TRIAL BRITAIN-he had no hand in the editing-Grierson was derived from von Sternberg and represented the interceded with Michael Balcon (then in charge of true credits, according to him . According to ·Mr. Kos- production at Gaumont-British) and others on behalf zarski , Sternberg is no more to be trusted than I am of the Aran-Island picture which Flaherty next wanted and I should have gone to Koszarski for the true credits. to make. He says I have no evidence but Sternberg 's testimo- ny-granted-but what evidence does Mr. Koszarski Once underway the production of MAN OF ARAN con- have? Only the screen credits. And he bases his whole tinued to occupy more than a corner of Grierson's case on that. He is wrong also to say there has been attention . His wife's brother, the eighteen-year-old John a \" near conspiracy to bury Furthman 's work. \" There Taylor, was loaned from the Empire Marketing Board has been no such thing , nor has he any reason to state to become another invaluable assistant to Flaherty. Subsequently, and ample reward surely, Taylor married the lovely Barbara Mullen, Pat's daughter, who would become a celebrated stage, screen , and eventually television actress . Harry Watt (of later NIGHT MAIL, NORTH SEA, and TARGET FOR TONIGHT fame) also spent some time with the Aran crew during the autumn of 1932, FILM COMMENT 77

The man at the right is that Sternberg denigrated the work of Lee Garmes and To the Editor: the real Jules Furthman . Hans Dreier-both cred ited for their respective works On page 39 of Vol. 6, # 4, you credit Ben Hecht on Sternberg 's film throughout my filmography . If any- one is denigrated it is Sternberg and myself in the with \" uncredited \" authorship of ROPE . I don 't think my animadversions of Mr. Koszarski. It is good company screenplay was that brilliant, but Hume Cronyn also to be in and I don 't mind . (Furthman 's name appears grabbed credit (publicly) until he was stopped by a on five of Sternberg 's films in my filmography , by the combination of Hitchcock and the GUild. As for Mr. way-so much for the \" conspiracy to bury him .\" ) I can 't Hecht-do you ever check your information? This is imagine what purpose is served by trying to belittle von the only clue I have: After finishing the screenplay (for Sternberg (impossible) and raising Furthman to the which I retained not one word of the original play, mainly status of von Sternberg (just as impossible). because the play was set in England and the film was set in America), I went on vacation. When I returned , Sincerely, Sidney Bernstein-Hitchcock's co-producer and En- Herman G. Weinberg glish-handed me a \" new \" script: great hunks, mainly from the original play, had been inserted : full of \" Dear Mr. Koszarski replies: chap , I'd adore it! \", \" Darling boy, how divine! \" Etc. There are certain catalogues and indices which all There was no dispute: the Hollywood censors excised everyone of these passages simply by marking them film scholars must refer to for accurate credit listings. \" homosexual dialogue \" (1948 , remember) . That was Although none of these older sources are perfectly that and the picture was shot as I wrote it. When I complete , they are considered at least as reliable as questioned Hitchcock about this, he merely laughed- most personal memoirs , especially as far as Hollywood and asked me to do his next picture . I hope Ben Hecht egos are concerned. If in relation to those films directed wasn 't responsible, but I know he wasn 't responsible by Josef von Sternberg my Furthman filmography con- for one word of the screenplay used. If Steven Fuller, flicts with the cred its as given to Mr. Weinberg by that who wrote the piece for you , is writing a book on Hecht, director, then I believe that such a discrepancy throws I trust he will not make the same error again . Trivial both filmographies into question . Attempting to resolve as it may be . this conflict by analyz ing the internal evidence in the films in an art historical fashion was the purpose of Sincerely, the article. The credits were certainly not presented Arthur Laurents as formal evidence, but merely as a point of departure ; (Ed . note: The information concerning the authorship I hoped to apply such an analysis to those films much of ROPE was given to Steven Fuller by Rose Caylor in the manner that historians of other disciplines would Hecht.) to authenticate a disputed Tintoretto or a shady Stradi- varius . I also thought it clear that the piece was not To the Editor: trying to inordinately belittle or upraise, but merely shed I feel morally obliged , while amused, to protest the some light in a neglected corner . Film scholarship (and thanks largely to groundbreaking work by men such use of the asterisk. If one doesn't have the right to as Mr. Weinberg) has now evolved to the point where suppress one 's own follies , what other rights are left? we can apply such an approach to our own discipline. A minor correction, as long as we are at it: the French If I did not convince Mr. Weinberg of at least a furtive are probably wrong in attributing Phillip Yordan's Furthman influence in the films discussed , then the fault screenplay JOHNNY GUITAR to me ; wrong again , and lies not in the method , but my application of it. As for more certainly , in not crediting half a dC'zen other the \" near conspiracy ,\" this is my humorous manner Yordan epics , i.e. MEN IN WAR , TOBACCO ROAD * , NAKED of indicating the conspicuous scarcity of Furthman 's JUNGLE , etc . etc ., to their proper author-myself. None name in works on Howard Hawks as well as Sternberg , deserve an asterisk, believe me. and in most film encyclopedias, too . In regard to Stern- berg 's own attitudes , I think they were made clear by Sincerely yours, the absolute exclusion of the names of Dreier , Garmes Ben Maddow and Furthman from the seven hundred entry index to \" Maddow probably means GOD 'S LITTLE ACRE .-editor Fun in a Chinese Laundry. To the Editor: In the Ben Hecht filmography on page 37 of your Very truly yours, Richard Koszarski Winter 1970 17 1 issue, Mr. Hecht is credited with writing THE GREEN GHOST in 1925 and UNHOLY NIGHT in 1929. In our library at UCLA, we have an original copy of THE GREEN GHOST by Mr. Hecht. The date on the title page is February 21 , 1929 not 1925. In addition , the call sheets for cast and crew which were included with the script indicate that the film starred Natalie Moore- head and Sidney Jarvis along with many others includ- ing Boris Karloff. The title page of the script also credits Edwin Justus Mayer with the screenplay and dialogue and Dorothy Farnum with the continuity. As you can see , these facts all match with the information supplied for UNHOLY NIGHT. It is therefore my conclusion that THE GREEN GHOST and UNHOLY NIGHT are one and the same and was released in 1929 under the title of UNHOLY NIGHT . Sincerely, Ronald Garrison Theater Arts Library University of California Los Angeles 78 SUMMER 1971

Who realJy sup~rts Nader's Raiders? It has to be you. Nursing home practices; The Center for Study The quality of medical care; of Responsive Law is the Mental health programs; summer home of law, medi- The impact of \"think-tanks\" on cal, engineeering and gradu- policy decisions of the national ate students known as \"Nader's Raiders.\" government; Some money comes from royalties on Supermarket operations; Center books. The effect of corporation Some has been received from foundations. activities on the quality of food But if the Center for Study of Responsive consumed by young children. Law is to continue on a full-time basis, most And all the time work con- of the money will have to come from you tinued on air and water pollution, pesticides, and your fellow citizens. civil rights and rural poverty , and the Mr. Nader himself serves without salary. Food and Drug Administration. The funds are needed for the students who How can they do it? work at the Center. So that more of them can come in and more can he done. Time Magazine says that Ralph N ader What dothe Raiders do? \" has shown that in an increasingly com- puterized , complex and impersonal soc iety, They investigate problems that affect us all , one persistent man can actually do something and tell what they find. about the forces that often seem to badger him- In 1969 , $90,000 was spent supporting and that he can indeed even shake and change big guiding 105 students for: business , big labor and even bi gge r government. \" A report on the ICC- The Interstate Com- Plus the help of 200 students. Adds Time: \"Their merce Oll1ission is the book th at tells about it ; Zola-like zeal for investi gating bureaucracies A report on the regulation of food has earned them the name 'Nader's Raiders.''' quality by the Food and Drug Admin- Your help is needed too . The funds for the istration called The Chemical Feast; Study of the pulp Center's program will have to come mostl y from A study of national air pollution and paper industry in Maine ; your contri butions. Pl ease send your check tod ay. problems called Vanishing Air; Study of a bank in New York ; You will seldom make an invest ment so A report on rural poverty and food Studies of the public responsibilities of direct, in so mething so valuable, with quality as affected by the Department large corporations in Detroit and