VOLUME 07 - NUMBER 04 - WINTER 1971-72

servants (red). A hint of the eventual union between tions that her brother-i n-law is a haird resser in the two is maintained throughout by the chief ex- Cherbourg ; Michel 's story of being cast away on ception to this contrast-the similarity of color tone a Pacific island for several years bears an uncanny and design in the stained glass windows and tapes- resemblance to the plot of a Gary Cooper movie mentioned earlier in the film. Demy makes no at- tries of both kingdoms. tempt to h ide the artificiality of th is structu re ; instead Though all four of Demy's color films are very he emphasizes it by a c areful paralleling of incidents and settings and a series of coin cidental encounters similar thematically, the effect each makes on the and near-misses which bring together one group spectator is totally different. It is possible to talk of characters and keep apart those whose recogni- about the use of color in intellectual terms , as I have tion of one another would resolve too soon the done so far-to say that in LES PARAPLUIES DE CHER- symmetry of the plot. The film begins with Michel BOURG the colors separate the world into two op- coming into Nantes in his white convertible and then posing factions , while in LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHE- Frankie and his friends entering the nightclub and FORT they create a total fusion between the ind ividu- immediately beginning to dance with Lola and the al and his environment. In MODEL SHOP the relentless other girls; it ends with a new group of sailors enter- use of a very narrow and violent color scheme ing the club and bursting into dance, and then heightens the sense of disorientation and helpless- Michel (and Lola) leaving Nantes in the white con- ness that is central to the theme of a character who vertible . It is a world where dreams come true (Mi- feels he is trapped in a world that is false and ugly; chel 's mother dreams on the night before he returns in PEAU D'ANE the cool formality of the color patterns that he will come back) and simply thinking of an- allows us to accept the fairy tale world on its own other person enables one to meet him (Roland liter- ally bumps into Lola immediately after he has been terms. reminded of her by Cecile). But beyond this is the fact that each film is a Of the later films LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT completely different experience and that this cannot is the closest in its pattern ing of LOLA . Here Demy be accounted fo r by an analysis simply of moral and has a series of characters who are looking or intellectual ideas. Demy has often said that he works search ing 'for one another but are kept apart by in terms of instinct-\" I am like a tree or a plant , chance and misinformation until the very end of the and I like to function in that way , because it's the film . Each of them manages at some stage to pour way in which I live and express myself best\" -and out his story to at least one of the other characters, that he wants his audiences to try to live through but always the one person who could direct him his films in the way in which he himself has done. to the object of his search happens not to be present The color sets a different sensual tone in each film at the time. So Mme. Yvonne and Simon Dame live that prompts us to approach each variation of the in the same town for years, each believing that the basic thematic material in a different way. And it other is thousands of miles away ; Maxence searches achieves this through a systematic violation of nor- for the ideal incarnated in Delph ine, but constantly mal cinematic principles of \" realistic \" color and the misses her and meets only her sister Solange; Andy, matching of visual qualities to theme and mood . looking for Solange, meets only Delphine and does not know of their relationship . Everything is resolved COljljespolldelleeS in the end , of co urse , in a series of the most blatant yet inevitable coincidences , and the atmosphere of In all his films , Demy employs an intricate and harmony promised throughout by the colors is finally highly-formal narrative structure that is closer to the attained. nineteenth century novel than to most films made within the last two decades. LOLA , the first of his BAlE DES ANGES and MODEL SHOP , each essentially features , is still perhaps the most complex, with its concerned with two characters only, replace the series of parallel plots that overlap , reflect, and interweavings and parallels of different plots by a repeat one another. Each of the main characters systematic repetition or doubling of incidents and has a \" double \" whose story is a variation or repeti- sett ings. In BAlE DES ANGES the casino and th e rou- tion of his or her own: the fourteen year old Cecile lette wheel form the focal point and the characters resembles Lola (whose own real name is Cecile) at are constantly drawn back to them , while the theme that age ; Lola had met a blonde man dressed as of gambling itself provides the atmosphere of fate, an American sailor at a fair on her fourteenth birth- mystery, chance and uncertainty achieved by dif- day, and Cecile meets a blonde American sailor at ferent methods in the other films . In MODEL SHOP a fair on her fourteenth birthday ; Lola is a dancer, the endless drives through the streets of Los An- Cecile wants to be a dancer; Lola met and fell in geles are essential to the theme of searching in the love with her sailor years later, and we can assume film , but the randomness of th is is countered by the that Cecile, having run away from home at the end deliberate doubling of each major incident-two of the film , will repeat this experience too. The sailor visits to the model shop itself, two to the camera Frankie reminds Lola of Michel , her first love. Roland shop, two to the house on the hill , and so on . and Frankie both love Lola, but eventually lose her to Michel , and Frankie's experience with Cecile of PEAU D'ANE crystallizes and draws together all course parallels that of Michel with Lola years be- these elements , and it was perhaps inevitable that fore . Even minor references heighten the pervasive Demy should turn eventually to the overt structure sense that everything is somehow interlinked and of a fairy tale, with its transformations, mistaken interwoven : Roland has a fourteen-year-old sister identities, chance yet fated encounters, and the who resembles Cecile; he tells Mme. Desnoyers that he is going to work for a hairdresser and she men- FILM COMMENT 49

final discovery that the ideal for which one had been emotion and rise to a climax (with choral assistance) searching had been within reach , yet unrecognized , after her quarrel with Roland , and Michel, Lola's all the time . This element within all the films allows lost hero, appears to the strains of Beethoven 's them to build up a logic of their own which can Seventh. These familiar devices are employed with be accepted on a formal level through its associa- an irony and sophistication that enable us to adjust tions with a traditional structure, and enables the correctly to the highly formal patterning of the rest deliberately simplified characters to take their place of the film and take the world created for us on as part of a wider pattern. its own terms-as an artifact shaped for his own purposes by the filmmaker. The overlappings and repetitions are found not just within each film , but often . from one film to Music is most conspicuously used in BAlE DES another-again very much in the manner of some ANGES in the ecstatic piano theme that accompanies nineteenth-century novelists . Roland is a character Jackie's and Jean 's winning streaks at the roulette in both LOLA and LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG and table-creating a sense of excitement but also , as finds himself caught in a very similar mother- the pattern of winning and squandering is estab- daughter relationship on each occasion ; Lola herself lished , becoming more and more of an ironic com- re-appears in MODEL SHOP. There are recurring visual mentary on the action and the characters. The pre- references , such as the white convertible that turns dictability with which the theme recurs helps to up in LOLA, BAlE DES ANGES and MODEL SHOP , and shape the repetitive patterns that build up the film . the ubiquitous sailors who are either central figures , as in LOLA, or pervasive background presences in Michel Legrand 's score for LES PARAPLUIES and the street , as in LES PARAPLUIES and LES DEMOISELL- LES DEMOISELLES has been criticized for being too ES. And of course each film (except PEAU D'ANE) monotonous and one-dimensional. The films, how- is set in a town by the sea-Nantes , Nice, Cherbourg , ever , are not conventional musicals in which the Rochefort and Los Angeles. Yet within this setting, songs and dances are intended as visual and aural and despite the fact that the films generally open highlights set in contrast to the \" normality \" of the on an iris-out from the harbour of each particular rest of the action. Here the music blends into and town , Demy tends to place the action in a recurring becomes part of the patterns and harmonies created series of cafes, bars, shops, apartments, cars, hotel by color, settings and incidents; certain themes are rooms , and streets that are seen only in isolation associated with particular characters, relationships from their wider surroundings-only in MODEL SHOP or moods, and these are interwoven or played off do we get a shot that gives us some sense of the one against the other, but nothing is allowed to city as a whole. disrupt the integrated pattern of the whole. PETRIE ; You ' re very interested in music in your The main musical \" set-piece \" in LES PARAPLUIES films? is the love theme between Guy and Genevieve which is most fully elaborated as they return to Guy 's DEMY : Yes. It comes from my adolescence. I apartment to spend the night together. It returns began making films very young . I was 13 when I later in the film as an ironic juxtaposition to the shot of Genevieve writing to Roland , and in the closing began to make films , I bought a camera and made shots as Genevieve drives away after her final meet- ing with Guy. The tone and mood of this theme, films. At the same time I was interested in literature, however, blend in with the music used elsewhere painting, and music. I played the violin, I studied in the film, and the chief exception to the basic painting, and the cinema seemed the best choice harmonic structure is the tinkling .and haunting for me, for I could express myself as writer, as piano music that accompanies Guy's .sad encounter painter and as musician. That is why I chose cinema , with the prostitute Jenny. The deliberate formality and that 's why I love music in my films so much-as of this use of music, however, is most evident in well as colors , words, the performances of the LES DEMOISELLES , where there are three or four in- actors, ideas, the camera-everything concerned terlinked yet distinct motifs, and the son.g given to with filmmaking . one partner in a love affair is exactly balanced by that given to his as yet unrecognized soulmate-Ma- PETRIE : You give them all equal importance? xence's and Delphine's songs about their ideal loves DEMY : Yes. have the same tune and only slightly different words, The most noticeable use of music is of course and the same is true for Mme. Yvonne and Simon in LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG, where Demy pro- Dame. The sense of harmony is strengthened by duced the first film musical in which every word is the fact that bystanders are apt to join sympa- sung. LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT and, to a thetically in the laments or rejoicings of the central lesser extent , PEAU D'ANE , are musicals of a more figures-as the customers in the cafe do with Ma- traditional kind , but in all the films music is vital to xence . (This is all handled with the same amused an understanding of the world Demy is creating . irony that has the dancers in the night-club burst Songs and dances weave their way through LOLA simultaneously into tears when Lola is finally reunit- and , as is characteristic of Demy, the lyrics of Lola 's ed with Michel.) Like Lola, Delphine and Solange songs provide all the information necessary for an and Bill and Etienne (the two young men who run understanding of her. Background music is consis- the carnival) describe themselves as adequately in tently used to underscore relationships and create their songs as is needed for the purposes of the mood-a muted jazz accompaniment holds the as- film. And the most important set-piece here, the sociations of the night-club around Lola, unasha- \" Aimer la Vie\" song performed by the twin sisters, medly romantic strings throb during passages of 50 WINTER 1971-72

simply crystallizes in words the \"message\" that the LOLA. rest of the film has worked upon our senses : \" For AnoukAimee LES DEMOISELLES I wanted above all to provide two and Alan Scott. hours of joy. I was concerned simply to show happi- [Mu seum of ness . .. Modern Art! Film Stills Archive] In his use of color Demy takes an aspect of cinematic language that is generally limited to BAY OF creating a vague aesthetic sensation in the audience THE ANGELS. or to convincing them that what they are watching Jeanne Moreau is the \" real\" world , and modifies this so that color and Claude Mann. in itself largely conditions our emotional response [Museum of to the films. He employs a narrative structure that Modern Art! has little of the randomness and the loose ends of Film Stills Archive] ordinary experience and relies far more heavily on coincidence, on people following out apparently UMBRELLAS destined patterns, than almost any other filmmaker OF CHERBOURG . has dared to . He takes the already artificial element Nino Castelnuovo of background music and heightens its artificiality, and Catherine Deneuve. having his characters express themselves in song [photo : Museum of and dance and creating musical patterns that em- Modern Art! phasize our awareness of the way in which the film Film Stills Archive] is shaped . Anyone of these elements used in con- junction with conventional \" realism \" would prove UMBRELLAS disastrous; the films succeed because everything OF CHERBOURG . in them works together, subtly modifying our rela- Nino Castelnuovo tionship to the world presented on the screen before and Catherine Deneuve. us . [photo : Museum of Modern Art/ All this is also true of the way in wh ich the camera Film Stills Archive] is used in Demy 's films , though here the style is much more consistent from film to film than is his FILM COMMENT 51 use of color or music, which tends to vary with the circumstances. Influenced perhaps by Max Ophuls (to whom his first feature was dedicated), Demy keeps his camera in almost constant movement, smoothly and fluidly sweeping around or along with the characters. The result is a camera style that is continually responding or adjusting to the charac- ters, altering relationships between them, bringing them together,in new ways, or separating them . The flowing and graceful movements of the camera impose their own vision of harmony on the films; nothing is frenetic or arbitrary, and everything seems interwoven yet in constant change . In the excep- tional cases where the camera remains still for any length of time, the actors themselves tend to act outthe patterning , either in dance, or, as in the shots behind the credits of LES PARAPLUIES , in diagonal , horizontal, and vertical movements across the screen which the camera simply observes from overhead . There is little purely virtuoso or obtrusive cam- era movement, and where Demy indulges in a par- ticularly long tracking shot , it is always fully inter- grated into the other movements of the film-the long track back along the station platform in LES PARAPLUIES, for example, that accompanies the train taking Guy away from Genevieve. At the end of the same film , the camera moves away from Guy as he runs out of the office of his filling-station into the snow-apparently after the departing Genevieve but really, as we see when the track continues , to meet the returning Madeleine and Fran<;ois. In PEAU D'ANE which, being an overt fairy tale is a special case ,

Demy makes use of such camera tricks as slow-mo- One way of defending Demy, therefore , has been tion and backward motion and characters ap- to point out that his films are as much concerned parently disappearing in the middle of a scene . with pain , war, death and loss as they are with (Slow-motion is used for lyrical effect in the fair- happiness and ideal love. LES PARAPLUIES DE ground scene of LOLA-at a time when it was much CHERBOURG has an astonishingly high death-rate for less hackneyed than it is now). a work often seen as pure mindless escapism : Guy 's aunt and Genevieve 's mother both die in the course There is also very little use of editing to create of the film , Guy's letters from Algeria talk about particular artistic effects, Demy preferring to let the friends being killed , and he himself returns crippled camera movements create the necessary juxtaposi- by the war . We hear in LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHE- tion and reactions . The patterning of the use of color FORT of a dancer called Lola-Lola being brutally complements the way in which the camera itself is hacked to pieces (and the murderer turns out to be used , and in the two non-color films , LOLA and BAlE a nice old man seen earlier in the film) . Guy in LES DES ANGES , completely different effects are obtained PARAPLUIES and George in MODEL SHOP receive their in each case simply from the way in which the call-up papers and are very conscious of the idea black-and-white images are created . In the first film of killing others or themselves being killed in war . Raoul Coutard's photography is rather harsh and Most of the characters are fundamentally very lonely grainy , little attention is paid to composition as such and the happiness usually granted them at the end and framing often seems rather haphazard , but the has to be set against this. Lola spends years of her texture of sunlight and open air central to the mood life waiting for the return of the man who has desert- of the film is perfectly rendered . In the second film ed her; Jackie in BAlE DES ANGES is cut off from normal Jean Rabier's photography concentrates on visual human relationships by her compulsion for gambl- contrasts that suit the alternations and reversals of ing , and her return to Jean at the end of the film the film: smooth dazzling whites are constantly set can easily be seen as simply the beginning of an- against rich blacks, and the characters tend to be other phase of an endlessly unsatisfactory cycle ; dressed in white or black and to be juxtaposed George in MODEL SHOP is disoriented and aimless, against backgrounds of whatever color is the op- unable to find the real companionship he needs in posite at the time . Recurring reflections in glass or either his friends or his girl. The clearest indication against marble pillars emphasize the dual aspects of this aspect of the films , however, is the series of the characters ' personalities , and the film delights of lonely middle-aged mothers, conscious that they in the sensuous textures of sea, stone , marble , are themselves still physically attractive, and luring feathers, and hair. young men towards their daughters more as a boost to their own egos than for any other DisconlUlldd{'s reason-Mme. Desnoyers in LOLA , Genevieve 's mother in LES PARAPLUIES , Mme . Yvonne in LES DEM- PETRIE : In your films people suffer, they experi- OISELLEs-and of these only Mme. Yvonne is granted ence pain and fear, yet the background , the colors, a happiness of her own . the music , are always beautiful. Do you think there is a conflict there? Set against the happy lovers are those who fail or are left aside , whose love is betrayed or des- DE MY : I don 't think so , because that 's how life troyed-Roland and Frankie in LOLA , Guy and, in is. We live , we suffer, and yet music is beautiful, effect, Madeleine in LES PARAPLUIES , Lola and colors are beautiful; even though we are going George in MODEL SHOP . The last of these films is through the worst troubles and sufferings, red is most explicitly concerned with the theme of always lovely, blue is always lovely, and the music voyeurim that is submerged in most of the others- of Mozart is always beautiful-even if you have the the idea of characters hanging around the fringes of other people's love affairs, yet unable to partici- worst political problems . . . It's a contradiction, you pate themselves. can call it a contradiction, not a conflict. So why But simply to list all these elements does little not use it? Just because my characters may suffer more than acknowledge that Demy's world has the terribly, that 's no reason to surround them with variety we would expect from any artist worth taking hideous, ugly colors or put in grating music. That seriously. And to limit oneself solely to this aspect would be superfluous. of his films brings one up against the awkward fact that very few of his characters have much complex- In almost all Demy 's films characters tend to fall ity or depth, and that he tends to work with stock in love at first sight and to remain faithful to this characters and recurring types. first love despite all separation or adversity , or they have an ideal for which they are searching that is PETRIE: You like working with actors? finally attained at the end of the film . Even in a film DEMY:- Yes . What I like about actors is that-in which ends unhappily, like LES PARAPLUIES DE French you say \"jouer\", in English \" play\" -and I CHERBOURG , it is clearly implied that , however con- tent Guy may be with Madeleine , it is Genevieve like to play. I approach it in a childlike way-when who will always be his real love and that Genevieve you are a child you play at cops and robbers and is fully aware of how much her betrayal has cost her. This is a vision of life that has seemed totally so on, and the fact of playing on a stage with actors unreal or sentimental to many critics, and the ideas is still like playing as a child. I like that very much . of the coup de foudre and the consuming passion (whether for a lover or for something like gambling, PETRIE : In your films the women are generally as in BAlE DES ANGES) are particularly alien to Ang- more interesting and stronger than the men . lo-Saxons. DEMY: Women in my films have to surprise, to 52 WINTER 1971-72

