Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

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CLOSE UP of one company — British Instructional — it promises to become miicli more than that. THE LOST PATROL. A British Instructional film made by Walter Summers. Patrol got me. I saw it three times. First by business, then by choice, then by accident. And the third state of mind was as good as the first. Patrol is a typical British picture, indirectly glorifying the British soldier. But not so vicious, needless to say, as The Flag Lieutenant and similar dither. Patrol is a satisfying picture. It is almost a great one. Many people might think that it is the best thing yet done in England. Summers is one of our best directors. I saw the film before I had read the book, and, after reading it, can understand why people who had read the novel first were disappointed in the picture. It just misses the bigness it sets out to capture. But in its very failure it is infinitely more stimulating than the cabaret nonsense of the average British masterpiece. The storv is well known ; a dozen men are lost in the desert during the War. One by way they are killed off like flies, ruthlessly, unfeelingly, by the vigilant tribesmen. The sergeant, the one soldier who takes militarism seriously, lasts longest. He is killed, after having accounted for one Arab for everv one of his comrades who has been shot. The picture's value is psychological rather than cinematic. Summers is nearly always an onlooker in his pictures. But he is an intensely observant one. He treats his subject with aloofness, running back from it to give you a sense of 43