Delaware; results so visible. of Agriculture, to be published in a Examination of the effectiveness of Center for Studyof book, Sowing th e Wind; departments of consumer protection and insurance in Connecticut ; A study of the protection of workers' health and safety by the responsible Responsive LawStudy of a major law firm in Chicago; government agencies, to be published as a book early in 1971 ; A look at several problems in the South, An examination of the deterioration -------------including the pollution of the Savannah River, and the economic forces operating (\" Nader's Raiders\") I I I Ralph Nader Center for Study of Responsi ve L aw 11908 Q Street, N.W., Washington, D .C. 20009 of our lakes, streams and oceans and in company towns. I II want to help the public interest. I want the the causes for it, also to come out In Washington , students set out to Center to continue on an expanded, year-round in book form . b as is . Enclosed is $_ _ _ _ _ __ examine: In 1970, the program grew to 200 The Antitrust Division of the I Name I students and 20 projects, and so did the Department of Justice; I Address I budget. At a cost of nearly $200,000, The impact of the Bureau of Reclama- groups of students began work on I Ci.ty .Zlp_ _ __ I regional problems across the country, tion and the Forest Service on water -------------I IContributions are tax-deductible and checks including: conservation and the American Indian; Ishould be made payable to the Center for Study I of Responsive Law. Study of land use in California; Air safety programs and the Federal Aviation Administration;



now there's a choice choice. My The Royal 16mm Manual Models from $650.00 biggest fight •In wp•iacstnu'rtes. The Royal 16mm Self Threader It happened in real life. I was just Unique features on both projectors: finishing my 99th ridin', jumpin', fightin', picture. Never felt better in HIGH POWER LAMP my life. TWICE AS BRIGHT But my family nagged me into Newly designed General Electric or Sylvania gettir)g a medical checkup. And it EJL200 W, 24 V Halogen lamps produce turned out I had lung cancer. If I'd double the screen brightness of 1000 W waited a few more weeks, I'd be Tungsten lamp. Won't blacken during entire kicking up daisies ·now. 25-hour rated life, yet generates less heat than standard lamps. So, friend, I know what I'm talk- ing about when I tell you, get a MAINTENANCE checkup. Talk someone you like into getting a checkup. Nag some- TWICE AS EASY one you love into getting a checkup. ·Fewer moving parts. All major parts (ampli- fier, film pull-down mechanism, and motor) And when the lady from the are modular units which can be quickly re- American Cancer Society rings your placed with simple tools. Full year warranty doorbell, dig deep in your pocket. on parts and labor. Royal projectors cost They're working to \\-id this world of much less than competitive equipment when cancer once and for all. true Total Life Cost (purchase price plus 5-year maintenance) is fi.gured. ® CONVERTIBLE TWICE AS USEFUL Standard Royal projectors convert to spe- cial power source and Marc 300/16 lamp or Colorarc 300/16 in minutes. The class- room projector can produce auditorium brightness for special shows, then go back to work in the classroom with the standard Halogen lamp. Conversion kit can be pur- chased with the projector, or added any time in the future. American For further information call or write Mr. Bob Roizman: CancerSociety THE CAMERA MART INC. We want to wipe out concer in your lifetime. 456 W. 55th ST., NEW YORK, N. Y. 10019 • (212) 757-6977 RENTALS 0 SALES 0 SERVICE when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

This HmiaghgaSzt.i,nNeuistldeyis,tNrib.Ju.toednbrvo,B.wDheoBaolesro 188 distributes the other fine magazines listed here. Bookstore and individual inquires invited. American Record Guide Ju d a i s m American Scholar The Little Magazine Antaeus Massachusetts Review Aphra Michigan Quarterly Arts in SOCiety Midstream Beloit Poetry Modern Age Black Scholar Carleton Miscellany Modern Fiction Studies Chelsea Modern Occasions Chicago Review Mosa ic Cinefantastique Monthly Review Cinema MOVie Commentary New Left Review Confrontation Partisan Review Contemporary Literature Poetry Cross Currents Poetry North west Current Prairie Schooner Current History Daedalus Psychoanalytic Review The Drama Review Quarterly Review Epoch of Literature Film Comment Salmagundi Film Culture Science & Society Film Heritage Sewanee Review Filmmakers Newsletter Southern Review Film Quarterly South Dakota Review Film Society Review Transatlantic Review Focus Tri-Quarterly Foreign Policy Virginia Quarterly Harvard Business Review Washington Monthly Hudson Review Yale French Studies Yale Review Yale/Theatre ~--------------------New The N ew D~cumentary in Action A Casebook in Film-Making Alan Rosenthal This is the first book of interviews to focus exclusively on the nonfiction film-maker : his particular conceptions of his work, his special problems, his techniques and artistic strate- gies. The interviewees and films discussed in depth include Alan King (A Married Couple), Fred Wiseman (H igh Sch ool), Al Maysles (Salesman), Allen Funt (What Do Y ou Say to a Naked Lady?), Norman McLaren (Pas de D eux), and others. 