astonish; the men are always calmer, more well- Algerian War, and this seemed essential to me. For behaved. The mixture of the two, the contrast, inter- LES DEMOISELLES I wanted above all to provide two ests me-the woman more brilliant, joyous, or ex- hours of joy. I was concerned simply to show happi- travagent, this play between the restrained man and ness, and this relates to another concept of cinema I've always held. This can be explained in this way: this exuberant woman creates a mixture, a dialogue when I was a student in Paris, I was lonely, really that I like . . . I like women who are witty, amusing, beautiful, who have something fanciful about them ; alone, I didn't know anyone, I had very few friends, even if, like Lola, she has problems that cause her I was unhappy and often depressed, because I didn 't sadness, she remains despite this amusing and full see at all how I could get to make films some day-I of life and sympathetic. The man is always more didn 't know anyone and I was up against a blank reserved with relation to the woman. wall. In such moments of despair I would go to see, for example, Renoir's THE RIVER, and I would come PETRIE : Do you think it's like this in life? out-how can I express it?-exalted, quite exalted, DEMY : In my life. But not perhaps in your or right on top of the world, ready to overcome every- someone else 's. thing. Nowadays, when people talk about confron- Demy consistently reverses the normal film code tation and revolution in the world, I make my own that has the woman as a beautiful, rather mindless object and gives the most interesting mental and revolution when I come out of a film by Renoir, and physical activities to the man. In Demy's films it is the men who are generally beautiful objects, quiet, .I can say that for me that is what cinema is all about, sad-eyed, blonde and melancholy, at the mercy of fate and circumstances. The women , though almost it 's what gives me courage , the desire to live and equally controlled by fate , have a vitality and spon- to go on living. And in my films that 's all I 've tried taneity that allow them to take charge of at least part of their own destiny. Yet they take on life largely ~~. through the women who incarnate them on the screen , actresses of the calibre of Jeanne Moreau , JACQUES DEMY FILMOGRAPHY Anouk Aimee and Catherine Deneuve, and though 1960 they have sufficient interest to hold their place in LOLA. Films Around the World ; screenplay Jacques the overall scheme, the world that Demy creates Demy;'cinematography Raoul Coutard; cast Anouk does not depend solely on the people who inhabit Aimee, Marc Michel, Elina Labourdette, Allen Scott. it or on the moral ideas expressed through them . Distributed in 16mm by Contemporary Films l The characters exist as part of the total pattern- McGraw-HilI. of color, sound, movement, narrative structure, per- 1962 sonal relationships-that goes to make up the com- LUST. (An episode from LES SEPT PECHES CAPITAUX) . pleted film. They blend into this and have their role Embassy Pictures ;screenplayDemy ;basedonan idea to play, but they cannot be understood if they are by Roger Peyrefitte; cast Laurent Terzieff and Jean- abstracted from the \" systematic and unexpected Louis Trintignant. variations of the mode of language, of narrative, or Distributed in 16mm by Audio / Brandon . of existing [cinematic] forms \". In his use of the other elements in the pattern Demy is concerned with LE BAlE DES ANGES. (BAY OF ANGELS) . Pathe Con- imposing his own personal vision without much temporary; screenplay Demy; cinematography Jean regard to the conventions of realistic cinema; rather Rabier; cast Jeanne Moreau and Claude Mann. he emphasizes and exploits the artifice inherent in Distributed in 16mm by Contemporary Films l film itself. The meaning of his work emerges from McGraw-Hili. the deliberate discontinuities set up between the 1964 nature of the subject and the method of treating LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG. Landau l it, for these force us to reassess our relationship Unger; screenplay and lyrics Demy; music Michel to the screen image and to the world that it presents. Legrand ; cinematography Jean Rabier; cast Cath- erine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Marc Michel, PETRIE: Why do you make films? To teach people Ellen Farner, Anne Vernon . something? to give them pleasure? to amuse your- 1967 self? LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT. Warner Brothers; screenplay Demy; music Michel Legrand; DE MY: I started out, when I was twenty and be- cinematography Ghislain Cloquet; cast Catherine ginning to make films , with what you might call Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, Gene Kelly, George certain moral principles. I wanted to show men and Chakiris, Danielle Darrieux. women , human beings, in what you might call noble 1968 situations, with aspirations, desires, ambitions, who THE MODEL SHOP. Columbia; screenplay Demy; are never debased by what happens to them , and English dialogue Adrien Joyce; cinematography Mi- who express courage, the desire to continue, to go chel Hugo; cast Anouk Aimee, Gary Lockwood, on living, and my ambition stopped there. And for Alexandra Hay, Carol Cole. each film I asked myself the same question. In LES 1970 PARAPLUIES it was a matter of love and unfaithfulness PEAU D'ANE. screenplay Demy; from a fairy tale and to make people aware of how serious that situa- by Charles De Perrault; cinematography Ghislain tion of such a love affair was in the context of the Cloquet; cast Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Jac- ques Perrin, Delphine Seyrig . 1971 PIED PIPER. A work in progress starring Donovan . FILM COMMENT 53

54 WINTER 1971-72

by Andrew Sarris Part One Speaking of Frank Borzage and George Steven s, the Lubitsch-produced and Borzage-d irected DESIRE as we expect to be, brings up the matter of the offered an interesting stylistic conflict between the unsung motion picture director. We remember a poll twinkle and the tear . All in all , a productive decade conducted by one of the theatre circuits not so long for a director who had survived the trip from Ger- ago in which the patrons were invited to name their many to America, the temper tantrums of Pola Negri favorite stars, pictures, stories and directors. John and Mary Pickford , the transition from silence to Public and his wife sprinted through the first three sound , the rise in power (if fall in glory) from director categories and bluffed or quit cold on the fourth. to producer-director at Paramount, and the chang- Adolph Zukor, of all people, was voted the favorite ing tastes of the fickle public. Still , Lubitsch never director by some; Sam Goldwyn was another c on- won a competitive Oscar or a New York Film Critics tender. As we recall it, Ernst Lubitsch won in a walk. Award , a symptom , perhaps, of an ultimate lack of His name seemed to be easy to remember. Actually, respect,for the \" mere\" stylist and entertainer. it wa s no contest. Indeed , there is a conventional attitude toward -Frank S. Nugent, The Sunday New York Times, Lubitsch which often stands in the way of a clear- June 12, 1938 eyed appraisal of his career. This conventional atti- tude may be summed up in the phrase The Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch enjoyed a curious immunity in the Tou ch-which is also the title of Herman G. Wein- Thirties in that his reputation at the end of the dec- berg 's exhaustive critical study, itself a compendium ade was almost as high as it was at the beginning. of all the conventional wisdom , coffee , brandy and By contrast, Josef von Sternberg , King Vidor , Frank cigars on and of its subject. In these enlightened Borzage, Rene Clair, Rouben Mamoulian and Lewis times , however, to speak of Lubitsch in terms of Milestone had lost their early Thirties preeminence his \" touch\" is comparable to describing Alfred by the Forties , whereas John Ford , Frank Capra, Hitchcock as the \" Master of Suspense .\" In both Leo McCarey, Alfred Hitchcock, Gregory La Cava instances, a comple x directorial style is reduced to and William Wyler seemed to come out of nowhere its most obvious effects, to its most transparent in the middle Th irties to shape the last half of that techniques. Lubitsch becomes a creature of closed decade. Lubitsch had his ups and downs to be sure, doors and deadpan reaction shots, a sophisticated but he never really passed permanently out of fash- continental , a world-weary head waiter, a moldy ion . MONTE CARLO helped usher in the decade with Molnar. In fact, there have always been in even the an artful blend of sound montage and visual music most affectionate tributes to Lubitsch a touch of in Jeanette MacDonald 's rendition of \" Beyond the social condescension. Both Lotte Eisner in (The Blue Horizon ,\" and NINOTCHKA helped lower the Haunted Screen) and Weinberg often seem ob- curtain on the Thirties in a grand manner with Greta sessed by Lubitsch 's Jewishness even though they Garbo 's exquisite evocation of an ideological ice- themselves are Jewish . Even in his more refined berg melting in mirth . American comedies, we are told by Miss Eisner, \" there always remained a little of the vainglory of In between these two epiphanies of his delicate the nouveau-riche.\" Berlin is also blamed by Miss style Lubitsch contributed distinctively personal Eisner for Lubitsch 's lapses into vulgarity. Indeed, sketches to two omnibus revues: PARAMOUNT ON she goes so far as to preface her chapter on Lu- PARADE (1930 , the Chevalier Frenchie numbers) and bitsch with Goethe's description of a musician friend IF I HAD A MILLION (1932 , the famous Laughton rasp- named Zeiter (from Eckermann 's Conversations berry) . In addition , he directed seven other films 1827): \" At first sight he may appear a trifle rough , outright: THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931) , THE MAN I even vulgar. But you have to remember that he spent KILLED , originally BROKEN LULLABY (1932) , TROUBLE more than half a century in Berlin where there IN PARADISE (1932), DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933), THE I·ives-as many a detail has made me realize-a spe- MERRY WIDOW (1934) , ANGEL (1937) and BLUEBEARD 'S cies of the human race so bold that little can be EIGHTH WIFE (1938) . ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932) , was gained by treating them with nicety; on the contrary, directed by George Cukor from a Lubitsch plan , and you have to bare your teeth and resolve to be brutal signed by Lubitsch , thus providing an interesting yourself if you don't want to go under ... \" mi x of Lubitsch snap and Cukor stretch . Similarly, Ernst Lubitsch , a shopkeeper's son, began his FILM COMMENT 55

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movie career in the Berlin of 1913 by playing Ger- legend of Chaplin 's A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923) , as man-Jewish dummkopf roles, and thus the critics the brilliant precursor of Lubitsch 's Twenties Holly- and historians who knew him when never allowed wood comedies. Chaplin himself has shrewdly con- him to forget his humble, even earthy origins. More tributed to this legend by withholding A WOMAN OF important was the constricting critical context in PARIS from vulgar view for nearly half a century . which Lubitsch was ever after typed as the actor- (Fortunately, Jay Leyda of the East Berlin Archive comic type of director, virtually a panderer to the allowed me to see a print of this forbidden classic audience's funny bone. And if the audience didn't about which Eric Bentley has written eloquently in laugh , then off with the head of the vulgar jester. Moviegoer.) As Bentley notes , Chaplin 's genre is Victorian melodrama. What must have impressed Weinberg 's very informative book is saturated Lubitsch was not Chaplin 's style, rather stodgy and with noble quotations on the profundity of comedy, tedious even in comparison with DIE PUPPE and ANNE but the fact remains that comic talents are seldom BOLEYN in 1919, but rather Chaplin 's demonstration taken as seriously as tragic or even merely somber that American audiences were not entirely alien to talents , and especially in Hollywood . Consequently, European sophistication and cynicism about what the comic talents often overcompensate for their low Preston Sturges was later to designate (in THE PALM estate by essaying completely humorless projects BEACH STORY) as Topic A . To the end of his career , to prove their seriousness. (Vide Leo McCarey's Chaplin was never able to take the casualness of discomfiture at getting an Oscar in 1937 for THE carnality in his stride. Indeed , as Chaplin 's films AWFUL TRUTH rather than for MAKE WAY FOR TO- became more autobiographical , the wistful roman- MORROW.) And so it was with Lubitsch in the Thirties ticism began to wither into nasty misogamy-whereas as he attempted to prove his seriousness (and even Lubitsch never lost his lilt even at death 's door. his pacifism) with THE MAN I KILLED . Of all his films in this decade, THE MAN I KILLED emerges today as As for Rene Clair, it is difficult to believe how Lubitsc:h 's least inspired and most calculated effort, much superior to Lubitsch he was considered in all surface effect, all ritualistic piety toward a the early Thirties by critics who should have known \" noble\" subject. THE MAN I KILLED died at the box- better ., Although Lubitsch long antedated Clair in office , as much for the right reasons as for the wrong the cinema, Clair was generally considered the ones. Nonetheless, the critics held Lubitsch 's hand source from which all cinematic wit and whimsy had during the wake , castigated the public for its inat- sprung . Even Chaplin was condemned (by Otis Fer- tentiveness at intolerable sermons and , with a sigh guson) for lifting Clair'S assembly line in A NOUS LA (and a subconscious sense of relief) , returned the L1BERTE for use in MODERN TIMES. Part of the problem repentant jester to h is more frivolous pu rsu its. with Lubitsch is that his power position at Para- mount made him a spokesman for an unpopular By contrast, strikingly unconventional comedies , industry. He was blamed for Sternberg 's troubles more in the mellow manner of later Lubitsch , like at the studio. And he was criticized for stressing DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933) , THE MERRY WIDOW (1934) the need to please a mass audience. Look at Clair, and ANGEL (1 937) have been dismissed by Weinberg the critics said. He doesn 't care about audiences. and the other official film historians as unedifying He is concerned only with his own art. It was one failures . DESIGN FOR LIVING was invidiously compared thing for Frank S. Nugent (later John Ford's scen- in its casting (Gary Cooper , Miriam Hopkins , Fredric arist and son-in-law) to declare flatly that THE IN- March) to the stage original (Alfred Lunt, Lynne FORMER was infinitely superior to Max Ophuls ' Fontanne, Noel Coward), not to mention the sacri- L1EBELEI. A turgid allegory is always superior in some lege of Ben Hecht's brassily romantic screenplay aesthetics to a tender love story, but that Lubitsch's presuming to improve on Noel Coward 's gilded cyn- talent should be considered spiritually inferior to icism. THE MERRY WIDOW lacked (at least in Wein- such a more tinkly than tingly mechanical-doll talent berg 's eyes) Stroheim 's scathing documentation of as Rene Clair's is almost beyond understanding. On imperial decadence in the 1925 version with John any ultimate scale of values, Lubitsch 's only sin Gilbert and Mae Murray. Fortunately, Lubitsch seems to have been in assuming power in a situation lacked also Stroheim's snickering villainies and in which highbrows computed glory in inverse pro- overstuffed ornamentation. As for ANGEL , it was sim- portion to power and even potency. As a result, Lubitsch has never been credited for his undeniable aply misunderstood as failed bedroom farce la influence on directors as disparate as Ophuls (THE BARTERED BRIDE) , Hitchcock (STRAUSS' GREAT WALTZ) , Feydeau rather than as a rhyming exercise in Pi ran- Bergman (SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT) , Renoir dellian role-playing. Far from being failures , DESIGN (THE RULES OF THE GAME) , Mamoulian (LOVE ME FOR LIVING , THE MERRY WIDOW and ANGEL mark an TONIGHT) , Chaplin (THE COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG) , evolution of Lubitsch 's style away from the sparkling Hawks (PAID TO LOVE), Sternberg (THE KING STEPS balancing acts of THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE (1925) and OUT) , Lewis Milestone (PARIS IN THE SPRING) , and THE TROUBLE IN PARADISE to the somewhat heavier more of Preston Sturges, Mitchell Leisen , Frank but richer concoctions of the FortieS-THE SHOP Tuttle and Billy Wilder than we need mention at this AROUND THE CORNER , TO BE OR NOT TO BE , HEAVEN time. Indeed , if \" influence\" were the sole criterion CAN WAIT and CLUNY BROWN. of greatness, Lubitsch 's name would be near the top of the list with Griffith 's and not too many more. Of course , critics in the Thirties could hardly have anticipated Lubitsch's last burst of stylistic develop- (to be continued) ment in the Forties, but they might have given him more credit as an innovator in his own right , rather than as a manipulative mimic of Charlie Chaplin and Rene Clair. Weinberg's book helps perpetuate the FILM COMMENT 57



David Shepard discusses the importance, methods, costs and confusions of film archive work. The Search for Lost Films David Shepard is Associate Archivist of the Amer- of AFl 's preservation program , the \" rescue list\" ican Film Institute. This interview was recorded in concept has been replaced by a much wider con- November 1970 by Austin Lamont of FILM COM- cern for the thousands of little-known motion pic- MENT. It has been altered and rewritten by AFI tures which could still be saved . When the Institute publicity specialists-with Mr. Shepard 's reluctant hired first Sam Kula as archivist and then myself, consent-and cut again by FILM COMMENT be- his associate, we got into something which had cause of limited space. The original interview c on- never been initially bargained for-a wholesale sweep of the country looking for early films which tained a tremendous amount of information and a had not been annointed as \" classics \" because they hadn 't been found by other arch ives. They weren 't great deal of David Shepard 's personality, some of in the memories of Iris Barry, Paul Rotha , Lewis which have been lost in the alterations. Any reader Jacobs or Richard Griffith either because they wishing to know more about the AFI 's archival func- hadn 't seen the films, or they hadn 't remembered tions, or who knows of any undiscovered nitrate them . But these films nonetheless have considerable films is urged to write David Shepard at the Ameri- importance for artistic or sociological reasons. So can Film Institute, 1815 H Street NW, Washington we began to accumulate enormous amounts of early DC 20006. film and find out about untouched caches of others. Our efforts were directed toward sifting through FILM COMMENT: How did the film preservation these films , since very little is really known about program at The American Film Institute start? film history and a great deal is going to have to be revised on the basis of what turns up. DAVID SHEPARD : The people who developed plans for The American Film Institute in 1966 and FILM COMMENT: What is the Institute 's relation- early 1967 were impressed by the fact that a great ship with the Library of Congress? many films of importance-the textbook classics- existed in American archives only on nitrate film SHEPARD: The Institute's intent was never to base. Richard Kahlenberg , the first person appoint- establish a separate film archive which would inevi- ed to the Institute staff by Director George Stevens, tably vie for public funds and attention with existing Jr. , proposed that the initial stage of AFl 's film archives. The idea, rather, was to supplement the preservation program would be to provide funds to activities of ex isting archives. So it was that the convert these Arthur Kn ight-approved films to safety Archival Advisory Committee agreed at the early stock , so that at least some qf the landmarks of the stages to focus the preservation aspect of the Insti- American film would be preserved. A blue-ribbon tute's American film archive work on the Library of committee , which included such people as Willard Congress . After about si x months of negotiation , a Van Dyke and Eileen Bowser of the Museum of collaborative agreement between the Library of Modern Art Jim Card of George Eastman House, Congress and the American Film Institute was William K. Everson, and John Kuiper of the Library Signed for a two-year period , beginning June, 1968, of Congress, identified a select group of film classics coinciding with the remaining two years of the Insti- whose importance couldn 't be questioned by any- tute's initial three-year funding period . one, and called this the \" rescue list. \" The \" rescue list\" consisted of 250 motion pictures, about 150 FILM COMMENT: What was your first acquisition? of which were actually not known to exist anywhere SHEPARD: Richard Kahlenberg negotiated the at the time. For these , the plan was to conduct a first big deposit of films from a motion picture com- search to try and locate them . The rest of the films pany-the RKO Library of about 740 features and on the list were pictures known to exist at Eastman about 900 short subjects produced by RKO between House, at the Hollywood Museum (which had al- 1929 and 1952-all original negatives. The story of ready gone under) , at the Museum of Modern Art this acquisition demonstrates the practical attrac- and at the Library of Congress , but the on Iy copies tiveness of the AFI-Library of Congress preservation or the best copies of these films were on nitrate program. stock, living on borrowed time. Since the first year Top row, from left : THE INFORMER (1912) with Henry B. Walthall , with Mary Pi c kford ,Wilf red Lucas and Grace Henderso n ; FRIENDS Mary Pickford and Walter Miller ; THE MENDER OF FATE (1912), (1912), Mary Pi ckford ; A PUEBLO LEGEND (191 2) , Mary Pickfo rd. Mary Pickford ; RAMONA (1910) with Mary Pickford and Kate Bru ce. [aI/ photos: American Film Institute , AFI/ Robert Cushman fo r Center : BIRTH OF A NATION . Bottom : JUST LIKE A WOMAN (1912) Mary Pickford photos.] FILM COMMENT 59

