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and strong of limb, as they carry on their bacchanales. Pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair are mingled in these faun-like, evil faces that glide like apparitions in a mist before us, as if seen through a powerful telescope which had succeeded in overtaking several thousand light years. In the midst of these saturnalian revels, Lot is seen in the synagogue with the elders. He comes home, where his wife and daughter await him. Suddenly a blinding light from which myriads of rays glance off and cut and cross each other until the screen glitters with shimmering points of light shafts — an angel appears, at the house of Lot. There he is received by Lot, his wife and daughter, given the sacramental wine to drink and the Sabbath chalah to eat.
Towards late evening, word has spread around the town among the Sodomites that a stranger has been received by Lot. They watch Lot's strange guest like crouched animals, from outside the window. They know not what to make of this person whose face is hidden by a cowl. They watch with amusement, until grown weary of this indifference to their restless souls, they shout for Lot to bring him out so that they may look at him. Lot comes out to appease them. He coaxes and cajoles them but to no avail.
" Spare not even thy daughter ' " is the admonishment to Lot from the angel. Lot offers the virginal beauty of his daughter as a sacrifice to the young men. Not torture or death — but as an instrument of childbirth. Will they not change their ways which are alien to God ? Lot pictures for them the lovely poem which is childbirth — and here is the high spot of the film, and one of the finest moment in all pure cinema. A mingling of tears, blood, water and flowers, a physical agony lined by a spiritual ecstasy, a male hand dripping with water after the delivery and the loving fondling of the luminous oval, like the egg of a bird, which trembles and glows with the first breath of life — finallv a clear close-up view of a child. And the mother smiling through her tear stained face.
I cannot impart how the sudden burst of buds to full bloom, disclosing the poignantly lyrical beauty of their stamens, as Lot's daughter lets drop her robe disclosing her naked loveliness, gets across so well the idea of reproduction. Her body floats in turbulent water during her travail, everything is immersed in rushing water (a sexual symbol long discovered by Freud) until it calms down, the body rises above the gentle ripples, and now the water drops gently (in slow motion — three quarters of the film seems to have been " shot " in slowmotion) from the fingers. A child is born.
But the Sodomites are unmoved by this strange poetry. They cannot feel its sensual warmth, and turn from it in repugnance. They scorn Lot, and will have none of his daughter.
The angel warns Lot to flee with his wife and daughter. Sodom's hours are numbered. Ere long, the city will be destroyed. The angel discloses himself to the curious sodomites with their dumb, blank faces. They are blinded by the light. They run away, falling over each other. The panic is on. Lot flees with his wife and daughter. But curiosity overtakes Lot's wife. Or was it sentiment ? She hears the roar and crackle of the fire and brimstone that has descended on the city and turns back to look, against the angel's