Documentary News Letter (1940)

I DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1940 15 t) SJi fiof Sfot Ittjde, Mimi udCi ten JxSoa REVIEWS OF FOREIGN FILMS 411 films recommended on this page are the test continentals viewable in London, and are, t our opinion, suitable for Film Society showing. Ve are unable to indicate at what dates they will e available for booking.) Tragedie Imperiale. Direction: Marcel I'Her ler. Actors: Harry Baur, Marcelle Chantal, ierre-Richard Willm, Jean Worms. Distribution: n! aalBfuropean Films Ltd. "Kiia [asputin rears his ugly head again, uglier than ver. He seems to be as difficult to extinguish on KciDa le screen as he was in actual life. This time the lan beneath the beard is Harry Baur. It doesn't '''■patter whether his interpretation of the mad lonk is historically accurate or not — Rasputin eprofi^assed more quickly into legend than any other nan. It is, at any rate, plausible. We can believe r more easily in a superstitious peasant whose iipsiBreed is that life is incomplete without sin, and bsciipiii ihose rustic common sense gives him sufficient Sou uman understanding to perform what seem to ['edma e miracles, than we can in a mystic and mac iavellian prophet of the steppes, who is Conrad fjiisaBi'eidt and there's no getting away from it. Apart ithem rem Harry Baur, the film is nowhere quite in the il ana rst class. The direction is always thoughtful, but ai <k ever brilliant. There is a big patch in the middle residn f the film which is uneventful and slow. The upporting cast do little more than sketch in background which is recognisable as the Romanoff Court, although Marcelle Chantal's Tsarina sometimes comes to life as a naive and sincere woman bordering on religious mania. Jean Worms' make-up makes him the dead spit of the Tsar, but then Mme Tussaud's waxworks have done as well as that before now. Law report addicts will be disappointed to know that no libel suits are likely to arise from this film, for the only characters based on real people are those of the royal family and of Rasputin himself. Their surviving relations, if any, are unlikely to bring actions. The man who kills Rasputin is a fictitious nobleman, and is played by Pierre-Richard Willm. Les Mutines de I'Elseneur. Direction: Christan Stengel. Actor.s: Jean Murat, Winna Winfried, Andre Berley, Rene Bergeron. Distribution: Associated British. FORMULA pictures and hokum don't all come from Hollywood. There is a good lacing of both in this film. The formula is the French one, the only essential ingredient of which is that you have to have a sex maniac in the cast. He need not have much to do, just so long as he appears now and again to relieve the tedium and give the story verisimilitude. The hokum is supplied by Winna Winfried, tres chic and tres sport as the captain's blonde niece on the four-masted clipper, who has a chromium-fitted dressing-table in her cabin. provides the excuse for the sex-maniac, and can show a pretty style with a sextant when the need arises. She also helps to occupy the time of the hero of the film, a journalist played by Jean Murat, who would be quite at a loose end without her. All this is only sufTerable because it goes on in a foreign language. The reason for recommending the film is that the real story has nothing to do with captains' nieces and journalists and has some genuine excitement in it. The crew of the Elsinore is made up of a score or so assorted gaolbirds, controlled by the first and second mate. The first mate is a sort of Captain Bligh without the sadism. His excuse for what brutality he commits is that to sail a fourmaster you have to be hard. And so it seems. He is played by Andre Berley, who makes him look like a big, unshaven toad. The second mate is a shifty, subversive individual, who gambles with the crew, steals money from the journalist, and ends up by knifing the captain. Rene Bergeron, with his long nose and the cigarette in the corner of his surly mouth, makes him a real and understandable character. After the death of the captain, the gaolbirds mutiny, but are finally quelled. There is a storm too, of course, but it is better than usual because it has all been shot on the spot in the documentary manner, even including some of the dialogue scenes. The cameramen must have deserved the Legion of Honour. noiiiiiB * A New Quarterly Edited by Jay Leyda 2 Dollars a Year Published by Kamin Publishers 15 West 56th Street New York NY Arnl. CA ia rhe Second Number Contains: Collaboration in Documentary by Joris Ivens: Life joes to the Pictures by Otis Ferguson: Film Music of the Quarter by Kurt ondon : A Channel For Democratic Thought by Philip Sterling : Film Problems of the Quarter : Literature of the Film FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION 3 DOLLARS A YEAR NO. 2 SPRING 1940