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which Catherine Hessling has a small part. Jean Dreville, documentary producer, turns Trois per cent. Eugene Deslaw, one of the earliest abstract film-makers, is among the few who have resisted the lure of the Big Time. He is making a documentary of La Cite Universitaire. In an interview he said : " I was tired of the world, with its depressions and crises. It held no hope. But here among the young students I have found gaiety, health, and optimism, a belief in ideals. That is the spirit of my film." It will carry neither dialogue nor spoken commentary. Titles will be used with a musical commentary, a synthesis of national songs typifying the cosmopolitan atmosphere of this university.
Rene Clair, silent for so long, has been working on a shooting script for a new film based on his own story. Conditions of the story and the wishes of Tobis decided the making of the picture in Berlin. Unfortunately under the Nazi regime certain regulations had to be complied with and Clair was asked to make modifications to the film. He refused, and temporarily the film has been shelved. In an interview with Comcedia, Douglas Fairbanks said that he hoped Clair would direct a picture for his new company. Nothing has developed, and Clair is still idle. It is difficult to assess his position to-day. Over a year has passed since A Nous la Liberie. In that film he demonstrated his lack of social consciousness and his inability to face a social problem. Instead he produced a vague Rousseauesque philosophy. Unless Clair can show us that he is willing to tackle social themes, his films will remain as they always have been, pleasant exercises in movie technique. Sous les Toits de Paris was his best film, because he was definitely interested in the lives of people at that time. Unquestionably heis the best producer in France, but we want to know how he is facing up to the new problems, what use he is making of new ideas, and most importantly, whether he will remain a producer of burlesque and musical comedy or whether he has the courage to face movie themes.
The most sizeable figure working in France to-day is V. I. Tourjansky. You will remember him as an unambitious producer of such pictures as Volga-Volga and The White Devil. He has learnt a lot since then and his latest picture, L'Ordannance, puts him in the front rank. It is adapted from a de Maupassant story and has been directed with a magnificent economy of shots giving it the starkness of real drama. In the middle the film tends to lose balance, too much emphasis being laid on matters immaterial to the logical development of the story. Music has been very skilfully woven into the film in a symbolic but never obtrusive fashion. Tourjansky will do even bigger things when he ceases to use his camera truck in a pointless manner and when he can curb his embarrassing tendency to overemphasise the mood of a scene with symbolical settings. The
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