The film till now : a survey of world cinema (1960)

THE EUROPEAN CINEMA importance to come into his hands. It is disappointing that his next picture is again from Dickens, Oliver Twist. It is no accident that Hitchcock's were the first British films to be really popular in the United States. The most popular of contemporary British pictures in this country, Mr. Rank's and Sir Alexander's super-productions included, are the murder mysteries like Dead of Night (1945) and Green for Danger (Launder and Gilliat, 1946). If Britain is to send us pictures distinguished only by skill and good taste, and not by vitality of subject-matter, they had better be murder mysteries. That seems to be a general verdict. When they star James Mason, that helps. But Britain no longer has Mr. Mason. She had better look first to filling her own home screens with genuine product. (Ill) The Soviet Film When the sound-film era was ushered in, Sergei Eisenstein was on his way to the West. The great exponent of the dialectical cinema had signed a contract with Paramount during a triumphal visit to western Europe, whither he had come to be deservedly welcomed by the intelligentsia. Behind him lay his sweeping revolutionary epics; ahead lay a unique attempt to adapt himself to, or ask concessions from, the capitalist film industry. It was to be a fruitless attempt and a long one in terms of the swiftmoving events of the early thirties. Thus it came about that the first of Russian directors was absent from the scene during the crucial period when Soviet sound-film style was being evolved. If the heads of Paramount reckoned that in signing Eisenstein they had merely acquired another tame European director for their stables, they were more than usually egocentric. Eisenstein regarded himself, and was regarded, as being on leave of absence from the Soviet Union. His adventure in California was in the nature of a Soviet experiment. Accompanied by Alexandrov and Tisse, and with Ivor Montagu as liaison officer with the alien West, 561 36