The RKO studio has long been out of business, the films would be physically preserved , but profit but its film library has been maintained under the could still be made from them by the people who basic ownership of RKO General, a division of Gen- have licenses . What we were doing , in effect, was eral Tire and Rubber. The rights to the films were investing public funds for the purposes of long-run licensed off seventeen ways from Sunday. RKO public interest, while furthering the short-run private maintained TV rights in major markets in North interest of the people who owned the films. America . Another company had TV rights in Western Europe, and yet another company had theatrical FILM COMMENT: So you actually save the com- rights for certain films . To add to the confusion , panies money? two more companies had divided the non-theatrical rights for the duration of the copyright. Yet another SHEPARD: Relieving companies of the problems company had all the other rights in other parts of the of safety film transfer, storage charges and film world . All of the negatives were stored in vaults on handling (that is, pulling something out and shipping Long Island and in a New York laboratory, and any- it off when you need one print made once every one who had any legitimate claim to access could go two or three years) is one of the most appealing in and make prints . The material was deteriorating elements in the AFI preservation program. It can very rapidly because it was nobody's sole responsi- be justified in commercial terms to a company bil ity to care for the films . For instance, the people whose business is still to preserve films only as a who held overseas theatrical rights would ship a business asset-that is, to make money with them negative down to Chile to make two prints in a wherever they can but to spend less on them than laboratory there and they 'd tear the hell out of it they bring in from them. and patch it with Scotch tape . Two reels of sound track would get lost in transit on the way back and We have found in many instances that we can 't no one would check to see if the film was complete get film by appealing to the long range· cultural on arrival. Furthermore, the terms of sale required interests or the altruism of the people in the com- that the negatives remain the basic property of RKO pany who are genuinely concerned with the art of General. But a French company which owned the film . Rather, we get results by going to·the man who remaining worldwide rights was stuck with the re- is the controller of the company and saying , \" You sponsibility for maintenance and physical storage-a know how much money you ' re spending on those very expensive, and to them unprofitable, burden . vaults each year? What do you think you could get It was , in other words , a mess. The attractiveness for that real estate if you didn 't have to keep film of the AFI-Library of Congress program was precise- on it? \" In addition , another benefit to the companies ly this : The Institute negotiated the deposit of the has been a tax advantage . A deposit can be con- films and the Library manages the storage and verted to an outright gift at any time , so the company transfer to safety stock, with funds partially supplied can take a tax benefit from it when it needs to . by the Institute. This relieved the company of enor- mous storage problems. The films were shipped to FILM COMMENT: Are the savings the only reason Washington where they were inspected , stored and the companies cooperate? put in order. Then , using funds supplied by the government and the Institute, the films which were SHEPARD : The motivations vary from company selected for permanent preservation are transferred to company. For example, United Artists was keenly to safety base master copies ( in this case positive interested in the tax advantage, but they were also fine grains because the original material was all genuinely interested in the preservation of their negative). The master copies are to be preserved films . They have been extremely generous with ma- in the Library of Congress as the Property of the terial that belongs to them which they feel has some people of the United States. However, the rights of scholarly or historic interest. They've given a lot of use remain exclusively with the copyright holders their corporate papers to the University of Wisconsin for the duration of the copyright. This means that and have deposited 16mm prints of the RKO Library and the pre-1948 Warner Brothers Library with the HUMOROUS University of Wisconsin for study purposes. PHASES In the case of Paramount Pictures , we were for- OF FUNNY tunate enough to find a young lawyer in the com- FACES (1906) . pany who was devoted enough to film to be con- The earliest known cerned with the fact that these pictures were disap- US animation pearing at an alarming rate. I think that in the four years preceding Paramount's gift of about 90 feature film . films to us , they had scrapped about 70 silent pic- tures-in many cases the last copies . In November, 1968, Paramount gave the Library of Congress 90 features which they said were all that remained of their silent film library. Between November and the following April when the films were finally shipped , 13 of them had deteriorated . Fortunately, we were able to locate another 65 films stored in New Jersey which the company had overlooked when they gave us the initial group. Then , when we found those, they again said that was all they thought they had , but we again found another 75 stored in Hollywood . As a result , we are getting a representative sample of Paramount's production of the silent era. But it 60 WINTER 1971-72

wasn't so much from any commercial desire but duplication are very few. But it's amazing which films from a genuine concern for the public interest that do occasionally turn up in duplicate and triplicate they deposited their films. prints. I think I've found three prints of the same hand-colored 1904 trick film . We do occasionally FILM COMMENT: How do you actually acquire find double prints of Columbia features from the films from the companies? Twenties. But usually, when a film turns up, the odds are overwhelming that it's going to be a unique SHEPARD : The motion picture companies de- copy, and it's going to be a 35mm nitrate print. posit their materials in the Library of Congress in what has been named The American Institute Film FILM COMMENT: What arrangements do you Collection . The arrangement varies again from company to company , as to whether it is an outnght make with private collectors? gift, a deposit for a period of time, or a loan of SHEPARD : We have developed an exchange re- material. In the case of Twentieth Century-Fo x and Warner Brothers direct (as distinct from Warner lationship with private collectors . What we do is copy Brothers films owned by United Artists Television) , the nitrate they provide, give the safety copies to they don 't make bulk deposits of material but they the Library of Congress, and then if there is no make the films available to us title by title as we copyright restriction , we exchange the nitrate origi- can afford to execute the transfer. We ask for the nals with other collectors for the privilege of copying title based on our priorities and they send it, with other nitrate films in their collections which they the understanding that we copy it immediately. want to retain but which we would like to duplicate. With especially important films , we simply turn the FILM COMMENT: Have all the acquired films original over to the Library of Congress and they been transferred? take on the responsibility for copying it and also wil l conserve the original as long as it is possible . LaS! SHEPARD : Up to now , approximately 500 nitrate year, we found original negatives dating back before films have been converted to safety stock under the the turn of the century through 1906 on some Vi- AFI-Library of Congress preservation agreement. All tagraph pictures, including the very first animated of the Paramount titles have been converted . Some cartoon , HUMOROUS PHASES OF FUNNY FACES . We of the private collections we 've acquired have been obviously aren 't going to barter off that original transferred , but the bulk deposits of the studios material. We have original negative material on THE have, by and large, not been converted yet en BIRTH OF A NATION , outtakes of the film, as well as masse. Conversion to acetate is an exceedingly a portion of the original negative of the cut film. expensive process , so what we must do is transfer The material is being conserved until a method is first those films on which no other copies are known found to lift the emulsion off the nitrate base and to exist. For example , in the case of a film in which put it on some other kind of material , so that all there is no fine grain anywhere , and we have been of the original photographic quality can be retained . given the original negatives, we would make a pres- The National Film Board of Canada has successfully ervation fine grain. Many of the companies retained experimented with this process and is now preserv- fine grains and gave us the negatives. Where the ing very important Canadian films this way. negative is the sole existing copy , we try to convert it immediately. In each case we are attempting to FILM COMMENT: You have been picking films preserve the best surviving material. In some cases , out all over the country for two years. Have you it may be from a fine grain ; in others a third-genera- found any important films that turned up by ac- tion print is all that remains. Every archivist has had cident? the unfortunate experience of spending funds on inferior preservation material, thinking it unique , SHEPARD : The films that have come to us in large only to learn afterward that better material has been collections , that is large deposits in one place , have turned up. But sometimes you have to act to save belonged primarily to older people. One of our first whatever you have in hand , especially when the big collections came to us from a man in New Jersey material has already begun to decompose. named George Marshall who was, I guess, about 70 years old. He had operated an automobile elec- FILM COMMENT: 00 you find film outside other trical repair shop in Vineland , New Jersey, for years, institutions and company vaults? outside of which hung a huge sign that simply said \" Old Films Bought and Sold. \" In the back of his SHEPARD : We have also turned up considerable shop , he had accumulated about 350 reels of nitrate . numbers, roughly 1800, of motion pictures which His interest was in pictures he had seen as a boy , are not in any of the major studios ' collections. The all films made prior to 1920. He didn't care about films that we locate in private collections are , in the features of the Twenties , which is what most private main , acquired by the American Film Institute and collectors are looking for . He was especially hung then donated or deposited by AFI in the Library of up on one-reel subjects. To guard against the loss Congress. The Library does not have a procedure of his collection through diSintegration , he had built either to expend funds for film acquisition , to beat himself a reduction printer, a contact printer, and the bush looking for films, or to make contacts or a negative-positive developing machine. When he arrangements with private collectors . But we do wasn 't fi x ing ignitions, he would copy these pictures have that mechanism , and that's a large part of my onto safety film just for his own private use. So when job. we secured his collection , it contained not only a lot of originals but also a lot of unique copies of FILM COMMENT: Aren 't these titles just dupli- prints which had long since disappeared. He loved cates? Are they worth saving? these films and was extremely sorry to see them SHEPARD : Most of the titles we find in the hands of private collectors are unique. The instances of FILM COMMENT 61

go , but he had been confined for some years to know that it had already been preserved by Eastman a wheelchair and had reached the point where he House . So we not only copied it ourselves but also could no longer get up to get the films and run the used that print in a public show (at the New York projector. He knew that his films were rotting and Film Festival) and claimed not so much that we had he wanted to see them preserved . His reduction preserved this film , but that this film was from the printer turned out to be an extremely well-con- AFI Collection , which in fact it was . But the implica- structed machine which had , through long prag- tion could have been drawn that we had \" saved\" matic experience, been altered in a way that would it, which wasn 't true. The matter has now been pretty solve almost all the problems one runs into work ing well aired between Eastman House and ourselves, with old nitrate film . We told a laboratory that does and I think they have come to see it was an honest extremely high quality work about the existence of error on our part. his machine and they bought it and have since been using it to do work for us. FILM COMMENT: Are you cooperating with East- man House at the present time? Another large collection belonged to an old Rus- sian projectionist in San Francisco by the name of SHEPARD: In spite of some misunderstandings Mr. Post, who had come to this country shortly after with Eastman House in the preservation program the Revolution and had fallen in love with the city whicn perSist , we are cooperating in other areas. of San Francisco. The most interesting part of his Eastman House is collaborating with us on the pre- collection was an accumulation of over 15 ,000 feet paration of the volume of the AFI Catalog covering of newsreel stories on the history of San Francisco , films from 1893-1911 . Jim Card and George Pratt beginning back before the earthquake and going are on the editorial advisory board of the Catalog up through about 1934. This is one of the finest and we have had a full-time employee working at deposits we found in anyone spot on the history Eastman House gathering data on this early period of a particular urban center and the way it devel- out of Pratt's files . Eastman House is in a royal- oped. He also had a very large number of two-reel ty-sharing situation with AFI on that volume, and comedies and feature films which he had acquired the volume of the 1911-1920 decade. But, sadly, mostly in the late 1920s. He never liked talking pic- there has not been much cooperation in the archive tures because of his trouble understanding English . area. It's largely a matter of motives and personality He thought that for ethnic markets such as his own , and nothing to do with any institutional objectives silent films would always be popular. He began or prerogatives. There have been lapses on the AFI buying out old exchanges with the idea of operating side . There have been isolated incidents which they a rental library of these films when everyone else have heard about from third parties and that we 've had converted over to talkies , a plan which never heard about from third parties which have but- materialized but which helped save a great many tressed an atmosphere of distrust which is really pictures . quite unfortunate. I think the air should be cleared and that there should be cooperation because there Just recently , we 've acquired a collection we are so few people working in this field relative to heard about in New South Wales , Austra lia. Some- what needs to be done. It's simply absurd and one in the distributing business in that remote place short-sighted for there to be any kind of quarrels. since 1909 had saved all the pictures he liked up But the film archives world does seem to be full through around 1935. The man died five years ago of largely unmotivated quarrels. The world of film and his wife has spent a lot of her spare time since archives , at times, appears to be divided into two then winding through what is apparently a very large camps: the FIAF group; and the other group, which number of films . She is trying to interest archives is led by Henri Langlois and James Card , who won't in the country of origin of each picture to take them have anything to do with the FIAF group except and preserve them under whatever basis they can occasionally as acts of individual friendship , but afford to get them. Her husband was an aviation nothing of a formal way . There are two archives in nut and his library includes as its specialty an Italy and they won 't have anything to do with each eight-page listing of early newsreel stories about other. There are two archives in Austria and they aviation prior to 1930. It has perhaps 15 or 18 Amer- won 't have anything to do with each other, and it's ican features that are unique, as well as some that preposterous. we have copies of, and some early shorts and some original export negatives of Chaplin and other co- FILM COMMENT: Is everything you do open to medians , which if they turn out to be good for the the public? period , might be the best material from those pic- tures. SHEPARD: Everything in the AFI Collection at the Library of Congress and in the national collection FILM COMMENT: I 've heard complaints that is open to the public. There are no secret holdings, sometimes copies of films which have been pre- though we may occasionally withhold the source served by the Museum of Modern Art or Eastman of a film as a condition of the gift, but that happens House are sort of swept up by the Institute for the very seldom. Anyone can find out what films are AFI Collection and the Institute then claims credit in the collection and what physical materials we for preserving them. have on each picture. The catalog cards of the Motion Picture Section are changed within two or SHEPARD: There was one specific instance in three weeks of any development. Readers who are which that did occur , but it was an absolutely inad- vertent error. The film was THE OLD DARK HOUSE . interested in doing research could write in, state Universal gave us the film and we simply did not the area in which they are interested, ask about specific titles they need or whether we have other 62 WINTER 1971-72

films which they didn 't think of but which we might suggest as appropriate to their area of study , what would be available on each one, when they could come down and see it, and so forth . There's no charge for this. FILM COMMENT: What is your relationship with the Museum of Modern Art? SHEPARD : We have worked cooperatively with the Museum of Modern Art to share preservation costs . THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM was a shared project-we split the cost of preserving it. In the Library of Congress , it is identified as part of the AFI Collection . If we were to do any publicity on it, we would list it as AFI-Museum of Modern Art . STARK LOVE was another cooperative situation . The Museum of Modern Art obtained the material from Czechoslovakia and we provided English titles. The Museum has also supplied films to us on which they had original materials which they couldn 't afford to copy at the time, or they wanted to speed up the transfer process, so they split them up and sent a number to the Library of Congress where the films were copied by the Library with our funds . That identifies them as part of the AFI Collec- tion , with the Museum of Modern Art listed as the source. We make whatever preservation materials are required for a particular picture, materials which are accessible as a source to draw prints , but we would only draw prints for third parties with their permission , and of course that of the copyright owner if that is applicable . We've done this with , I don 't know, ten or twelve features . Recently, we have sent some nitrate film to be copied by the Museum of Modern Art. On THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM we divided the cost of preservation materi- als. The color negative goes into the Library of Congress deep freeze color vaults in Dayton , Ohio. The print stays with the Museum to satisfy their need to be able to show the film on their premises. The print is available to us if we want to show it, and it's available for them to loan it to other places, with our permission . It's a very nice, equitable rela- tionship. The same kind of thing could exist with archives allover the world and does with some. The British Film Institute has copied some American pictures for us that have been found in England , and we 've copied some British pictures for them which have been found here, and just exchanged copies . FILM COMMENT: What about the commercial use of films you have preserved? SHEPARD: This brings up the complexities of copyright and restrictions on gifts. When there is no restriction on a gift of films on which the copy- right has expired , the films may be copies for people to use commercially. Blackhawk. Films gets a lot of material from the Library of Congress , and so does Murray Glass' MG films and various television sta- tions. The Library isn't really set up to handle re- From top : Nitrate films were stored in these old concrete vaults, some with tin roofs , built without temperature or humidity con- trols. As a result, some films deteriorated beyond the point of preservation and the cans they were stored in rusted through . At the bottom , a deteriorated part of a film which was rescued just in time by the AFI ; THE BLUE EAGLE (1926) . FILM COMMENT 63

quests like a working commercial film library but films to be preserved and a very short time to do to the extent that they can , they cooperate. the work if they are to be saved . When I first heard that the Institute had budgeted $750 ,000 to copy There are some gifts of films whose copyright films , I thought it would be impossible to spend such has expired , but there are nonetheless definite re- a huge amount of money . But it turns out to be a strictions placed on the gift. For example, Mary pitifully small amount when you start looking at the Pickford donated the original negatives of about 51 size of the job. D. W . Griffith Biograph films to us. We have pre- served those films in beautiful 35mm safety fine If you convert a 90-minute film from a positive grains that are almost three-dimensional in excel- print by making a 35mm duplicate negative and a lence. The gift was not restricted except that we 35mm test print , at present lab prices with all the were not to supply copies to anybody who would contract breaks we can get, it costs about $2500 . use them in any commercial way. People who apply If you were to start with an original negative, make for copies would have to sign an agreement that a fine grain and a print (you make the print first they would be used strictly non-commercially. It is to get the timing right , then use that as the basis Miss Pickford 's right to grant the gift with this re- for correction to get a really excellent fine grain), striction since she owns the material. At the same you 'd spend about $1500 . So an average figure time, some of those same films are also available would be $2000 a picture for 35mm preservation in paper prints and could be used from other physi- and about $500 a picture for 16mm preservation . cal originals without this restriction. The Library may We only do a 16mm preservation when we find a refuse to accept a gift under restrictive conditions, banged-up 35mm print where not much would be but in this case they did accept the gift with these gained by going to a 35mm negative, or where the conditions. The Pickford films are available for spe- film is of marginal importance and we want to pre- cific usage-for example, if you wanted to buy serve it for the record but not spend a lot of money copies of the Mary Pickford films for your private on it. If you figure $2000 a feature , and $50 ,000 for study or if you were operating a museum and wanted the cost of freighting the films back and forth , the to put on a show, or if you wanted to have them original $750 ,000 would transfer about 350 films , for any purpose other than commercial. These , in which is half of one year's production in the twen- fact, are exactly the kinds of situations to which Mary ties . So the resources-$650 ,000 which the Museum Pickford wants to supply her films-museums and of Modern Art has recently expended , and the initial study collections. $750,000 budgeted by AFI-may sound like a great deal , but it is nothing when you consider there are FILM COMMENT: To switch topics for a mo- probably about 30 ,000 American feature films of ment-how much money has been spent in the which perhaps half would be interesting to have for archive program on all activities? one reason or another. This is a project which can only be sustained financially by the government, SHEPARD : In the initial three-year period of the justified in terms of the long range public interest . Institute, $1 ,200 ,000 was budgeted for all Archive activities, including the Catalog , salaries , and so FILM COMMENT: Why don 't you make the money forth . Appro ximately $750 ,000 was to be spent on go further and copy everything in 16mm? the film preservation program . In actuality , we were able to spend roughly $450 ,000 . The other money SHEPARD : The cost of copying onto 16mm is did not get spent for two reasons. One was that about one-fourth the cost of transferring onto 35mm. a lot of it was diverted into other programs, particu- But we think the expense is justified for a number larly the Advanced Study Center at Greystone. The of reasons. First, if you look to the future, once other was that certain funds were made available you 've gone onto 16mm you 've pretty much taken annually and what wasn 't spent by the end of the the last step . You can 't copy it again and get much year was lost. Some money was actually lost this from it. Then shrinkage is a serious problem with way in the first year of the Institute, before the aging safety film , just as nitrate decomposition is Archives were really geared up. The detective work with aging nitrate film . There is a much greater body we had done by that time had unearthed thousands of resources available to treat shrunken 35mm film of films needing transfer and thousands more await- than 16mm. It's really as though photographs were ing acquisition. Still , the success of the program being saved in Xero x copies . When a company can in this period put constructive pressure on the Li- provide you with original negative material it would brary of Congress to allocate more funds to film really be a shame not to conserve something which preservation in the Motion Picture Section , so that suggests the quality of the original, especially when their budget for film transfer has risen each year the film 's primary interest is in its photographic since the collaborative agreement was initiated. quality. To copy a film photographed by Lee Garmes onto 16mm when you have an original negative to Most of the Institute 's $450 ,000 has gone directly work with would be an atrocity. You can , on the to the Library for preservation work. The balance other hand , get very acceptable blOWUps . We 've has been spent directly by the Institute either on done a few from 16mm to complete 35mm pictures the purchase of private collections, through ex- wh ich were missing odd reels where we could find change of converted material, or through conver- 16mm prints to fill in from . sion of the material directly which is then presented to the Library for storage. FILM COMMENT: How much money will it take to do the job on an annual basis? FILM COMMENT: How many more films are there to acquire to transfer? SHEPARD : The amount of work still to be done in preservation and the amount of money it's going SHEPARD: There are an incredible number of 64 WINTER 1971-72

