Close Up (Jan-Jun 1929)

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CLOSE UP and treated it according to tlie universal feeling of his countrymen — the result of his endeavours would have been a film exactly on the lines of Potemkin ; there is no doubt whatever that it would have aroused the frantic acclamations of every true and staunch English audience, that it would have been considered as appealing to the best traditions and the soundest instincts of the British nation — hate of oppression and corruption, sympathy with the weak and so on. But to-day Potemkin is banned. Englishmen must be protected from falling into the bottomless pit of Bolshevism. The contrast becomes still more glaring in Germany where Potemkin has been show^n innumerable times to enthusiastic audiences; the persons protesting vehemently against this enthusiasm as ^'unpatriotic" are absolutely identical with those w^ho only twelve years ago would have considered it as doAvnright defeatism to depict a Russian army or navy officer as anything else but a brutal and inhuman monster, hated to death by his inferiors. A third case : A short time ago in Berlin was shown an American film which I don't hesitate to call the worst of its class. The Man who Laughs, A w^ork without any artistic ambition, appealing only to the densest — especially sadistic — emotions. In this film is shown a w^oman in her bath and at the subsequent toilet as being observed through the key-hole by two men. True, the naked body is never shown entirely, only various and sundry appetizing bits of it, some directly, some indirectly as silhouettes or mirror-reflection. The tendency of this scene which has nothing whatever to do with the plot is plainly to give the audience cheap erotic sensations 20