1971 LC: 77-139776 ISBN : 0-520-0188-5 380 pages $12.50 Now available in paperback The Films of Akira Kurosawa Donald Richie \"A masterpiece of scholarship, comparable in mastery of detail, imaginative interpretation and good writing to Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce. I don't know any other study of a director's work that approaches its scope and its intelligence.\" -Dwight Macdonald, Esquire 220 pages photographs paper, $5.95; cloth, $1l.00 ~ from California ~~ University of California Press. Berkeley 94720 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

17 West 60th Street, New York NY 10023 At Arno Press, some of the best material o n Timely arti cles and reviews on cinema that we know of was \"born the documentary and short film yesterday.\" These books, magazines, and other works encompass some of the earliest writings fo r and about cinema and are vita l reading for an understanding of the history, theory, criticism and aesthetics of an industry· become art. Yet many have been out of print or generally unavailable for twenty years or more. Arno has gathered up almost 150 of these materials in their entirety (complete with their illustrations, many of which constitute some of the rarest assemblages of film photographs ava ilable), and has reprinted a nd bound them according to the highest lib rary standards. THE ARNO PRESS CINEMA PROGRAM - a new star is born. For an illustrated brochure describing these publications write ARNO PRESS Box 193, 330 Modison Avenue, New York, N .Y. 10017 A Publishing and l ibrary Service of lIJrNrwUorklimu HE .LAZED A PATH HALF WA r AC\"OSS For Non·Theatrical Showings The Finest Exploitation Films very popu lar on college campus information Peripheral Fi lms 20 Ph E. Gra nd River E. Lansing , Mich 48823 Subscription $4.75 from British Film Institute BOUNCING FROM SOFT DEALS TO VIOLENT BRAWLS Publications Department, 81 Dean Street - MAKING HIS OWN LAWS - LIVING HIS london, WIV, 6AA, England. OWN LIFE - DOING IT ALL HIS OWN WAY when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

film schedules don't borrow American Film Institute Theatre Film Comment 429 L 'Enfant Plaza Center SW Washington DC 20024 . We recently received letters from two college 202 / 554-1000 . Screenings daily at 8PM ; child ren 's matinee libraries. One in Iowa wrote, \"Film Comment Saturdays and Sundays at 3PM ; special lunchtime program is that magazine which disappears right after it Wednesdays and Fridays at noon. Boxoffice hours 2-8PM , comes into the library and then reappears two members $1 .25 , guests $1 .50 , children under 14 50¢; mem- months later all dog-earred and torn. \"Theother, berships $10 / year, $1 .50 / 30 days , includes mailed pro- from Vermont, was more to the point \"The gram . Underground parking adjacent. magazine is quite popular with thieves here.\" June 5-18: Festival of the Nations; new films from fourteen countries. So, please don't borrow Film Comment from June 19-30: A Season of Clowns; the funniest films the library unless you intend to return it quickly ever made. and in good condition. Many others want to July 1-31: A Tribute to Columbia Pictures; a major read it. retrospective ranging from the 1920s through 1970. August 1-31: Faces of America; features and You can get your own subscription, and we newsreels showing historical and social evolution, have low student rates. The library will let you including the history of manned flight. use the adjacent postage-paid envelope. If the envelope is missing, a one-year student sub Anthology Film Archives in the US & Canada is $5 (US funds only, please); for non-students it's $6. Send check 425 Lafayette Street New York NY 10003. (One block south or money order plus name, address, zip, and of Astor Place) 212 / 677-3197 . Screenings Tuesday through occupation (students give school) to us at 100 Sunday at 6, 8 & 1OPM . Admission : $1 .00 . Walnut Place, Brookline, Mass 02146. You can Three different programs are screened each day loan out your own copy all you want. from the Anthology collection. The entire archive of avant-garde and ex perimental films is shown in classified advertising cycles of si x weeks each . Anthology mails a monthly program for a service fee of $1 / year. rates: .