to take is almost astronomic. The smallest part of tainty in adjustment from our initial emphasis on it is the films which have yet to be located and the problem of making our interest in early film acquired . The amount of film which we 've been able widely known , looking for it, and acquiring it ; to our to collect over the last two years is probably less subsequent concern and still groping search for than half the films out there waiting to be tracked enough money to actually save the films which were down . It's hardly possible for me to go any place secured and are still com ing in . for a weekend without finding a few films. If we were Despite the tight budget and the public debate able to afford the systematic pursuit of material , I on the Institute's po lices and priorities whic h have think it would be possible to keep bringing the films characterized the last year, the Archives program in at the rate of a thousand titles a year for the ne xt has maintained a respectable level of activity. The five years . Then there are all the unique cop ies of AFI Collection has grown to slightly more than 8 ,000 American films held in foreign archives . After that films. In the last year alone , more than 30 ,000 ,000 we must face the task of transferring the film on feet of nitrate have been depOSited in the Library nitrate base we already have in custody . When you through the efforts of AFI-more than was contained add the problem of color , the task is staggering . in the Library 's entire collection before 1954 . The FILM COMMENT What are you going to do to Library of Congress film printing facility , which was solve the money problem? equipped with the help of $72 ,500 in AFI support , SHEPARD : For one th ing , we have tried very hard has been in steady operation for the past five months to create more awareness on the part of people and during the first eight months of 1971 , 153 films throughout the country about the need for film pre- were converted there and in commercial labora- servation . It's hard to evaluate the success of a tories. This has been accomplished with the li- change in public attitude . We have succeeded in brary's own vastly increased Congressional appro- making people who are already oriented toward film priation for film preservation (for Fiscal 1972, aware of the fact that we are genuinely concerned $344 ,000 compared to $150 ,000 in Fiscal 1971 ) as and engaged in an all-out effort to try and preserve well as with AFI grants to the Lib rary of $50 ,000 film . We are launching a campaign to bring a wider in each of these years . If progress has not been knowledge of the need , and the problems, through spectacular , we have at least been able to keep the creation of a National Trust for Film Preserva- abreast of deterioration in the Collection and to tion-national because we hope that the Museum make some modest headway. of Modern Art and other organizations will jo in us . The total problem , however, is larger than film The intent is to promote the concept of film preser- archivists first anticipated . From what is now known vat ion rather than the work of one organization , or about the amount of early film still remain ing only one specific approach to the problem. We are re- on nitrate stock , Paul Spehr of the Library of Con- cruiting people who have celebrity status in one way gress has calculated that appro ximately 185 ,000 ,000 or another, who are truly concerned about old films , feet of film have to be copied to guarantee the and asking them to use their names, their time and complete preservation of all remaining black and their positions to stimulate public awareness and white feature and short films (together with a good support for film preservation . deal of newsreel film ) from the late 1890's to 1950, Considering the size of the problem , what is working over a period of ten years. Measured by needed is a one-time Congressional appropriation present resources of American film archives , the of funds , perhaps ten million dollars. But we are cost is staggering. If support for the complete pro- also hoping for private support to help sustain the gram cannot be found , the only choice will be selec- program at its present level right now so that at least tive acquisition and preservation , with risks of sig- we don't lose anything . Ultimately the preservation nificant omissions proportional to the size of the film of American film is going to have to be nationally sample which can be conserved . funded . The Eastman House and Museum of Modern Fortunately, hopes of Federal support are higher Art collections are each important but, the Library now than at any time in the past , and although of Congress seems the logical site for the national efforts to win a large special appropriation are still film collection . The proliferation of interest in films in their infancy, the National Endowment for the Arts throughout the country makes it extremely important approved a grant in September 1971 to The Ameri- that the Library 's film program be continued and can Film Institute wh ich will be matched by George expanded . The Library has an unbroken record of Eastman House, the Library of Congress and the more than 70 years of total integrity in the handling Museum of Modern Art, and used by them for pres- of film entrusted to its care , and it is, I think , a logical ervation of especially urgent items in their respec- institution to preserve this aspect of our cultural tive collections. The individual films to be preserved heritage. 11111111 with Endowment assistance are discussed in a com- mittee made up of arch ivists and their associates A year has elapsed between the taping session from the four institutions involved , and chances of of which this interview is a product and the appear- ance here of the edited transcript, and what may duplicating efforts or of printing from less than the sound immediate because of the currency of its publication is like a sign-post passed long ago by best available original copies are now much smaller those of us who have been working in film preserva- tion the 52 weeks since then . than at the time FILM COMMENT recorded this Looking back , my remarks seem to reflect uncer- interview. Hopefully, another year's work will leave our current circumstances in the same shadow of history now cast by present events on the situation of 1970. David Shepard FILM COMMENT 65

Flllm FA sII~II that Alice knows is the America whose business was business, the America that-as she innocently notes [Ilioll JI~in at one point-is famous for \" businessmen and on ban king and things like that. \" Admittedly, the look of the film 's costumes is vaguely Depression Provin - RliceRdomJ cial ; but the entire ethos of the film , like the entire ethos of the novel that it's based on , is unmistakably Elliott Sirkin is a graduate student at NYU . Twenties Barbarian . And, from what Stevens shows us about that peculiar era in the history of the George Stevens ' film of Booth Tarkington 's ALICE American hinterlands, it's obvious that he thinks of ADAMS was first released in America in the summer it as a period when a fairly democratic soc iety was of 1935, and the newspaper reviewers who saluted beginning to harden into a decidedly elitist one. A the movie's debut with phrases like \"a well-nigh shift in values has evidently taken place somewhere perfect film \" weren 't exaggerating . ALICE ADAMS is along the line in the movie 's world , and as one of an almost unique realistic American film of the early the characters says , \" The way things are now, sound period-unique, because there's practically no money is family .\" Stevens ' opinion of this shift isn 't need to make excuses for it. With the glaring excep- very hard to figure out: very plainly, he despises tion of its last few minutes, there 's nothing in the it. But the mold that he 's working in is still much movie that smacks of sententiousness or triviality too introspective and much too ambitious to let him or primitivism. When you measure it against the spend time simply raking provincial American soci- same exacting standards that the finest realistic ety over the coals for its willingness to desert the novels and plays of its period ask to be judged by, egalitarian credo of its frontier days. Rather, it leads ALICE ADAMS has no difficulty standing up on its own. him to someth ing a great deal more fascinating : an Very simply, it's a movie that doesn 't require the examination of the distressing effects that the supportive services of all the fancy literary talk about Twenties upheaval in rural values exerts on one Powerful Conceptions and Metaphors and Uncon- confused , unhappy young woman . Sensitive Alice scious Meanings that the defense of the average Adams , the daughter of a clerk , is the prism through \" serious\" Thirties film usually makes necessary. which Stevens observes the New Prairie, and he What George Stevens and his script-writers- handles his instrument with exemplary gentleness. Dorothy Yost and Melvin Offner-are able to achieve All through the movie , Alice 's mother rages against on ALICE ADAMS doesn 't call for crutches : it calls the way in which the same men who were the chums for analysis. and colleagues of her husband only twenty-five years ago now throw parties for thei r children to The theme of the film is the anguish of a young which Alice isn 't always considered \" good enough \" girl growing up under a social hardship; and with to be invited. The querulous tone in which Mrs. the very first image, Stevens establishes his story 's Adams voices her grievances is exasperating ; but social background . The movie opens with a short it's clear that in her indignation over the coldness of a long street banner, inscribed with the words shown her daughter by the town 's newly organized \" South Remsen , Indiana-Seventy-Fifth Jubilee first families, she's the spokeswoman for Stevens Year-The Town With A Future.\" So right from the and for the film . There really is no good reason why start , there's no question that this is Calvin Coolidge Alice should be made to feel inferior by her former country we 're in-the small-town Midwest, at a time friends; there 's only brutal snobbery. Something that when its richest inhabitants were starting to prosper happens to her at one of the society parties to which foundly moving ; her gentle relationship with her she does manage to be invited leaves no doubt about that. In between dances at Mildred Palmer's formal ball , a soignee society girl glides past her, Silently inspects the old-fashioned evening gown that she's wearing , and then giggles fatuously to her companion , \" Organdie ... well, perhaps we 're wrong. \" And Alice , who 's been managing to look lovely up until then , crumbles completely. (From this description of the way Alice is treated by the chic little vulgarian, it may sound as though the movie is guilty of caricaturing its society people , and therefore , of willfully prejud icing its case against them . However most of the film 's aristocrats are nothing like the usual Frank Capra nightmares of the undeserving rich. The majority of them come across as gracious mediocrities, and when they ' re cruel , they ' re cruel only unintentionally.) As Katharine Hepburn plays her, Alice is alive with spirit and imagination and sensibility: her stoi- cism and her sweetness and her warmth are pro- beyond anybody's wildest predictions. The America 66 WINTER 1971 -72

father and her tolerant treatment of her mother show Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray. how capable she is of unselfish affection. She 's an [all photos : Museum o f Modern Art/ Fi lm Stills Archive]. unusual girl , and the point that Stevens makes about her again and again is that this unusual girl , who 's to hear the poor girl reeling off so many awful glam- endowed with so many rare qualities, is recklessly orous lies , and not feel some outrage over the social wasting her precious gifts-wasting them because perversions that make her think so little of herself she's been made to feel that they're worthless . The as she really is. prevailing views of her society place little value on Alice's virtues ; so , she subverts them. Her elan and Alice 's predicament is an ugly one ; and Stevens, her energy are amazing , but in scene after scene , like Tarkington , suggests that the only plausible she squanders them manufacturing pathetic lies , all solution to it is for her to grow up and grow out of which revolve around the same topic: her social of it. The film is convinced that the deformed values \"position. \" But her fictions aren 't the inventions of a of Boom America have pushed its heroine into a schizophrenic or a compulsive mischief-maker, rut ; but it's also aware that she has allowed herself though . They're more than the pitiful self-aggran- to be pushed there, that by mutely accepting the dizing lies of somebody who 's been ruled out of socialite opinion of herself, she 's done a lot to bring a category that has no room for her, and who knows on her own misery. To climb out of the mess she's that she 'll be left with nothing if she accepts her in , the movie indicates , Alice is going to have to elimination sitting down . Her lack of money and learn to find fulfillment in a role that is suited to status and all the other trifling things treasured by her-one that will allow her to judge herself by stan- her peers has Alice convinced that she 's no good dards that won 't turn her into a self-denigrating as she is; to keep up a tiny shred of respect for fraud . It's not an easy switch to make , but eventually , herself, she turns her whole life into an elaborate she does make it, and the catalyst in her transfor- falsehood . By the time the movie begins , her life mation is her bittersweet summer romance with has become a matter of self-protection by any Arthur Russell . Russell , as the delighted expressions means possible: it's not assuming too much to sup- on Fred MacMurray 's face repeatedly show , is at- pose that Stevens is using that sequence at the tracted to Alice for her brio and her charm , not for Palmer 's party as a means of summarizing what her self-alleged status. But once she 's begun de- she's been going through regularly for years . An ceiving him , she can 't stop . She showers him with intensely humiliating ordeal for Alice, the scene is a more and more of the same playgirl fantasies-so series of snubs and traumas and protracted stints as a many of them that she effectively destroys any wallflower, and one jfllafje in particular emphasizes chance of a lasting relationship between them . More her terrible isolation there: a shot of the ball- than once, Alice tells Russell, \" Me , I'm just me .\" room floor, its foreground filling up with lively young But the \" me \" she presents him with is a figment couples, while she , a lonely figure in white , flutters of her imagination , and it's plain that he's going around unnoticed underneath the staircase in the to have to find that out sooner or later. Their scenes background . Stevens' masterly timing makes the en- together (particularly their one meeting in a secluded tire dance sequence seem twice as long as it actually restaurant) almost se8m to have a shadow hanging is, and dependably, Alice has a tacky pretense of over them . Stevens has them played with a faint some kind or other to see her through every painful current of doubt constantly underlying them , a feel- phase of it. The accuracy with which each of her ing of uncertainty that's reflected over and over in frantic face-sav!!lg ploys is depicted is as heart- Alice 's desperate pressing of her admirer for infor- breaking as it is unnerving. Yet by far the most mation as to what \" they \" have been telling him understandable and the most dismaying of all her about her. subterfuges are the wistful stories she tells Arthur Russell , the likable newcomer who unexpectedly When , at a catastrophically pretentious supper asks her to dance. Alice honestly can 't believe that party given by Mrs. Adams, the truth about Alice this young man , reportedly so well-connected and and her family and h-er life is finally revealed to so heavily pursued , actually could be seriously in- Russell , the shock of her unmasking has an im- terested in her. The lies she tells him-here and in mense, eye-opening impact on Alice. After the din- her next scene with him-abo~t what a dazzlingly ner, when she tries to apologize to Russell for her popular heiress she is are her misguided way of trying to make him interested . Ironically enough , even when she's fibbing badly, she still has plenty of verve and plenty of natural appeal. But experi- ences like her experiences at this dance have ap- parently taught her that nothing she is naturally is going to make any of the people around her notice her or like her; so , not surprisingly , she goes on with the snow-job, chattering away gamely about her years of dancing lessons and her posh friend- ships and her recklessly extravagant parents. Ste- vens doesn't point any accusing fingers, here or anywhere else in the movie; even so, it's impossible FILM COMM~NT 67

deceitfulness , her dialogue is made up largely of Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray. vaguely embarrassed attempts at self-justification . But the subtext of close to everyth ing that she says Lamentably, the ending that the movie actually does to him shows that she knows what a ghastly mistake have is an imbecilic fake , and because of that , for her whole approach to their attachment has been ; just two or three minutes , it becomes necessary to and half-excitedly, half-regretfully, she sends him discuss ALICE ADAMS in the same hedging , apologetic away shortly afterwards. Their farewells are expertly way in which the average Thirties character study handled ; but unfortunately, at about this point- or social consciousness film has to be discussed . where Alice is just getting ready to start revising With infuriating cowardice , at the very tail-end of her priorities-the rhythm of the film 's events accel- the film , the screenplay suddenly succumbs to the erates wildly. For some reason (studio time restric- deranged formulas of \" popular\" entertainment, and tions , most likely), Stevens suddenly starts skipping out of nowhere, a frolicsomely \" happy \" ending is steps, and the talent he's been showing for careful, dropped on the plot: Alice and Russell are absurdly detailed story-telling is abruptly shoved aside. It's re-united ; her father is going to be a rich man at disconcerting , but what, in the book , takes place last; her thieving brother will probably be let off the over a period of weeks , of months , is made to hap- hook; etc ., etc ., etc . The result-as practically every pen inside the space of roughly ten minutes; and daily critic who reviewed the film in 1935 could when the evening of the dinner party is through , see-is an idiotic and utterly inappropriate last stanza Alice hasn 't just begun to mature-she's broken with for the movie's story. All you can say for it by way the confusion and the fraudulence in her past al- of excuse is that the idiocy is too patently nonsen- together. Only moments after her romance with sical to be lethal. The last image that Stevens Russell ends, her outlook on her situation virtually presents may be a moon-lit shot of Alice , locked inverts itself: during a heated argument with her in an embrace with the improbably faithful Arthur embezzling brother's irate boss, she announces Russell. But the most memorable image in the movie what amounts to her decision to live a totally new appears way before the final fade-out, and it has kind of life. Bent on going to work in order to pay nothing to do with the starry skies of Joan Craw- back what her brother has stolen , she says , quite fordland . The image is a shot of Alice , early in the vehemently, that she knows she could make some- action , standing in front of the local business college body a good secretary-and that's what she 's and staring speculatively at the names of the prac- going to become. Of course, this decision repre- tical skills written on the stairs. That's the shot that sents an enormous step for Alice . It means abandon- stays with you long after the movie is over, and it ing the whole direction that she 's been going in for rem inds you that, no matter what sort of ridiculous so long , giving up whatever hopes she still has left things the script may say about her, Katharine Hep- of succeeding with her wealthy idols. And consider- burn 's Alice is headed for the same future as Booth ing the weight of her decision, the speed with which Tarkington 's. she's shown making it should mean only one of two Given the shoddy purpose of the movie's ending , things-either the film is lying , or she is. But as- the work done on it, by Stevens and by the Yost- tonishingly, that's not the case. A small miracle Offner screenplay-writing team , is extraordinary rescues the scene's-and Alice's-credibility: the -they almost make the insulting comic opera twists miracle is Katharine Hepburn 's acting . She plays seem logical. But then again, everything that they Alice 's vows with so much fervor and so much do on the film is extraordinary. Their sense of form inspiration that the hastiness with which they ' re -both visual and dramatic- never wavers; and made is overshadowed completely . With Katharine neither does their sense of character or their sense Hepburn playing it, Alice 's self-reversal becomes an of milieu . Granted, the materials they're working with authentic moment of epiphany, a stirring , almost are basically Booth Tarkington's. But the screen goddess-like monument to the suffering and the sensibilities through which Tark ington 's writing is elation that go into self-knowledge. Hepburn 's pas- filtered are still inarguably theirs-and especially sionate sincerity makes it unthinkable that Alice Stevens' . Hard as it is to believe , this was Stevens ' won 't do everything she says she's going to do . She first major directorial assignment, and it may also persuades you that the character really is going to stop pursuing goals that can offer her nothing but trouble and frustration , that she will , as she says , go to work. With a job of her own , Alice will know what she 's worth ; she won 't have to try to define herself ac- cording to debutante standards. True, she'll never be able to wipe out the snobbery and the materialism that have been oppressing her. But she will be able to ignore them and that's a triumph in itself. With the aud ience secure in the knowledge of that, Ste- vens really should end the film : an ending like that wouldn 't match the facts of the last pages of the novel (which see Alice calmly beginning her secre- tarial studies) , but it would match them in spirit. 68 WINTER 1971-72

humor.\" When you realize that both Fred Stone and Anne Shoemaker were making their first movie appearances here, and that the closest Katharine Hepburn had come to giving a good sceen perform- ance before this was most probably in LITTLE WOMEN , the flair can begin to look like a minor form of genius. 111I11I1 ALICE ADAMS 1935, RKO, 99 Minutes. Distributed in 16mm by Films, Inc. dire ctor George Stevens ; produ cer Pan- dro S. Berman ; screenplay Mortimer Offner, Dorothy Yost , Jane Murfin ';' ; from the n o vel by Booth Tar- kington ; photograph y Robert DeGrasse. Katharine Hepburn and Fred Mac Murray . CAST Alice Adams Katharine Hepburn Arthur Russell be the finest piece of work he 's done to date. The Fred MacMurray Mr. Adams movie's mise-en-scene isn 't halted by so much as Fred Stone Mildred Palmer a trace of the sclerosis that would some day cripple Evelyn Venable Walter Adams his films-the pace is swift , the chief points are made Frank Albertson Mrs. Adams unobtrusively, the images are soft and luminous. Ann Shoemaker Mr. Lamb Stevens ' supple shooting style is vastly superior to Charles Grapewin Frank Dowling Tarkington 's flaccid prose , as well as far more highly Grady Sutton Mrs. Palmer charged emotionally: it's able to get a great deal Hedda Hopper Mr. Palmer of agonizingly vivid feeling out of scenes that , in Jonathon Hale Malena Burns the novel , are too awkwardly presented to be any- Hattie MacDaniel Henrietta Lamb thing more than mildly upsetting. Still the true Janet McLeod Mrs. Dowling triumph of Stevens ' direction is that it touches the Virginia Howell Mrs. Dresser film with tenderness . Many of the scenes (the ones Zeffie Tilbury involving Alice and Arthur Russell, most notably) com'e with their affection for the characters built-in ; ';' Although , in the film 's credits and in the o riginal and these , Stevens directs with all the delicacy and newspaper reviews, Jane Murfin shares full screen- all the wryness that they invite. But there are also play credit with Offner and Yost, it's not very likely many opportunities for bitterness in the script , many that she actually had much to do with the movie's places where things could easily be made shrill or script. For example, the title page of the film 's \" Re- condescend ing or sad istic. And those episodes, vised Final Script \" (dated June 21 , 1935) makes no Stevens approaches with the same sweet discretion mention of her; it gives authorship cred it only to that he brings to the rest of the film . He doesn 't white- Offner and Yost , whose names frequently appear in wash the screenplay's corrosive elements, but he the headings of the manuscript's mimeographed does humanize them . To a large extent, his art con- pages . And , in a never-publ ished interview w ith sists of spotting the fundamental decency, the fine- Robert Hughes (conducted in February , 1967), ness,the aspiration , that hides behind his characters' George Stevens says: \" We didn 't have that script wretchedness ortheir melancholy or their impotence. [the script that was eventually used] when we started For example, instead of using ihe decaying re- the picture. We had a big thick script that had been lationship between Alice's squabbiing middle-age prepared by the studio . ... it [the studio-prepared parents as a source for some horrendous Gothic original] just didn 't relate to Booth Tarkington 's Alice humor, Stevens uses their marriage as a symbol of Adams. It was ali scenes about other people and the hopes and the yearning good intentions that can other things, and the kind of talk they wouldn 't use, survive in even the most horrible situations. The way and it was written by one of the renowned sce- he has Fred Stone and Anne Shoemaker play Mr. narists-you find them all around Academy Award and Mrs. Adams, you don 't scorn the two old peo- time , you know.\" In all probability, the \" renowned ple-you sympath ize with them . Unlike the d irector scenarist\" whose \" big th ick script\" Stevens rejected whose later movies would turn into crushingly con- was Jane Murfin : by 1935 , her credi~s included the descending liberal briefs, the George Stevens of this screenplays for more than forty films , many of them film is genuinely and unostentatiously a humani- written for RKO , and several of them quite success- tarian . He feels something for his characters , and ful. (The Stevens-Hughes interview , although it men- without getting mushy or trite , he's able to relay tions Mortimer Offner several times, also says noth- those feelings. Manny Farber states the case per- ing about Dorothy Yost. Stili , it is fairly safe to as- fectly when he writes that the Stevens of ALICE ADAMS su me, from the shooting script credits and headings , (and of PENN Y SERENADE) shows an uncommon flair that Dorothy Yost at least contributed something to for \" directing people so that they come out as natu- the movi,e's screenplay . Her reputation certainly was ral , warm , bright middle-class Americans whose far too small for her to qualify as the \" renowned lives have po ignancy and tact, but not much scenarist\" whose work was scrapped entirely.) FILM COMMENT 69

