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Viertel stays close to the theatrical tradition and scarcely ever dares to embrace the film medium for what it could give him. The interiors are beautifully lit and have that grace of style which we associate with Jiinge but the exterior Park scenes are feeble in the extreme. But, and this is the point, it marks a breakaway for Gaumont-British into more worthwhile subjects and for that deserves our recognition. Paul Rotha.
LOT IN SODOM
Production, direction and photography: Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber. Music: Louis Seigel. Length: 2,234 feet. Surrealism apart, we know that the film can be more than a mere mirror of reality, or the dramatic simulation of reality. Word strewn epics, symphonies, the sterner stuff of documentary, and even the simple lyric, we are familiar with. But cinema has still other genres to develop. It has still the higher reaches of Parnassus to assail. Watson and Webber in their interpretation of the Bible episode of Lot's travail in the city of perversion have had this in mind, and if their film is no more than a self-conscious preening of feathers before spreading the wings for flight, it must be welcomed as an attempt at experiment, even though we deplore the choice of theme and the decadent artiness of its treatment.
To anyone unfamiliar with the Old Testament narrative the film is barely explicit. But that is no concern of poetry. The beauty of its visuals, integrated with Louis SeigePs Hebraic orchestration of sound reflecting mood and intensifying atmosphere, appeals purely to the senses. Distorting mirror and prism are creaky mechanics with which to reach the higher flights, but even so there is achieved a sort of white fire of passion — as in Lot's description of woman's labour — alternating with a cold, harrowing sensuality, whipped up by flute and harp and laid low again by the morose chanting of Hebrew voices. As an achievement in film poetics Lot in Sodom is scarcely a milestone, but it is at least a signpost to a road which independent producers might profitably explore.
Norman Wilson.
THE SLUMP IS OVER. (French. Nero Film. Made at Joinville.) The spiritual father of this film is Le Chemin du Paradis which some of you may remember with affection. Given as good songs, this film would be as great a success at the box-office. There is a cheerful air of spontaneity about the whole production, which is not to be compared with the mechanical gaieties of Rene Clair. The story is about a shoe-stringing theatrical company and from the appearance of the film, I should imagine it too, was produced on a shoe-string. The cheerful atmosphere of this kind of production, the happy co
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