$3 per line, 2 line mininu.un. For info write : Ads Film Comment 100 Walnut Place Brookline MA 02146 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Classified deadline for next issue : 30 July 1971. 5905 Wi ltshire Boulevard Los Angeles CA 90036. 213 / 937- books and magazines 4250 extension 265 . Boxoffice hours: Tuesday-Friday 11 AM-4PM . Screenings Friday at 8:30PM . FILM-TELEVISION-RADIO-New , current, out-of-print, and to June 12: A Tribute to King Vidor foreign books and periodicals on every aspect of fi~ , July 10-August 14: Third International Childrens' television and radio . Comprehensive book search serv1ce . Film Festival (Saturdays at 3PM) Catalog 25¢. BooKLORD'S, Dept. FC, PO Box 177, Peter July 23 to September 10: Friday Evening Films: Stuyvesant Station, New York , New York, 10009 . International summer film series. CINEMABILIA - NEW YORK'S FILM BOOK CENTER - CINEMABILIA Museum of Modem Art All current and out-of-print titles, periodicals in- cluding back i ssues, and numerous related materials and 11 West 53rd Street New York NY 10019. 212 / 956-7094 . ephemera. All publications reviewed in Film Comment may Daily screenings at various times . Admission to film is free be ordered through us . Cinemabilia 10 Corne11a (off W with museum admission. June 3-June 17: New Acquisitions 4th &6th Av) NYC 10014. 212/989-8519. Open 1-7 Mon-Sat. June 19-August 30: Roots of the American Musical : 1929-1932 TIlE HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER issue of Film Comment is now August 5-September 8: International Film Distribu- being r eprinted in a second edition , incorporating.an tors and Importers of America (IFDIA) Show. errata section. Please order now for fall 1971 de11very in time for 1971- 72 school year. Generous discounts for Cineprobe: Tuesdays at 5:30PM . quantity orders f:om . sch~ols, colleges and boo~st~re~. June 8: MAIDSTONE by Norman Mailer For prices and sh1pp1ng 1nforrnat10n, please wr1te . F1lm June 20: Films by James Broughton Comment 100 Walnut Place Brookline MA 02146. Pacific Film Archives coming in the fall FILM COMMENT an interview with Willard Maas, 2621 Durant Avenue Berkeley CA 94720 . 415 / 642-1412, an interview with Roger Corman, recorded announcement on films : 415 / 642-0808. Screen- Robin Wood on John Ford, ings daily at 7:30 & 9:30PM . Bo xoffice hours 11 AM-9 :30PM. the Dovzhenko Papers, Admission 75¢. more Film Favorites, Retrospectives of major film directors or genres and countries planned for summer months for Tuesdays, and more book reviews Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Mondays: Surprise Night, always last-minute pro- gramming . Wednesdays: Independent films , filmmaker often present. Saturdays: Silent films with piano accompaniment. Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York NY 10021 . No summer film program scheduled . 84 SUMMER 1971

Special Issue of THE JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION FILM II: THE TEACHING OF FILM Scene from The M is fits In \"The Dance of The Misfits: A Movie Mobile,\" Gerald O'Grady develops Arthur Miller's conception of his film The Misfits \"as a sort of mobile, as having the structure of a puzzle, the pieces of which again and again just miss fitting together, as placing its characters like a group of dancers in a ballet.\" O'Grady compares the original short story to the cinema-novel version of The Misfits to demonstrate this insight into Miller's form. Also in the April 1971 issue: • Basic Film Aesthetics, by F. f. SparshoH • Film and Cultural Pluralism, by Thomas H. Guback • Ten Questions about Film Form, by George W. Linden • Jules and Catherine and Jim and Hedda, by Alan Brody • The Humanizing Power of Film (Essay Review), by Donald W. Crawford • \"Whose Oscar?\" A hard look at the Academy Awards presentations, by Martin S. Dworkin Four times a year THE JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION brings you: • articles devoted to an understanding of problem areas critical to education in the arts and the humanities (literature, music, the visual and performing arts) • articles which focus on the aesthetic import of the new communications media and environmental arts • articles dealing with the aesthetic aspects of th e art and craft of teaching • articles which comment upon the aesthetic character of other d isciplines, such as mathemati cs and the sciences • Subscription $7.50 a year; single copies $2 .25. til UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Urbana 61801