Fllllm FA' II~I- S shoulders draped with a befringed Spanish shawl. As she enthusiastically urges the children on , some- C;oryCorey thing quite mysterious happens: the mask begins on to reflect her joy. Then at the precise moment when we become impatient to see her real face, the mask ~oppinejj is torn off and the lady joins the dance. Happiness for the film buff is seeing a film of little And there stands the legendary Laurette Taylor, reputation and discovering it to be a masterpiece. with a rou nd moon of a face that ought not to HAPPINESS , safely tucked away in the archives of photograph well (there don 't seem to be enough George Eastman House, is such a once-in-a-blue- contours) but does: the skin glows with what even- moon fulfillment of the dream. tually is attributable only to a spiritual incandes- cence; and the eyes, enormous questioning depths, It's a wisp of a film with the kind of plot used catch the light and sparkle . It is a piquant face that over and over again as a vehicle for Mary Pickford never knows the blankness of repose, though the or Nancy Carroll or any of the other girls whose emotions flickering across it appear without disar- specialty was the poor but spunky virgin. This time ranging a muscle . Her smile , an Irish smile , makes the heroine is named Jenny Wreay, a Brooklyn tene- the whole face laugh and demands to be returned ment girl who teaches the wealthy but bored Mrs. in kind. At the age of forty (which she was in 1924), Sibyl Pole that happiness consists in \" Lookin ' for- Miss Taylor was obviously too old to play the twen- ward .\" In exchange for this bit of wisdom , Jenny tyish Jenny: this objection is registered and dis- naturally is showered with fame , wealth and true missed . With a smile, a twinkle of the eye, and a love . The film runs the gamut of emotions usual in brogue of a voice that miraculously defies the silent such stories-laughter, exuberant high-jinks, bursts screen to speak in the viewer 's inner ear, Miss Taylor of belligerence as pride is wounded, tears and , erases the years. Indeed , she passes beyond the finally , the hesitancy, coyness and flutter of first love. illusion of youth to become Youth itself. And it has that scene which is obligatory to this genre-the one in which the heroine makes a fool One begins to rela x. Nothing can be so fraught of herself at an expensive dinner by putting sugar with the possibility of disappointment as the first into the consomme or using the salad fork on the encounter with a legendary actress known only filet mignon. through books , reviews and hear-say reports , all of them glowing , all musty with age . Acting styles of It's a particularly appealing story, touching as it the past for some reason can never be grasped and does upon those almost forgotten adolescent fears appreciated as can former styles in other arts: once and faux pas we all experienced upon entering an they have died , we can never again be wooed by adult world . Dressed up with a dash of wit and the spell they formerly cast. Taylor, we are told , was featuring an engaging leading lady, it's sure-fire a naturalistic actress. Stanislavsky considered her entertainment. Rarely , however, has it played as well the great American actress, and said she had arrived as in HAPPINESS . It's a small gem of a film with such at his \" method \" by her own instincts. Naturalistic a glittering , 24-carat diamond of a performance at acting of forty years ago can seem pretty hammy its center that it becomes a major revelation. today . And , in all truth , Miss Taylor does on occasion use many of the conventional gestures and postures The film begins on a Brooklyn street, Thanks- associated with the typical early-20th-century stage giving day. A group of children of various ethnic ingenue. She does not sit, she perches; she kicks backgrounds dance in turn to the music of an organ out the left foot in moments of ex citement ; she is grinder. In the background of the shot sits Jenny, at times a shade too exuberant, too gay, too bellig- her face hidden by a grotesque Gypsy mask, her erent. Was this her usual style of acting or was it some- thing she fell back on because of indifference or condescension to screen acting? At times in her career she was accused of an \" excess zeal for natural effects\" and Laurette herself once admitted that occaSionally she tended to \" spill over \" in ev- erything she did. In her first starring role (in The Girl in Waiting in 1910) , Miss Taylor disappointed everyone by playing her role of a hoyden \" along conventional lines neither much better nor much worse than scores of smart girls on the American stage could.\" When actors are nervous or bored or tired , they tend to fall back on all the little man- nerisms that they know will please an audience . For whatever reason , there is more than a little such compromising in Miss Taylor's HAPPINESS perform- ance . In the light of her over-all accomplishment , how- ever , this is quibbling . The miracle that Miss Taylor 70 WINTER 1971-72

works upon her stock character can best be ap- Laurette Taylor and Pat O' Malley. proached by describing what another actress does [all photos : Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive] . in a similar vehicle . In the 1927 MY BEST GIRL (directed by Sam Taylor) , Mary Pickford played a character Hedda Hopper and Laurette Taylor. very similar to Jenny_Both heroines are shop girls ; Pat O'Malley and Laurette Taylor. both get involved with the filthy rich (Miss Pickford eats the lobster cocktail with a spoon) : both find true happiness; the gamut of emotion is the same . In almost every way , MY BEST GIRL is a better film than HAPPINESS : it is more \" cinematic ,\" the script is better constructed , the supporting characters more individualized , the direction has more spirit. Where it fails to measure up is in the central per- formance. Miss Pickford (in one of her lesser performances) goes after the comedy moments like a bird dog after dead quail. She zeroes in on the script , playing it point by point, quite cleverly at times, but never giving us any sense of a whole or real character. In a final scena, she attempts to persuade the rich boy that loves her that she is just another floozy after his money. It's quite a performance-the sce- nery is in shreds by the time she finishes. She goes from the cheap floozy she is enacting to the grand , sacrificing kid who is putting on this swell perform- ance. Pickford can get from the toughness on the surface to the tears just beneath . But she can 't play them simultaneously, and she can 't prevent us from seeing her shift gears as she goes along. Miss Taylor can play any emotion , two by two , or a dozen all at once. She too has her big scene- one ' in which she meets the man she loves , an electrician / inventor. It has lots of coy business con- cerning sandwiches and glass fruit and squatting on the floor . There is also an enormous range of shifting , simple emotion . Miss Taylor's playing of this scene (which was the talk of Broadway when she played it on the stage) is as delicate as Miss Pick- ford 's handling of her big scene is florid. In fact, despite the conventions she adheres to , there is no sense that Miss Taylor is playing anything . At its very best , this is acting so perfect that it doesn't feel like a performance at all. Each gesture , each movement comes from within-and each is inexpli- cably right. What she does is so rich in imagination and so spontaneous in execution that one believes that, were she to do a scene over again on the spot, she might do it an entirely different way , equally right and equally striking. It's a brash performance, a bold one, and yet delicate and tender and witty and profound. Like all great stars , Miss Taylor has the uncanny ability of riveting attention upon herself. It isn 't up- staging and it isn 't, as it might seem , just a case of star acting. There are too many details, too much color , too much that is unquestionably genuine for this to be a case of a star parading The Emperor's New Clothes. As all the critics pOinted out , Miss Taylor's performances in shopworn roles (on which she founded her career) had a meaning much greater than would appear in the script. She trans- cended them to make art from what was essentially buncombe. How she did it, even what she did , can- not be analyzed, simply because all the technique FILM COMMENT 71

and skill and instinct and planning that went into tightly and cleanly as the film is directed , I think it have become so many transparent threads in the fin ished performance . One can only sit before her it is less his film than Manners ' and Taylor's . (In Jenny and wonder. And be moved-for by reaching to the heart of her character, Miss Taylor has his autobiography , A Tree is a Tree , he does not touched ours and opened doors in our imagination as o nly the very greatest art can do . mention it.) Still , he played a large part in Miss These Seidlitz hysterics concluded , let me add Taylor's screen career. Against his better judg- that though Miss Taylor is most of the show , she is not all of it. The screenplay of HAPPINESS was ment , he directed her first film , PEG 0 ' MY HEART written by J . Hartley Manners, Miss Taylor 's husband , who wrote most of the actress ' plays in the early in 1922. His unwillingness arose from the fact that years of her career . Peg 0 ' My Heart in 1912 was one of the great successes of the American theater. he had seen a screen test made of Miss Taylor- It made Laurette one of the great stars and it es- tablished Manners as a playwright. It also created under the supervision of D. W. Griffith-in which she an image for Laurette . To the public , she was the spunky , down-to-earth , quick-tempered Irish- evidently appeared so ancient that Vidor despaired American colleen who knew the answer to the riddle of life . Try as she would , the public would rarely of ever creating the illusion of a youthful Peg . When accept her so enthusiastically as when she played another of Manners ' endless variations on Peg . If he saw her in person , he was encouraged and after she stepped too far out of Peg 's shadow, the bo x- office suffered , causing Miss Taylor to scurry back making tests of her from every possible angle, dis- to another version of Peg . Happiness, written in 1917 , was finished in a rush during one of these covered methods of emphasizing her youthful quali- emergencies and it proved to be one of the actress ' greatest successes. ties . On the first day of shooting on PEG , Laurette Manners is almost forgotten today . With the ex- was headstrong , insisting on doing things her way. ception of Peg 0 ' My Heart, all of his plays are out-of-print. From the little that can be found of his Vidor acquiesced , showed her the daily rushes, thus work , o ne must concur w ith the contemporary critics who dismissed him as a second-rate playwright. He convincing her that, in the ways of the screen , he was poor at dramatic construction , as HAPPINESS shows. A sub-plot concerning Jenny's mother and knew better than she. her search for the husband who has deserted her in not inherently related to the over-all story : Mama HAPPINESS is the kind of cozy and giddy comedy dies, in fact , before Jenny gets up the gumption to tell her that Dad ran off with a husky cabaret that Vidor directed so well in the silent period (films dancer. Similarly, Jenny's relationship with the rich Mrs . Pole is only tenuously linked to the outcome that are much more effective today than the inflated of Jenny's story. After Jenny refuses Mrs. Pole's help in starting a shop , the wealthy divorcee merely epics upon which his reputation rests) . Here, how- stands around smiling graciously. ever, Vidor limits himself to being the expert crafts- But for all of their deficiencies, I like Hartley Manners ' plays. At least, I like Peg and Happiness. man . He gives the film enough of a flow that it rarely As is true of much pre-1930 's American drama, they ' re a great deal better than anyone has allowed seems merely the faithfu I adaptation of a stage play. and a lot better than by all rights they should be . They ' re conce ived in conventions , geared to the There is an absolutely correct judgment as to cam- actor , put together with spit , and they moralize in cliches-and yet there 's something so sunny about era- placement in relation to the action and the star. them , something so graceful and kindly and fresh in the sensibility that lies behind them , that one Beyond this, one doubts that Vidor did very much . happily enters their world of cardboard make- believe . Happiness, in particular , smiles at the very Most of the business is remarkably simi liar to that conventions and platitudes it seems to be promot- ing , but it never smirks . Manners wrote many of described in reviews of the original play . Laurette's more winning characteristics into the roles he created for her and , because he loved her, Miss Taylor was to make only one other film , ONE that love becomes invisibly interwoven into the characters . Even on the written page one feels it, NIGHT IN ROME , also in 1924. She had never been and with Laurette embodying the character, it en- velops the spectator. very interested in a film career ; she considered it I have left King Vidor to the last because , as only as a method of financing a repertory company she hoped to open on Broadway. She considered her performance in ONE NIGHT IN ROME (which , signi- ficantly , was not directed by Vidor) the worst she ever gave. Also , at this period , the drinking began . George Cukor, among others, would attempt to bring her back to Hollywood , but she was never well enough or sober enough to follow through on these plans. The tragic futility of this blighted career can- not really be understood until one sees that laughing face and comes under the spell of her magic. One hopes that the reports that PEG 0 ' MY HEART is a lost film are not true , so that there will be at least one other record of the woman Stark Young summed up so beautifully as \" the real and first talent of them all. \" 11111111 HAPPINESS 1924, Metro, 76 minutes. director King Vidor; screenplay J. Hartley Manners from his play; photography Chester A. Lyons. CAST Jenny Wreay Laurette Taylor Fermoy McDonough Pat O'Malley Mrs. Sibyl Pole Hedda Hopper Philip Chandos Cyril Chadwick Mrs. Wreay Edith Yorke Rosselstein Lawrence Grant Sallie Perkins Patterson Dial 72 WINTER 1971-72

Copyright © 1971, H oward R ufln er It tool{. more than guts to cover I(ent State \"1 heard people telling me to stop of America's most su ccessful photog- Take the first step taking pictures. 1 kept saying 'This raphers distilled from their own ca- is the way the story will have to be r ee r s into a uniqu e hom e -study Do you have an aptitude for pho- told' .\" co ur se. But in st e ad of l a borin g tograph y? Find out by sending for through th e years and trial and error our fr ee A ptitud e T est. A m ember of And it was. it took them to reach the top, you our staff will grade it and evaluate Howard Ruffner's photographs of study only th e tested m ethods that your ability. There's no cost or obli- the K ent S tate tra ge dy were pub- brought them success. And you work gation . We'll also send you an illus- lished on th e cover of Life magazine at home, in your spare time, at your trated brochure about our School and in hundreds of other magazines own pace. and its unusual m ethod of instruc- and newspapers around the world. tion. He won the George Polk Memorial Of course, the famou s photogra- Award, one of the highest honors in phers th em selves don't work on your Fill in the coupon below and photojournalism. pictures. But each time you send an m ail it now for your free T est and Yet Howard is still only a student assignment to th e School, a skilled brochure. Find out if you have at Kent State. professional photographer gives it what it takes. How did he come so far, so fast? his undivided, personal attention. Not on guts alone. Howard credits Hi s special overlays, drawings, and Famous Pholographers School the Famous Photographers School. diagrams show you how to im prove Westport , Co nnecti cu t 06880 \" It gave me direction,\" he says. \"Not your pi ctures-and h e also gives you only technical ability, but a way of hints for making your pictures more I wan t to rece ive. wit ho u t cos t o r o b li ga tio n. y O U T seeing and photographing the every- saleable. It is almost like having an Ph o l ogra ph i(' Ap tit ud e T es t a nd t h e ill us t ra te d b ro - day situ ations th at most people i g- experienced photograph er sitting be- ch ure d esc rib ing you r h o me ·s tu dy co urse in p h o t o~· nore. 1 have become visuall y involve d side yo u, passin g along hi s most valu- mph )'. with m y en vironment.\" able secrets. If you have an aptitude for photog- Mr. raphy-and if you are interested in While no one can promise success, developing it-you can take the same the F amous Photographers School ~'fr s . . '....................... ............................... A /: c \". Famous Photographers Course that has helped many men and women started Howard on his way. You learn develop their natural talent-and be- ~ I i !is [ Circle o nc and please prin!] the m ethods and techniques that ten come full-tim e or part-time profes- sionals. S treet '\". Apt. Cit y .. State . .. .......................... ................. Zip . oApp roved fo r \" cle rno's ed ucatio n. P·303 9 Chec k her e if YOII a rc c li ~ ibl c .

CRITICS been instrumental in suggesting fresh approaches to particular directors and films : Wood , after all , is some- This is the first in a series of regular appraisals thing of a pioneer in the recent film paperback e xplo- of major film critics. sion , and his common-sensical , detailed discussions of both intellectual and popular filmmakers have set HITCHCOCK'S FILMS the tone for much of the sober deep-think pieces which BY ROBIN WOOD are becoming the customary currency of film writing. Paperback Library, New York, 1970; $1.25; 223 pages, illustrated. Wood 's three most widely-read books-on Hitch- HOWARD HAWKS cock , Hawks, and Bergman-indicate his general meth- BY ROBIN WOOD ods of procedure. Ascribing to no particular theory, Doubleday & Company, Inc. , Garden City, New York , other than the implicit assumption of the omnipresence 1968; $2.95 ; 200 pages, illustrated. of directorial Signature, Wood focuses on such typical INGMAR BERGMAN concerns of literary criticism as theme, structure , sym- BY ROBIN WOOD bolism , characterization , dialogue. At the conclusion Praeger, New York , 1969; $2.95 ; 191 pages , illus- of his book on Hawks, Wood acknowledges \" a general trated . indebtedness to the criticism of Dr . F. R. Leavis . There is no question of direct influence (I should be surprised REVIEWED BY FOSTER HIRSCH to learn that Dr. Leavis had ever heard of Howard Foster Hirsch teaches at Brooklyn College and has Hawks); but I feel that any strength this book may be felt to have derives from the basis of critical values contributed film criticism to The New York Times . that Dr. Leavis 's work has given me.\" Wood , clearly , is very much the academically-trained critic-there is When he was asked to offer a book-jacket comment virtually nothing of the amiably relaxed stance of the on James Agee 's collected film criticism, W .H. Auden popular journalist in his writing. Wood 's \"hard \" writing predicted (with ill-concealed displeasure) that Agee's is stripped of mass magazine congeniality , but his criticism would one day be the subject of a Ph .D. measured prose needs a little showmanship: Wood 's dissertation. That day-of scholarly attention to all careful analyses would be complemented by some aspects of film-has certainly arrived, and on a scale livelier verbal footwork. that the sceptical Auden had probably not envisioned. The rapid elevation of film as a field of legitimate aca- Wood 's greatest indebtedness to the methods of demic inquiry need hardly be a gloomy prospect, but literary criticism is one which all auteurists share : the a joyless and academically ritualized approach to film insistence on judging a particular film within the context is surely something to guard against , especially at a of a director's entire output. There is hardly a page time when film criticism is being written more and more in Woods' books which does not contain references by academically-trained sensibilities , when articles on to the director's previous work. This kind of antecedent film are finding their way into traditional scholarly jour- reference has long been the measure of a literary nals ( \" Mythic Paradigms in the Early Works of Go- critic 's credentials : to have mastered an artist's entire dard \" -as an article in PMLA-is not that far away from canon is to allow for no superficial judgments. And us), and when the number of serious film books and Wood is anything but superficial. informed articles bespeaks a need for something com- parable to an annual bibliography. Pedantry , archivist For all his similarity to the literary critic , Wood nec- self-enclosure, jargon-clogged prose are the plagues essarily differs from his counterpart in several ways . of much literary scholarship: as film becomes increas- Unlike the literary critic, Wood does not have the benefit ingly part of the intellectual establishment, the same of a te xt on his writing desk . The fact that a film is rush toward academic institutionalization is beginning seen rather than read does not prevent Wood from to be observable. Too many critics and teachers of very close \" textual \" analysis , however, and it is his literature lose sight of the fact that literatur.e is intended quite remarkable visual memory, his ability to recreate to be enjoyable; hopefully, critics and teachers of film a sequence of shots and camera movements and then won 't need to be reminded of why people go to films. to connect the use of film materials to thematic devel- opment which certifies Wood's status as a critic of film . If the field is in need of guidelines , those set down Unlike the literary critic , who has the accumulated in the directors' studies by Robin Wood are a profitable weight of centuries of respectable forebears behind beginning. At the moment, Wood occupies the pre- him , Wood occasionally feels compelled to impress his eminent position with respect to film books that Eric readers with the cultural respectability of his subject. Bentley enjoyed in relation to drama books in the 50s Consequently, his books contain ample comparisons and 60s . Like Bentley , Wood is seemingly ubiquitous , of films with literature, art, and music. Conrad's Heart defensive about works which he feels have been un- of Darkness is used several times as a thematic corre- justly underrated, anxious to correct common misin- terpretations of popular works and to explore possibil- spondent to Hitchcock; less happily, D. H. Lawrence ities for re-interpretation. Bentley \" discovered\" a whole range of modern continental dramatists, and he un- is adduced as an analogue to Bergman; most unfortu- covered many \" lost\" American plays; Wood hasn 't yet nately of all , Shakespeare is invok-ed as a companion accomplished such feats of resuscitation , but he has to Hitchcock. Wood 's intellectual self-consciousness is clearly attributable to his desire to validate film (par- ticularly the popular films of Hitchcock and Hawks) as a subject suitable for rigorous investigation. Yet to scurry for comparisons between Hitchcock and Shake- speare does no service to either figure , and introduces a sense of historical and cultural. dislocation. Surely Wood's readers don't need this kind of prodding, don't need to be told that Hitchcock and Hawks are true artists . What his readers want to know (and Wood is certainly qualified to tell them) is how the high achieve- ment of these directors is manifested . But Wood's insecurity about Hitchcock and 74 WINTER 1971-72

Hawks-his eagerness to defend them against the phil- Wood is defensive about his admiration for Hitch- istine unbelievers, his concern to certify their artistic credentials-gives the two books an impetus which is cock: \" VERTIGO seems to me Hitchcock 's masterpiece largely missing in the Bergman book . Bergman is an intellectual filmmaker-there can be no doubt about to date, and one of the four or five most profound and that-and Wood can treat Bergman's work with his characteristic high seriousness without ever having to beautiful films the cinema has yet given us . This is a apologize. Bergman 's films are immediately accessible to all the traditional critical apparatus which Wood uses , claim that may surprise, even amuse , the majority of but the work of Hitchcock and especially Hawks offers some resistance to Wood 's scholarly diction ; Wood's my readers ... \" Yet it is this type of proud posses- battles with popular materials in order to incorporate them into his usual framework yield some lively critical siveness which gives a needed charge to Wood 's writ- juggling. The sense of a challenge-to prove to those not in the know the excellence of Hitchcock 's and ing . His going into battle for the honor of MARNIE yields Hawks' achievement-pushes Wood to some of his sharpest, if occasionally excessive, observations. some of his most persuasive, closely reasoned criticism . The Bergman book, sturdy, sensible, contains fewer For all his sensitivity to the typical lines of anti-H itch- surprises . Critic meets filmmaker in filmmaker 's own terms : there are no intellectualized impositions , all the cock criticism , Wood is , however , peculiarly reticent talk about archetypal patterns, thematic continuity, organic structure , is perfectly congenial to the atmo- on the subject of acting , a touchy subject which any sphere of the films under analysis. Wood's organiza- tion is chronological , films are neatly (perhaps too Hitchcock admirer must make his peace with. Except neatly) subdivided into series: from early sequences like Innocence and Experience (SUMMER INTERLUDE , for scattered defenses and admissions (Kim Novak was SUMMER WITH MONIKA , WAITING WOMEN) to Lessons in Love, The Trilogy, and The World Without, The World \" flawless \" as Madeleine, though \" there are moments Within (PERSONA , HOUR OF THE WOLF , SHAME). when one wants more inwardness from her Judy,\" The most unconventional aspect of the book is Wood's surprising emphasis on acting (\"If one were Farley Granger wasn't fully equal to the demands of asked to name the cinema's greatest director of women , the automatic response would probably be 'George his role in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) , the rest is silence Cukor .' But on further reflection one might be tempted to retract this and say ' No-Ingmar Bergman .' \" ) One so far as that deadpan , marionette acting is concerned . of Wood ' s basic organizing principles is his division of Bergman 's work into periods according to actress. With Hawks, as with Hitchcock, Wood 's defensive- Wood attributes to Bergman 's exploration of a particu- lar actress' personality a stimulus for thematic motifs. ness, his proprietary air, goads him into a continual In these days when directors, cameramen , and screenwriters are the acknowledged heroes, the actor's alertness and vigilance . Wood 's belief in the imprint contribution has been largely ignored or taken for granted . Wood 's appreciation of Bergman 's extraor- of directorial personality is harder to maintain with dinary repertory company is judicious ; it's refreshing to have sustained criticism on the implications of actors' Hawks than it is with either Bergman or Hitchcock, and personae. Wood occasionally seems to be making a case for Even the most intellectually humble daily reviewer tries to discuss Bergman 's films in terms of \" religious Hawks ' personality o'n the absence of radical tempera- significance\" or \"philosophical doubt. \" When such comparably grandiose terms are applied to Hitchcock, ment or eccentricity, presenting Hawks as the disci- there is a sense that critical manner is not precisely keyed to artistic matter. Yet it is the mark of Wood's plined craftsman working efficiently within traditional skill that his analysis of Hitchcock, written in the same scholarly (though slightly more ruffled) prose as the genres . In trying to establish a unified sense of the Bergman book , manages to convince . Wood is particu- larly concerned with Hitchcock's complex moral tone Hawks canon , Wood works overtime in discovering and with our ambivalent moral responses , and , as a means of uncovering the films ' moral stances, Wood thematic cross-references. Departing from the chrono- isolates such recurrent Hitchcock themes as common guilt, the world of order against the chaos-world, the logical format of the other two books, Wood concen- inevitable mixture of good and evil, the hero in need of some kind of emotional therapy or moral corrective. trates here on strictly thematic organization: The Group, Wood is especially helpful in his discussion of Hitch- cock's audience manipulation-the cunning way , for The Lure of Irresponsibility, Male Relationships, and instance, in which we are made accomplices to crime, our insinuation into the action by means of the subjec- (rather uncomfortably) The Instinctive Consciousness tive camera, our consequent identification with certain characters : the James Stewart character in VERTIGO , (HATARI! , MAN ' S FAVORITE SPORT?, RED LINE 7000) . the Janet Leigh character in PSYCHO. (To maintain , as Wood often does, that we are such and such a charac- The terms in which Wood discusses RED LINE 7000 ter, is rather facile , however.) are surely too inflated : \" All three of the film 's main relationships begin with an almost instantaneous at- traction , and the development of each gets its impetus from the use by one or both partners of an empirical intelligence that both creates and seizes opportu- nities; ... motor racing ... demands a full development of the intuitive consciousness .. . \" Taken out of con- text, Wood's tortuous sentences read like a parody of intellectual criticism . But even in conte xt his prose is often graceless. Wood at times acknowledges the inap- propriate sobriety of his tone : \" It will be objected that this account of NORTH BY NORTHWEST makes it far too serious. But its charms , it deftness, the constant flow of invention , its humor and exhilaration , are there for all to see . All I have tried to do is adjust the balance : not to turn a light comedy into an unsmiling morality play , but to suggest why NORTH BY NORTHWEST is such a very , very good light comedy .\" But this isn 't entirely what he has done: his approach to the film really has been too stern , and the result is that , under the critic 's tOO-diligent gaze, a light comedy has been somewhat distorted . Wood persuades us that the complexity he attributes to Hitchcock and Hawks is actually there , he is un- failingly perceptive , but the manner in which he articu- lates his insights is not often enough commensurate with the material , and though we learn enormous amounts about each of the films discussed , we don 't always have a clear sense of a film's particular tone and ambiance . But every student of film can learn much from Wood's books; Wood 's absolute familiarity with a director's work, his cultural background , his eye for visual detail, his literary acumen , his love of subject, are all worthy of emulation . 11111111 FILM COMMENT 75

THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE CATALOG OF the George Eastman House, the Museum of Modern MOTION PICTURES PRODUCED IN THE UNITED Art, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Special Collections Department of the Library of STATES: FEATURE FILMS, 1921-1930 the University of California at Los Angeles , the National Film Collection of the Public Archives of Canada the COMPILED AND EDITED BY THE AMERICAN FILM Canadian Film Institute and the United States Nati'onal Archives . INSTITUTE The AFI discovered early in its film acquisition pro- R. R. Bowker Company , New York , 1971 ; hardcover, gram that no basic reference work existed as a short- cut to serve its own program and hence , to meet the $55 .00 in U.S. and Canada , $60 .50 elsewhere , needs of the ever-growing numbers of film students, the AFI launched the Catalog project, for a much-need- $45.00 for AFI members; two volumes, 1,653 pages. ed and reliable source of film data . Much of the factual information required was inaccessibly buried in studio REVIEWED BY ANDREW C . MCKAY files , copyright files in the Library of Congress , the Andrew McKay has been a film researcher for the licensing or censorship records of a number of states and municipalities, company records , sources generally Museum of Modern Art and various publishers for more beyond the reach of most researchers and film stu- than twenty years. dents . In addition , the Catalog facts have been drawn from books , contemporary fan and trade periodicals Here it is , at long last-but where , oh where was and newspapers as well as the personal memo ries and this indispensable and invaluable publication some collections of hundreds of film personalities, techni- twenty-odd years ago-a scant fifteen or even ten years cians and film aficionados as well as the films preserved ago? It should have been at hand then-before the in the national collection at the Library of Congress , current obsession w ith instant-nostalgia and more par- which includes the AFI Collection . ticularly , interest in silent and early sound films became so popular. This first volume , Feature Films 1921-1930, is a conveniently arranged first segment of the coming Why was it not in ex istence then ? Had this definitive nineteen volume Catalog series, compiled and edited and purely factual publication been in general refer- by the AFI under the executive editorship of Kenneth ence usage then-think of all the innumerable and W. Munden and the general direction of Sam Kula , the inexcusable mistakes it could have possibly averted ; AFI Archivist. After some three years of intensive work errors which have been endlessly repeated and perpet- this initial volume is published in a two-book set . The uated in print and word-of-mouth , ad infinitum , not only first section totals 936 pages of main feature film entries by various and sundry enthusiasts , johnnie-come-Iately listed in alphabetical order-adequately describing film buffs, camp followers , band-wagon opportunists, 6 ,606 U.S. made feature films released between Jan- but by established and reputable writers in earlier years . uary 1 , 1921 and December 31 , 1930. In detail , each However well-meaning their interest, they have all be- film entry is covered by the full title of the film ; series queathed a legacy of errors-a deep and lasting dam- title , if any; index reference number; production com- age to original , sincere and dedicated filmic research . pany or individual; sponsoring company or individual, What a Godsend-a boon this AFI publication would if any ; original distributing company ; completion and have been then to those about to embark upon re- release dates-premiere , trade showing or licensing; searching and writing the endless film books , periodi- copyright registration date and dossier number, if any; cals , monographs, filmographies , film society program audio aspects (silent, sound , sound effects); color; notes which have since flooded the market in a cur- gauge and length (reels and / or footage-silent and / or rently never-ending stream ! sound footage) . As for the production and technical credits-each person , group of persons, firm , institution Errors notwithstanding , the same nostalgia craze or agency involved in the production is named , with and its worshippers-fleeting or deep-grained-could the credited function preceding the name in abbrevi- rightfully be said to have helped to spawn the creation ated form and in italics. Cast credits list actors by name of the American Film Institute itself and this-its embry- including named animals and each group or ensemble; onic off-spring-their first Catalog publication which and the role played is stated parenthetically and in was expected off the presses last year. However late, italics after each name , or group of names , if applicable . this noble gesture can now, hopefully, put to rights the Also included is a complete breakdown of song and lamentable situation of errors even if only in a partial dance numbers in musicals . Next , in order , follows the way, since this first effort concerns itself with Theatrical genre classification (melodrama , musical , etc .) ; the Feature Films made in the U .S. (of 4000 ft. or more) literary, dramatic or other original source of the film during the decade from 1921 to 1930. (if any); plot or content synopsis of the action depicted, or (in the case of nondramatic films) an explanation Through the years there has definitely been a long- of the purpose and scope ; the list of subject headings felt need for such a single· source of filmic informa- under which the film is indexed in the accompanying tion-comprehensive, noncritical , authenticated, ob- Subject Index which is included in the second section jective-a purely basic research tool. Now, through the of the first volume . Finally, if any, Special Notes on tireless efforts of the AFI 's dedicated staff this wish the film . has been partially granted-in this its first segment of the unique nineteen volume computer-generated Cat- The second section of the volume has , in addition alog series to be published over the coming five years. to a 534-page Credit Index, a 183-page Subject Index which reveals comprehensively for the first time the The Catalog project is a major undertaking of the substantive content of these films in twelve major cat- AFI , made possible through founding grants from the egories ; i.e ., U.S. films made duri J'1g the period dealing National Endowment for the Arts , the Ford Foundation with characterizations (cowboys, gangsters, etc.); and the Motion Picture Association of America. This themes or situations (marriage , adoption , etc .) ; related filmographic record is being accomplished with the full subjects (hotels , colleges , etc .) ; seasons , dates or spe- cooperation and support of the Library of Congress, 76 WINTER 1971-72

cific time periods; actual happenings (the Crusades, decade that witnessed the full flowering and the ab- World War I, etc .) ; actual places ; actual people ; actual solute zenith of the silent film-Hollywood 's \" Golden institutions or organizations (Salvation Army , etc .); ac- Age. \" Perhaps it will be the most appreciated by those tual physical objects (usually man-made , such as the who , of necessity, had to dig through miscellaneous Pyramids , etc .) ; cinematic devices (floods , fires , etc .) ; sources in bygone days. So it will prove itself to be animals ; special references (an opera , dance se- priceless and relatively cheap-even at the asked-for $55 .00 . quence , etc .). Also in the second section of the volume is a 534- FRANK CAPRA: THE NAME ABOVE THE TITLE page Credit Index itemizing films associated with spe- BY FRANK CAPRA Foreword by John Ford ; The cific actors , directors , companies , etc., by year of re- lease . Films of all production and distribution compa- Macmillan Company , New York , 1971 ; hardcover nies are listed chronologically by year or release , then alphabetically by film title and index reference number. $12.50 ; 513 pages, illustrated , indexed . Each film is cited by title , year and index reference number. The authors of original literary and dramatic REVIEWED BY JEAN-LOUP BOURGET sources from which the films were derived are listed Jean-Loup Bourget teaches Fren c h and the history in a separate alphabetic sequence . of the cinema at Trinity College , University o f Toronto . Perhaps the most unique and valuable aspect of He c ontributes to Pos itif and is preparing a doctorate the Catalog is the computer-generated Indexes (indi- thesis on the American melodrama for Paris University. vidual and corporate names and subject headings) that will enable the reader to locate any film if he knows Capra 's reputation has been at a low ebb for years. any fact about the production , whether it is the title, Not that he has ever been forgotten ; but, perhaps the production company, the producer, director, writer, worse , appraisal of his films has tended to be mitigated cameraman , etc ., or any member of the cast, or the by such epithets as \" embarrassingly naive \" or \" mid- subject matter. So distinctive is this feature that probab- dle-class sentimental. \" Capra was found guilty of ig- ly the only other publication bearing any resemblance noring the fact that good movies and goodwill don 't to the Catalog would be THE FILM INDEX, A Bibliog- mi x. Histories of the cinema reduce a career spanning raphy , Vol. 1, The Film As Art , published in 1941 (origi- 36 feature films to half a dozen titles . Besides, these , nally) by the Museum of Modern Art Film Library and all made in the Thirties , are said to date badly . the H. W. Wilson Company. One of the points of interest in Capra ' s recently The ultimate objective of the Institute 's Catalog is published autobiography is that he does not deny the to itemize all films produced in the U.S. from 1893 charge of sentimentality . On the contrary , in describing through 1970-a yeoman service, indeed I Some five his own intentions, he frequently uses such provocative additional volumes are intended to deal with feature words as Pollyanna and \" my own brand of Capra-corn .\" films by decades; six will cover short films and six more This should be a reminder that sentimentality is a valid will concern themselves with newsreels . Finally, to cap point of view in its own right. The only thing we are the monumental undertaking would be a general vol- allowed to demand is that it should be undisguised and ume listing films of all kinds made from 1893 to 1910. consistent. What is embarrassingly naive is the belief Next on the agenda for publication in the near future of some critics that fairy-tales are necessarily kid stuff, is a volume on the feature films of the Si xties . and that reality is in itself grey or pink or black . As stated by Kenneth Munden , the Executive Editor The fairy-tale is one of the key-concepts of Capra 's of the project-\" We hope the Catalog will be a jump- universe . LADY FOR A DAY (1933 ), remade as POC KETFUL ing-off point for scholarly research in many fields that OF MIRACLES in 1961 , is a case in point. It is clear that must concern itself with the American film .\" Admittedly , POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES , like McCarey 's AN AFFAIR TO gaps and lapses are acknowledged-especially in the REMEMBER , was meant as a personal statement against field of \" State Rights \" and other independent feature the current wave of anti-sentimentality. Its honesty productions, Black and other special-appeal films of saves it from the trap of mawkishness . To see POCKET- the 20s and early 30s, American manufacture of FUL as , in a sense , the culmination of Capra ' s work foreign-language versions of American films-all of is not to succumb to the intentional fallacy : one may which proliferated during that period and about which well think that Capra is mistaken in seeing the film as scant information is at present available . That , in itself, an unhappy compromise . His professional difficulties is a separate project-all in all , a most thankless job with Glenn Ford have not impaired the final result. for the future . A variant of the fairy-tale is illustrated by IT HAPPENED It is apparent, to the knowing , that the 133 ,000 ONE NIGHT whictl rightly belongs to , and perhaps origi- separate bits of information for the 6,606 films de- nates, the \" screwball \" comedy, but which imports a scribed in the current volume are each more or less fairy-tale character with a twist , the Cinderella-m,·n here suspect. Even were it possible to screen and study played by Clark Gable . Essentially , Gary Cooper in MR. every film described-and many no longer exist or are DEEDS GOES TO TOWN or James Stewart in MR . SMITH unprojectable-we still would have to rely on printed GOES TO WASHINGTON embody the same personage-and or documentary sources-sources which are inconsis- in RIDING HIGH we have also the Cinderella-horse . The tent, incomplete and often incorrect-a point of frustra- very notion of Cinderella-man implies two important and tion for seasoned researchers. With that in mind , it can interrelated elements . Firstly , in Capra 's own words , safely be said that this is the most comprehensive single \" hero\" and \" comedian \" are one and the same person . source of data on American films to date and it is hoped In this way , a slap-stick gag invented for Harry Langdon that users of the Catalog will fill in any gaps as new can be given to Clark Gable (the misfired sp itting on information is uncovered . his own lapel) . Secondly, se x and comedy enhance each other . Eroticism is ever-present , ever-evasive-not It is needless to add , that this two-book set will find to be fulfilled until after the end of the film (the Walls itself much thumbed-over in usage in libraries , ar- of Jericho). chives, schools , show business-wherever data is readily and handily desired on facts about American Again , LOST HORIZON cannot be either understood theatrical feature films of the 20s and early 30s-a or criticized outside the conventions of the Utopia . It is ludicrous to claim that it should have been more explicit. While one may consider that the film is flawed , FILM COMMENT 77

this is rather because in parts it is not Utopian enough . A HOLE IN THE HEAD makes the film a distinguished For exa mple , its reference to the \" Christian ethic \" jars , companion to Minnelli 's SOME CAME RUNNING . being as it is a reminder of the \" real \" world ; its buildings are not too lush but too reminiscent of millionaires' Unlike other foreign-born directors who came to beach-houses. Nevertheless, there remains the forceful Hollywood when they were already famous, Capra was beauty of the sequences where Ronald Colman , ban- educated in America before he had anything to do with ished from Paradise, wanders Moses-like through the films . He identified completely with the American dream barren icy gulfs which make the existence of Shangri-La but also with its doubts and self-irony . It has been poetically possible argued that his political films had been misinterpreted as \"New Dealish \" but were in fact distinctly middle- Unsurprisingly, Capra 's book offers a combination class and therefore right-wing Republican . Even if this of sentiment and humour. Slang and abundant dialogue were the case in abstracto , it would be disproved by make for lively reading. It is in many ways the antithesis Capra 's deep sense of collective improvisation. of another equally vivacious autobiography, Stern- berg 's Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Both di rectors are One of the most telling features of the autobiography far from being humble, but their different prides testify is the series of group photographs of large casts, from to their contrasting personalities . Where Sternberg is LADY FOR A DAY to ARSENIC AND OLD LACE . This unanimism unabashedly proud , Capra is cunningly so. He uses ex presses itself in many single sequences (the singing the moderately distancing effect of irony to tell us that in the bus of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT is a well-known as a young man he wanted to become the best director example of extempore direction). It is the very subject in Hollywood . Later on he quotes his wife to let us know of whole films such as YOU CAN 'T TAKE IT WITH YOU or that he has in fact succeeded. Here another key-word IT 'S A WONDERFUL LIFE . From Capra 's autobiography is the cockiness which compensated for early igno- there emerges a belief in comedy with an implicit mes- rance. But both cockiness and the ensuing policies sage , not unlike SULLIVAN 'STRAVELS . Capra 's films reveal characterize his whole career: little or no make-up for a genuine concern for John Doe, for the \"little man \" - actors , as few camera movements as possible . At the which is not quite the same as Roosevelt 's or Berkeley's same time , unlike Sternberg , Capra pays obviously \" forgotten man. \" But in both cases the emphasis is sincere tributes to a number of actors or other collabo- as much on the community as on the individual. One rators . He has special praise for Barbara Stanwyck, of the most touching tributes recently paid to Capra the star of five Capra films from LADIES OF LEISURE to and not undeserved is an article published in an un- MEET JOHN DOE . Certain anecdotes suggest an interest- derground paper which describes him as a maker of ing parallel between Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Sin- \" movies by the people, of the people , for the people.\" atra (i n HOLE IN THE HEAD) . Both gave their best perform- ance on first take , thus fitting in with Capra ' s own HISTORY OF THE KINETOGRAPH, KINETOSCOPE penchant for improvisation . AND KINETOPHONOGRAPH (1895) BY W. K. L. and ANTONIA DICKSON However, Capra's warmth does not deter him from his adamant conviction : \" one man , one film .\" La Cava Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970; hard- and McCarey are names that crop up. These directors were both close to Capra 's style and school of thought. cover, $4.00; 55 pages; 54 illustrations. It is also more than coincidental that all three mysteri- ously fall short of Andrew Sarris 's \" Pantheon .\" Capra REVIEWED BY LEWIS JACOBS makes his point on two occasions at least. Comedian Lewis Jacobs is the author of The Rise of the Ameri- Harry Langdon and writer Robert Riskin both took umbrage at Capra 's directorial exclusivity . According can Film , The Emergence of Film Art , The Movies as to him , they each inevitably failed when they took to Medium , and most recently, The Documentary Tradi- directing their own pictures. The Capra-Riskin collabo- tion : From Nanook to Woodstock. ration , extending over nine films , remains exemplary, but one must agree that Riskin was not indispensable, This slight booklet of 55 pages , originally published as is proven by Buchman 's MR . SMITH GOES TO WASH- in 1895 , is a rare and important primary source data INGTON . As far as Langdon is concerned , it is clear of motion picture history. Up to now it was one of the that recognition has long been overdue . He was cer- most difficult film documents to come by. The copy tainly as great as Chaplin and Keaton , much greater at the Museum of Modern Art Film Library , from which than Harold Lloyd. But Capra 's claim that Langdon went this new printing was made, was the only one I had to the dogs when he did without Capra ' s guidance is ever found during years of research for my own history a glaring instance of cockiness. THREE 'S A CROWD and of the American film . The initial experiments at Edison's THE CHASER (both directed by Langdon himself) are West Orange , New Jersey laboratory that led to the hardly inferior to TRAMP , TRAMP , TRAMP , THE STRONG MAN invention of motion pictures are described by the man or LONG PANTS . On the other hand , what is certainly who himself performed a major role in the development true is that Capra had no small part in shaping Lang- and realization of motion photography, William Ken- don 's screen personality. Langdon 's triumphant inno- nedy-Laurie Dickson . cence brings us back to the fairy-tale conventions . The monograph is an intimate , first-hand account Not that Capra was incapable of grappling with of America 's primitive steps in commercial motion pic- tough , dramatic subjects . MIRACLE WOMAN is an early ture photography and exhibition . It traces the work of ELMER GANTRY . FLIGHT tells of a marine 's intervention forerunners in motion photography and details the in Central America . THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN is various attempts at perfecting silent and talking pic- a melodrama of the Chinese civil war and points forward tures, giving anecdotes of some of the earliest perform- to the opening scene of LOST HORIZON . And at home , ers and subjects. The ferment of discovery and experi- politics cease to be comic when , in a rather terrifying ment, of shared excitement and of an insider's aware- sequence of MR. SMITH, the police apparatus of an ness in the filming of notable personalities in the world 's entire state clashes with Stewart's youthful supporters. first movie studio, the \"Black Maria,\" of being involved The theme of political savagery is taken up again by in the beginning of something big and original , comes MEET JOHN DOE. Finally , the strident use of colour in through the pages to illuminate the subject with ear- nestness and warmth . An eloquent prediction by the Dicksons on the unlimited developments that still await the new invention , concludes the book and forges a bridge between the past and present: \" In the ad- 78 WINTER 1971-72

vancement of science , in the revelation of unguessed sion of a new nation in the making-a definite affi rma- worlds , in its educational and re-creative powers , and tion of the New Spirit. in its ability to immortalize our fleeting but beloved associations, the Kinetograph stands foremost among In addition to Carter's reasoned and strong feeling the creations of modern genius.\" for the synoptic vision of the Soviet films, the book reflects an elaborate sense of film h,istory w ith abundant Specifically for the film student and historian , Dick- observations of pictures, stars and directors of the silent sons 's history should be much appreciated for its in- period and contemporary reflections about the early sight and focus on the close up of a modern technology developments of sound in England and Germany . and art at its birth . THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURES (1946) MOTION-PICTURE WORK (1915) BY JEAN BENOIT-LEVY BY DAVID S. HULFISH Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970; hard- Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970; hard- cover, $9.00; 306 pages, 23 illustrations. cover, $25.00; 648 pages, 343 illustrations. REVIEWED BY LEWIS JACOBS REVIEWED BY LEWIS JACOBS Jean Benoit-Levy , a distinguished and respected film The author of this book describes himself as a tele- maker in France during the Twenties and Thirties , was phone and motion picture expert, solicitor of patents, best known in this country for his two sensitive features, and technical editor of \" Motography\" (a trade jour- BALLERINA and LA MATERNELLE . He wrote this book nal)-a man with obviously more than enough expertise subsequently on a Rockefeller Foundation Grant in the to qualify him for writing this first comprehensive trea- middle Forties while trying to establish himself as a tise on motiorl picture work. The te xt covers all aspects director in America . The book was written out of a deep of production , and exhibition of movies as well as the personal knowledge and experience; Benoit-Levy had principles of electricity and photoplay writing with spe- already made hundreds of short subjects which ranged cific instructions on the operation and management of over the entire field of film genres. He was a passionate movie theaters. Precise drawings, diagrams and pho- advoc ate of the human and social mission of motion tographs desc ribe in detail the various types of motion pictures and the thrust of The Art of the Motion Picture picture equipment, and make clear the handling and is with the medium 's forms in education and social maintenance of optical, mechanical, electrical parts, uplift, approached through an analysis of the various the recording of talking pictures and the process of categories or genres of the non-fiction film : the educa- color movies. Both a reference work and manual of tional film , the film in the classroom , the promotional instruction for people in or wanting to break into the film , the information film , documentaries, the film of life . film business , nothing of importance to the successful Each of these forms , their purposes and goals , is de- manufacturing and exhibition of motion pictures has scribed and aimed at the improvement of human and been ,left out. social relations . It is out of this perspective and the author's account of his own creative approach , that Undoubtedly this was the classic te xt for workers much about the art of film is revealed , offering an in the expanding film industry during the period of the inspiring text that richly validates the book 's title. first World War; modern advances in equipment, tech- nology and psychology have supplanted the book 's THE NEGRO IN FILMS (1947) usefulness, relegating its appeal to those who now col- BY PETER NOBLE lect motion picture antiques and memorabilia, or seek a knowledge of where the practice of motion pictures Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970; hard- was at in 1915 , and by inference just how far the film cover, $9.00; 296 pages; 43 illustrations. industry has come in 1971 . REVIEWED BY LEWIS JACOBS THE NEW SPIRIT IN THE CINEMA (1930) BY HUNTLEY CARTER First published in 1947 , Noble 's book is a pioneering and impassioned account of racial prejudice in the Arno Press and The New York Times, 1970; hard- American film . It examines the way a large minority of the nation's population has been falsely depicted cover, $14 .00 ; 496 pages ; 37 illustrations. in film stories and characterizations from 1900 to the period of the second World War, and deplores the REVIEWED BY LEWIS JACOBS falsification of the Negro as an inferior individual , claiming that such distorted portrayals have aided and Huntley Carter's book is one of the earliest sociolog- abetted racial antagonism and the mistreatment of the ical studies of the motion picture from a world view. blacks in American life. The author shows how decades The author traces the role and purpose of cinema and of caricature of Negro life and material , and of wasted its potentialities for influencing people and national valuable talent, have added up to a powerful record groups in America , Europe and the Soviet Union , of prejudice-implicit and explicit-that has been used drawing upon three concepts governing the production to nurture the feeling of contempt for the black man 's of movies in each country: commercial , esthetic , and mind , outlook and way of life-all calculated to justify social. In the United States , he examines the commer- his exploitation . cial traditions, the structure and content of films and finds their values false , artificial , box-office oriented , The text is further enriched by appendices that controlled by a ruthless profit motive . Those in Great review the historical background of the American Britain , Sweden and Germany he links with a \" pur- Negro from his first landing at Jamestown , Virginia in poseless esthetic \" equally shaped by box-office prin- 1619 to the cynical discrimination of his voting rights ciples, made for the privileged few . Since the fi lms of in the Democratic primaries in South Carolina in 1946 these nations \" negate a good purpose \" the author claims they are a denial of the New Spirit. Only in the a bibliography of important books on racial relation~ films of the Soviets does he find evidence of a non- commercial or social purpose . There he regards the in the United States , a list of motion pictures from the film as \" liberated \" engaged in \" an organic part of turn of the century to 1947 featuring Negroes or con- human society \" used for the good of all in the expres- taining racial themes , an excerpt from the monograph by Seymour Stern on Griffith 's defense of his BIRTH FILM COMMENT 79

OF A NATION , and a letter from the director of th at picture reference books. Entries themselves seem very good . de c laring that his attitude towards the Negroes has On Milos Forman : \" Extremely intelligent and sensitive , al w ays be en \" one of affection and brotherl y love.\" Fo rman uses his improvisatory methods and penetrat- Noble 's book was generall y recei ved with indiffer- ing observations based on an expert sense of casting en c e at its o riginal publi c atio n. Toda y, w hen the nation is polarized and torn by ra c ism and there is a deep His quick, ironic humour is constantly apparent, co nc e rn wi th the influ enc e of th e sc reen to reinfo rce with a compassionate understanding of people.\" The or assi st in formulating w hite attitudes tow ard black stills are se xy and bizarre , but not worth the price . peo pl e, Th e Negro in Film s c an se rv e as a formid abl e too l to help expose th e false sc reen image and aid The Egyptian book is sim ilar in format , without as in creating a more honest and auth e ntic interpretation much historical data but intrinsically more exotic , in- in a c onte xt w hich is both real istic and historic al ly cluding a discussion of the ancient Egyptian shadow acc urate. shows , the modern genres such as they are , and politi- A-Z OF MOVIE MAKING cal commentary in films . Three important recent in - BY WOLF RILLA novators are discussed at length with filmographies , The Viking Press , New Y ork , 1970; hardcover, $6 .95 ; then today 's industry is broken down into c ycles , veter- 128 pages; illustrated ; index; bibliography. ans, newcomers (including experimental films), and REVIEWED BY NORMAN KAGAN performers, with nine pages devoted to Omar Sharif. Norman Kagan has worked as a writer-produ cer for The writing is adequate , but fasc inates by its discussion Westinghou se Group W; Universal Edu cational and of the interaction of the film medium with an ancient Vis ual Arts Division ; General Learning Corporation ; Indigo Productions; and Allegro Films. culture. No mention of the impact of films and industry abroad makes the whole thing a little suspect. Poor I don 't know who is going to want to read this book . quality prudish illustrations. It is a pretty good outline discussion of the most elabo- rate, expensive form of 35mm feature movie making. THE PARADE 'S GONE BY But most people starting off in film today will learn the BY KEVIN BROWNLOW essences in 16mm , without all the organizational details Alfred A. Knopf , New York , 1968; hardback , $13 .95 , of standby painter, set dresser, continuity reports , etc. paperback , $3.95 (Ballantine); 580 pages, a great And most of them won 't need the information. Others many black and white production stills and frame are going to be specialists who 'll never have to worry en largements; index. about more than a topic or two , which they 'll have to REVIEWED BY HOWARD SUBER understand at much greater depth . Producers and directors also have to know much more than this , even Of the myriad film books proliferating from American at the start. Fin ally. fewe r and fewe r features are made and British publishers in the past few years , only a few could be regarded as indispensable. The Parade 's Gone athis way ; more and more la EAS Y RIDER and TWO LANE By is one of them. The book is carefully-researched , well-written , and beautifully-produced . It is also one of BLACKTOP. And by the by , some of these tricks are the most informative and interesting studies of the silent already superseded. era I have read . Nevertheless, if you want to know what the writer Brownlow makes no attempt at producing a coherent and / or director of BACHELOR OF HEARTS, VILLAGE OF THE history of silent films , and he specifically disclaims any DAMNED and WORLD TEN TIMES OVER th inks is profes- attempt at being definitive abo ut the era . It is doubtful sional , here it is . if any book could , even if it wanted to , be definitive about such a large area of film history. What Brownlow OUTLINE OF CZECHOSLOVAKIAN CINEMA attempts , instead , is \" to recapture the spirit of the era BY LANGDON DEWY through the words of those who created it. \" Here one Informatics, London , 1971 ; paperback ; 122 pages ; finds interviews with Alan Dwan , Henry King , Mary Pic kford , Clarence Brown , William Wellman , Gloria illustrated ; index. Swanson , Betty Blythe , Harold Lloyd , Buster Keaton , and many others , as they recollect the good old days AN INTRODUCTION TO THE EGYPTIAN CINEMA when filmmaking was new, exciting , and all-consuming. BY M. KHAN Informatics, London , 1969; paperback; 93 pages, It is in the nature of human memory to recall that which illustrated ; Omar Sharif filmography, industry statis- serve's one 's self-image best, and to distort, conceal , or reveal that wh ich will recreate the past in the way tics . one wished it could have been , rather than the way REVIEWED BY NORMAN KAGAN it was . This being so, the interview material needs to be approached with g reat caution , as all oral history These are two softcover chronological guidebooks must. to national cinema history, possibly most useful as references for researchers limited to the Engl ish lan- By relying so heavily on interviews, Brownlow proves guage. the old adage that the survivors write history. It is too late now to get a fully-rounded pictu re -o f the silents The Czech study is divided into major periods of from those who created them because so many of the development, summarizing each , followed by lists of principal participants are dead . So , Brownlow did the important directors and cameramen by year. A brief next best thing and got the picture from those who forward justifies the auteur approach , gives a tiny his- were still around and will ing to talk . The result , as torical chronology , explains notation. Personal entries interesting as some of the interviews are, may be to are brief autobiographies with films listed by number, unintentionally distort our image of the period. Edward then commented on , then listed by cameraman. There Sloman, whose works are mostly lost, presumably be- are by-the-way comments on important years , cultural cause no one cared enough to preserve them , is given trends , film schools , political developments. The writer a chapter by himself. Geraldine Farrar is given another complains that articles in his area are scattered and chapter. There is no chapter on von Stroheim because , neglected , but his own bibliography is just three old Brownlow tells us, he never met him and had nothing to tell us we didn 't already know (I wish other writers on film were as honest! ). The Parade 's Gone By is a very personal book , de- pending not only upon who was available, but upon what happened to catch the author's fancy . One of 80 WINTER 1971-72

the longest chapters in the book is devoted to telling possible stock, using the best reproduction obtainable. the story of how the original BEN-HUR was produced , The hardback edition , at $13 .95 , may seem expensi ve, and another long chapter details the making of Fair- but it is one of the bargains among film books . It is banks' ROBIN HOOD. Brownlow does not attempt to the kind of book one likes to simply browse through , present a balanced picture of the entire silent period. absorbing the rich , even sensuous , quality of visuals Of 48 chapters in the book , 46 deal with Americans and composition . The paperback versiun , unfortu- and American film . One chapter, eight pages long , nately , is grossly inferior, and the photographs look attempts to cover all of the silent film in Europe . The like 10th-generation dupes of silent films themselves. remaining chapter-at 48 pages, the longest of them In this case , I think it's worth the extra ten dollars to all-is devoted to Abel Gance, the one European stud- have the quality of the hardback edition. ied intensively in the book , and obviously a personal favorite of Brownlow (he has made a film on the director The title of the book is interesting . Brownlow tells us as well) . in the introduction that it came from writer-director The book, I think, has one major failing . In his introduc- tion and his conclusion , Brownlow tells us , \" the silent Monte Brice, who was curtly dismissed by a young era was the richest in the cinema 's history. \" But, in- stead of attempting to prove this contention , which assistant on a film who told him: \" You 're an old man . many would argue with , he merely takes it for granted . The parade 's gone by ... \" Perhaps it is coincidental , but a similar phrase crops up in SUNSET BOULEVARD , Hollywood 's best homage to its silent past . In the scene where William Holden is examining the faded glory of For too long now, we have had critics and historians the bedroom of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), he writing as if silent films were merely the precursor of a higher form , like the ape to the homo sapiens, as refers to her as \" still waving to a parade that had long though the silent film were somet.ow innately inferior because it did not use sound . This view assumes that since passed her by ... \" 11111111 all film has aspired to a divine consummation in 3-D , widescreen, technicolor, stereophonic, smello-feelo- holographic bliss . Such a view is nonsense , as Brownlow rightly tells us . The silent film , he tells us , was a separate art form , and it deserves to be taken on its own grounds , with its own standards of values , as a mature and complete kind of artistic endeavor in itself. I wholeheartedly agree . But it is one thing to grant the I E I IERS silent film its own autonomous dignity , and another to claim that it represents the richest period in cinema To the Editor: history, and that by comparison today 's filmmakers are, as Brownlow puts it, \"generally less imaginative, less George Stevens , Jr.' s response to the editorial in daring , and less skillful than their silent-era counter- FILM COMMENT's summer issue typifies the empty , parts.\" public relations rhetoric which characterizes official AFI pronouncements. Throughout the first three-and-a-half Historians traditionally regard the period they are years of the Institute 's existence the film community studying as being a golden age ; and they seem almost suspendad its judgment and the management became invariably to conclude that everything that came after accustomed to presenting its picture of AFI almost was a period of decline and decadence . Brownlow is completely unquestioned . not immune to this historical chauvinism . That grace period has ended . Seven million dollars It is possible that his contention may come to be the and four years later it is onl y reasonable that those accepted evaluation , and that historians will indeed who care about the future of the American Film Institute come to acknowledge the silent era as the richest we should evaluate critically what has been accomplished . have had . But at this point in time , the assertion needs Over the past few months there have been many strong to be proven. and specific criticisms levelled at AFI 's management. The management has answered with vague assertions: The interviews we are given show us people in their \" The American Film Institute is an educational institu- lonely and declining years who tell us what a hell of tion ;\" oversimplified generalizations: \" .. . most criti- a good time they used to have back in the good old cism of this four-year-old questions not the quality of days. I'm sure they did. But their often-fascinating accomplishment, but the quantity of work ... ;\" and anecdotes of privations, quarrels, rollicking good times, outright distortions of the truth : \" There are some people and youthful exuberances , do not, in themselves , tell who feel the Institute should not be involved in filmmak- us anything about the quality of the films that came ing at all . . . \" (Daily Variety, February 17 , 1971 ). out of the era. Brownlow's inter-chapters, which tell us how films were lighted , photographed , edited , titled, In spite of the fact that to date almost one-third of tinted, and exhibited are extremely valuable for the AFI 's fu nds has been spent on the Center for Advanced information they give us about production techniques Film Studies, the management has consistently refused of the period ; but , again , they do not in themselves to admit that that project has taken priority over all convince us of the richness of the films in comparison other AFI activities. If they will not even admit the to later works. obvious , the film community can hardly expect that they will be candid about any aspect of AFI 's programs or Even if it does not convince us , in itself, that the silent policies . era was the richest in cinema history , The Parade 's AFI is not an educational insitution just because Gone By is an immensely valuable book . It has already done much to change the condescending , glib attitude with which silent films used to be approached . It en- courages us to re-examine the period seriously, to take it on its own grounds as a means of artistic expression that had its own laws and its own attainments and for this we should be grateful. ' The book is the most beautifully-produced film study I have seen . Brownlow gave up a major portion of his royalties to enable the publisher to print the multitude of production stills and frame enlargements on the best FILM COMMENT 81

management says it is . It should be an educational To the Editor: institution , and that is what most of the criticism over the past few months has been about. The management Mr. Kitses ' letter is so presumptuous , preposterous , has tried to imply that those of us who have disagreed and factually inaccurate as to demand response . with the Institute's present direction have a narrow conception of film education which includes only He sets the student population at \" three dozen or schools and film educators , whereas management in- so .\" In fact , there are about si xty Fellows , fifty Auditors , sists that its educational program is all-encompassing . and dozens of young people who have worked on the films , used the library, and attended the screenings In fact, the scope of AFI 's present \" educational \" and seminars. There are no rollbooks, computers, program is circumscribed-heavily weighted toward credits, or diplomas. Furthermore, there are no riots, filmmaker training and benefitting a relative handful of demonstrations, or National Guardsmen . Instead, we individuals-and the claim that \" everything the Institute have three men on the Faculty whose skill and diligence engages in can be seen as educational \" is certainly should be the envy of any educational institution . Kitses debatable . AFI 's critics have urged an educational asks: \" What in such a system is transferable to colleges program which will reach and benefit the largest possi- and schools?\" There are si xty million people engaged ble number of people in the film community-historians , daily by education in America . The American Film Insti- scholars , critics , filmmakers , teachers , students , and tute and its Center for Advanced Film Studies was the general film audience . This, after all , should be the established and maintained because it fills a need no goal of a national educational and cultural institution other organization can . That the AFI does not resemble devoted to the fi 1m art . We believe that education is the University of California, Kitses finds odious. To me, getting short shrift at AFI , and management has failed it's laudable. to present any solid evidence to the contrary . (It is specious to argue , as the management has , that AFI Although I've spent a number of years as a student has been handicapped in its efforts by a shortage of and teacher myself, I've never measured the educa- funds . The Institute's initial funding was certainly ade- tional calibre of an institution by the happiness quotient quate to make substantial beginnings in all of its areas of its secretaries. Kitses traces the beginning of \" man- of concern .) agement-staff difficulties\" to the dismissal of a secre- tary who had insisted on her \" right\" to watch a Charlie Listing and numbering AFI activities, as Stevens Chaplin movie during work hours. Meeting last winter, does , is hardly adequate proof of what AFI has achieved the Board of Trustees found that Kitses' dismissal was and what progress it has made in \" advancing the art justified , although the way in which it was done was of the film .\" Lists tell us nothing about the quality of impolite . Now Kitses works his linguistic bellows in an the work, its value to the film community, nor its rele- effort to fan some inter-office bickering into a major vance to AFI 's overall goals . It is highly questionable scandal. The purpose of this is to adversely influence that AFI's 13-week television series on Los Angeles potential supporters and contributors to the AFI. The public television had any educational value ; the educa- consequence may be the denial of young filmmakers tional value of the \" Discussion \" pamphlets emanating and critics of a rare opportunity: for those of us here, from seminars at the Center can also be seriously the chance to learn and work in positions of creative questioned . Twenty-two oral history projects may have responsibility; for those yet to come , the chance to been funded , and \" thirty-six AFI-supported researchers hope . and scholars \" may currently be \" gathering history and data,\" but few results have yet been seen and little Ultimately, the moral bankruptcy of Kitses ' gripes assessment can be made-and if AFI is no more suc- is underscored by the fact that he declinec;J reinstate- cessful in publishing this research material than it has ment. A memorandum from Kitses dated January been in publishing other material , the work will remain 29th , 1971 proclaims his real motives . Of a meeting of very limited value. (It is well to remember that AFI 's with George Stevens to discuss the matter, Kitses oral history and research programs have been entirely writes: \" I called for the creation of a department within funded by a grant-specifically earmarked for such AFI specifically responsible for Education , Research , projects-from the Louis B. Mayer Foundation . It is no and Publications . Such a department would have to great credit to AFI that research has not been eliminat- be funded separately.. .. \" To the ample duties of this ed and \" is stronger than ever.\" The management had splinter organization , Kitses adds, \"Such a department no choice ; if the money had not been tied up in a special would also strive to create an ordered administrative fund it is very doubtful , given managment's past actions , structure, including clear job definitions, conditions of that research would st ill be ali ve at AFI today.) employment (and severance), and a fair and rational salary policy.... \" Kitses modestly offers: \"I expressed The facts remain : The Center for Advanced Film my feelings to George Stevens that I would be prepared Studies (serving a maxium of 100 people) has con- to work within such a system . .. .\" To this attempt at sumed the bulk of AFI 's funds ; other programs in edu- a beer hall putsch, Mr. Stevens generously conceded , cation , publications and archives have suffered as a \" . . . that some of the ideas I had outlined were useful result of massive Center expenditures; only one publi- and could be discussed .\" But this was not enough to cation of any substance (the Catalog) has been issued; satisfy Kitses : \" ... because of my personal commit- no serious effort has been made to solve the difficult ment to people and movies.\" Now this celluloid-minded problem of short film distribution. humanist has embarked upon an intense year-long campaign of memoranda-writing, letter-writing, and The budget recently approved by the Board of article-writing to impugn the AFI 's unprecedented and Trustees clearly indicates the AFI 's direction remains unparalleled record of film education , production , unaltered: thirty-six percent of this year's funds will be funding , research , preservation, and publication . spent on the Center. AFI continues to serve only a small minority of the film community. Sincerely yours, Michael Shamamian Sincerely, Fellow Kay Loveland 82 WINTER 1971-72

The murder of Fred Hampton

Now ACADEMY available AWARD for WINNER lbmm intervit?lYs non- Witll theatrical Mylai veterans s1lowi~ Th e film is a group o f intervi ews with five Am eri ca n soldi ers who were at My lai on March 16, 1968 . Of the ninety-five men A3- RING CIRCUS FOR ADULTS! in Charlie Compa ny , America l divi sion, invo lved in t he My lai TARZAN! KING KONG! GOONA- GOONA! massa cre, director J oseph Strick tracked down twe nty from all BRING/EM BACK ALIVE! AND NOW -- - over th e country ; he finall y se lected five ve terans who were willing to have their reco ll ections record ed on fi lm. The Color interviews were condu cted by Ri chard Hamme r, a uthor of the book On e M orning in fh e War. For Cat.a1og an this and. other audlence pho togra phed by Haske ll Wex le r and Ri chard Pearce satisfYlng hhns write PERIPHERALFlLMS 201li E.Gal\"ana River, .E,Lansins,MiC.h.> 'i88Z3 In terviews With Mylai Veterans is in co lor a nd runs 22 minutes. Ava il able in 16mm o nl y. Th is fi lm is ava il able either for rent o r for pu rchase: re ntal. $25 / showing; purchase, $27 5/ print. 241 East 34th Street New York, New York 10016 /Hlrn~ SHAKESPEARE AND THE FILM fran JT()~ Roger Manvell This is the first b ook to examine the major films of the world 's most pro lific writer of scenarios - William Shakespeare. Balancing an- GRIERSON ON DOCUMENTARY ecdotes and analysis, Roger Manvell explores the Edited with an Introduction by Forsyth Hardy adaptatio ns of Sh akespeare from the silents to the John Grierson was not o nly th e maker of many seve nties, including the films of Olivier, Welles, beautiful documentary films but also one of the an d Kozintsev, as well as such rece n t adaptation s major theorists and critics of the genre. For this re- as Zeffirelli 's R omeo and Juliet and Richardson 's issue of a classic film book , Forsyth Hardy h as Hamlet. compiled Grierson 's most important writings. \" For 128 illus. $1 0.00 an y one interested in the art of documentary films, THE GERMAN CINEMA Grierson on Documentary is an essen tial book. For Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel The o nly anyone who relished contact with a lively and cul- comp rehensive survey of German films published tivated mind, it is a high pleasure. \" - Co A . Lejeune in English recoun ts in detail no t only the glo rious films of the 1920's - amo ng them The Blue Angel, 57 illus. $10.95 (paper $5.50 ) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M - but also their di- POLITICS AND FILM Leif Furhammar and F o lke Isak sson Since their verse origins in Max Reinhardt 's revolutio nary th e- origin, movies have been vehicles for propaganda. ater and th e newsreel. Th ere is also a \" p articu larly The au thors, Swedish film critics, discuss both excellent\"* account of Nazi propaganda films, overtly propagandistic films and those where en- their evolu tion under the direction of Goebbels, tertainment includes persuasion, and con- the su bseq uent \" de-Nazification \" of the German clude that \" th e pure propaganda film satisfie s no fi lm industry, and its young avan t-garde directors. one but the sponsor and has a ch aracteristic nega- - *Library J oumal $10.00 163illus. tive effect. A penetrating ... diagnosis . .. a m ajor contribution to the study of communications, PRAEGER sociology, and film. \" -Library J oumal III Fourth Avenue, New York 10003 ~ \\....325 illus. $12 .50 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

The only known screen version of Greed - a masterpiece of uncompromising social realism - is a badly mutilated distortion of the original. Cut by MGM from 40 reels to a 10-reel version, the original A UNIQUE was never seen by the public. Still, at the Brussels RECONSTRUCTION International Exposition of 1958, Greed was voted IN BOOK FORM OF THE \"one of the twelve best films of all time.\" Now, UNCUT VERSION OF Herman Weinberg, distinguished film cr itic and historian, has assembled for Arno Press 400 stills ERICH VON STROHEIM'S from his personal collection . The original Greed screenplay is matched scene by scene with these LEGENDARY MASTERPIECE photographs, allowing us to visualize what GREED von Stroheim intended Greed to be, and how it was cut and irretrievably lost. Herman Weinberg has also prepared a Foreword and Epilogue to the book in which he discusses the production of Greed, the story of its mutilation, its influence on subsequent filmmaking , and the importance of Erich von Stroheim as a director. Available December 1971 9W' x 10\" 400 halftones $50.00 • • • I I ••• I •••••••••• I •• I •••••••• 1.1 •• I I ••••• THE LITERATURE Ad visory Editor: Martin S. Dworkin OF CINEMA \" Arno Press' The Literature of Cinema was a tremendous undertaking for any publisher - both in scope and in execution. Anyone seriously interested in the film as a medium of art and expression will do well to consider acquiring any or all of The Literature of Cinema series. Special interests . . . make some of these volumes indispensable to any film scholar. \" - James L. Limbacher , Audio-Vi sua l Librarian Henry Ford Centennial Library , and former President, Education Film Library Association and the American Federation of Film Societies Series I: 48 books Series II: 15 books Publication date: January 1972 •••••• , ••••••••••••••••••••• , •••••••••••••••••• IBI Descriptive brochures are available . ~~ ARNO PRESS A NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 330 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

L.A. JOURNAL continued from page 2 Farber claim that when PRETTY MAIDS was in the plan- ning stage, Dr. Jacqueline Bouhoutsos, a child psychol- ogist and one of the more powerful members of the board , went so far as to advise MGM to cancel the production , since a movie about a high school counselor seducing students would be harmful. And the final point the article makes is that this kind of dubious psychological moralizing is likely to become the stan- dard by which movies are rated , since Code Adminis- trator Dougherty has now been replaced by Dr. Aaron Stern , another psychologist who formerly functioned as consultant to the board. Stern has evidently argued with the board that films about rebellion against the Establishment should automatically be Restricted , regardless of the film 's treatment of the issues. Stern also feels that violence in G and GP films should always be \" represented as a force in the service of law and order.\" The article quotes Stern to the effect that films should be classified so that in the G category \" the broadly practiced social mores are not chal- lenged ,\" and in the GP \" the broadly practiced soc ial mores are not significantly challenged .\" Under Dougherty, the rating board was evidently conservative and puritanical , obsessed with the short- term , direct effects of se xual behaviour on the screen . Equally paternalistic , Stern and Bouhoutsos seem infinitely more dangerous in their readiness to make far-reaching moral and political judgments under the cover of psychologi c al jargon . Yet as anyone who knows the field can confirm , for all the moralizing and measuring that has gone on , little SOCiological or psychological evidence exists as to the effects of film PLUS and television on young people . This is of course no release prints justification for inaction ; on the other hand , neither Internegatives does it make any judgment necessarily better than CRls • MASTERS inaction. However, the Stern-Bouhoutsos mentality 16mm-8mm/super 8mm seems overweeningly arrogant in its attempts to \" pro- at tect \" young people by voting against a G for CROMWELL bebell because of its theme of \" insurrection \"; for an R for MOTION PICTURE LAB DIVISION SATURDAY MORNING because of its frank discussion of 416 West 45 St. problems young people have ; for an R for RYAN ' S New York 10036 (212)245-8900 DAUGHTER because music during a love scene has a WRITE . PHONE FOR PRICE LIST. \" subliminal \" erotic force . Given the pompousness and 86 WINTER 1971-72 banality of these attitudes , it is highly unlikely funda- mental questions (Who are the young likely to be disturbed? Is being disturbed necessarily bad?) ever get faced . The Chang as-Farber expose is very likely the open ing shot in a war . It' s doubtful , for instance , that studios wil l sit still for this pseudo-scientific moralizing if the size of the gross is to be affected . Already Samuel Z. Arkoff of AlP has accused Stern of being \" dictatorial ,\" and Jack Valenti has had to speak out to lower the tem'perature by pointing out that the board is responsible to him , and therefore does not have absolute powe r. It obviously would be useful if all of us began to kee p a close eye on the ratings. 11111111 coming in a future issue: Cuban Cinema, Dziga Vertov, interview with George Cukor, John Simon on Ermanno Olmi,

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American Film Institute Theatre 6658 Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood, California 90028 429 L' Enfant Plaza Center SW Washington DC 20024 . 2131463-3273 202 / 554-1000. Screenings da ily at 8PM ; children's mat inee Most complete stock of film publications Saturdays and Sundays at 3PM; special lunchti me program and related material now in existence. Wednesdays and Frida ys at noon . Boxoffice hours 2:30- New 525 ~~ catalog 8PM, members $1.25, guests $1.75, children under 14-50(1:; now available $2.95 film memberships $10 / year, includes mailed program ; visi tors membership $ 1.50 / 30 days. Underground parking adjacent. The November 28-December 11: Festival Choice. Films from Documentary schedules this year' s festival s in New York., Los Angeles, San lradition Francisco and Chicago . December 12-31: Christmas Assortment. Favorite films From Nanook to Woodstock of Washington VIP ' s. January 1-15: Poland Today . A selection of recent Selected , arranged and introduced by Polish films. January 15- 31: Sherlock Holmes and Other Masterminds. Levvis dacobs Sleuth films from the nventies t o the present . February 1- 21: 'Brazil Without Carmen Miranda. The best This book is the first attempt to survey films from Brazil. the development of documentary film- making from the beginning to the present. Anthology Film Archives Its central aim is to define the convention that came to be called \"documentary\"; to 425 Lafayette Street New York NY 10003. (One block south trace its growth and its major exponents ; to provide analyses and interpretations of of Astor Place) 212 / 677-3 197 . Screenings Tu esday th rough the classic and transitional achievements; to indicate the varied trends, movements, Sunday at 6, 8 & 1OPM. Admission : $1.00. and schools that have made it one of the Three different programs are screened each day from the most representative forms of social and Anthology Collection . The entire archive of avant- garde artistic expression, and, finally, to offer and experiment al films is shown in cycles of six Iveeks an insight into the documentary today. each . Program: $l /year. 530 pages, illustrated Museum of Modem Art $10 Clothbound , $5.50 paperback 11 West 53rd Street New York NY 10019. 212 / 956- 7094 . May be ordered directly from Da ily screenings at various times . Admission to film is free HOPKINSON AND BLAKE, Publishers 329 Fifth Ave ., New York, N.Y. 10016 with museum ad mi ssion of $ 1.75 . when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT November 26-December 23: Otto Preminger Retrospectlve. December 24 -January 5: Stanley Kubrick ' s Films. January 6-February 1: The Films of Al berto Cavalcanti . February 2-16: New Cinema from Quebec. February l 7-March 1 : Recent Soviet Cinema CINEPROBE Tuesdays at 5:30PM \\~T'S HAPPENING? Mondays at 3:30PM, Tuesdays at noon. Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York NY 10021 . 212 / 249-4100 extension 19. Daily at 12 noon , 2PM & 4PM , and Tu esdays onl y at 6 & 8PM . Admission to film is free with $1 museum admissio n . December 3- 15: A Special Videot ape Show. December 23-January 3: HILDUR AND THE MAGICIAN by Larry Jordan . January 4-12: Video Films. Films made Ivi th the aid of video equipment . January 13-24: lP~1 by Jean-Luc Godard and D. Pennebaker January 25 -February 2: FOR EXAMPLE by Arakawa. February 3- 9: New West Coast Films. February 10-16 : ANGELA DAVIS: PORTRAIT OF A REVOLUTION- ARY by Yolanda Dulart. February 17- 23: Animation Festival. About a dozen US animated films. February 24- March 1: I~1AGE, FLESH AND VOICE by Ed Emshwi ller. March 2-9: OUT THERE, ALONE ISLAND by Hwnphrey Leynse. classified advertisi.ng rates: $3 per llne, 2 llne ffilnlffiUffi. ror lnfo WTlte: Ads Film Comment 100 Walnut Place Brookline MA 02146 Classified deadline for next issue: 28 January 1972. CINEMABILIA New York 's Film Book Center. All current and out- of- print titles, periodicals including back issues, and related materials. 10 Cornelia (off II' 4th &6 Av) NYC 10014. 212/989-85 19. NOH open Tues &Fri ll- 7, Wed & Thurs 10 :30 -7:30, Sat 10 :30-6:30. Closed Sun &Mon. ~~1ORY SHOP: Tons of old interesting movie material for sale; stills, posters, lobby cards , pressbooks, movie magazines and miscellaneous. WE BUY SELL AND EXCHANGE. Memory Shop , box 365 , Cooper Station , New York NY 10003 Our s t ore is at 100 4th Avenue, New York 212/473-2404. WOMEN FIlPMAKERS: We want films made or directed by women for our international Festival of Women's Films. Send 16mm or 35mm prints to : 105 2nd Ave, NY NY 10003. Mail name, address, film title and $3 entry fee to: Festival Director, Kristina Nords trom, 1582 York Ave, NY NY 100 28. 212/628-5652 . Deadline: mid-December .

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