The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

530 THE EDUCATIONAL SCREEN Max Reinhardt and Douglas Fairbanks unite in saying that it is great art, the best motion picture either has ever seen. Already it has had, as well, a tremendous commercial success in Germany despite defeats in certain German cities by political censorship. Will Hays, who seems never to forget that the average mental age of the American public is fourteen years, and is so very careful lest the movies help mature us, was not present on Tuesday. There is no final word therefore as to whether the picture is to become a legend among the cognoscenti, or be the sensation of the movies this year. In making the picture Director Eisenstein used members of the Moscow Art Theater and hundreds of non-professional actors from the Proletcult (Organization for Proletarian Culture.) The story, based on the official report in the Admiralty files of the Czar, and on the recollections of eye-witnesses and participants, describes the revolt of the sailors of the armored cruiser "Potemkin" of the Black Sea fleet outside the harbor of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution, the demonstrations of the common people at the tent-bier of the sailor who led it, the attack on the mourners and revolutionists by the Cossacks, and finally the escape of the cruiser "Potemkin" with the connivance of comrades on the other cruisers of the fleet to the Rumanian port of Constanza. Here is epic material, full of pity, terror, and truth. Someone muttered in the audience "This is only news-reel." There could be no higher praise for the reality conveyed. So it was, indicating at last in which direction the art of the movies is to lie, if the screen is to be something more than a vehicle for exploiting the personalities of stars and a distractor of the public gaze from public and private conflicts. There was no star in the picture, unless perhaps the cruiser itself, or the sailors, or the masses of Odessa. Certainly not the sailor who rose to give command and who died in the fighting. The eyes of the audience beheld, sensed, understood all that happened on those significant three days. Captions were few and simple, muted down, whispered directions to those who have forgotten history. The continuity halts nowhere for explanations. The eye but followed as the ear might hearken to a tune. This was more than news-reel. The camera, like some holy invisible, watched and recorded. Of all this population that Director Eisenstein commanded, not one linger' ed before the camera. Life was the thingmasses of men, sweating at the furnaces, al mess, fighting; faces, arms, legs, engines, ther mometers, the big guns with nostrils scenting danger, the restless flow of the eommor people of Odessa across the narrow file ol the breakwater to where the dead sailor laj in common state; the faces of the mourners the student and revolutionist exhorters; th( crowd in panic — things like these have neve been seen so well in life or theater before Nor has machinery, monster and servant ii the modern world, been so emotionally com prehended, or the relations between thosi who physically manipulate it and those whi own it been so dramatized. The audience was divided between thosi who were nervous and puzzled by the socia conflict which was the theme of the film, am those who were deeply moved not only by th revolutionary theme but by the revolutioi in movie technique bringing in its wake vision of the new developments in the one ai the machine age can call its own. Whethe the public sees this picture or not, it will b( fore long experience the influence of the nei technique, the use of masses, the feeling fo motion and machinery, a new swiftness an naturalness. Chicago Tribune (October 3rd)— "M( tion Pictures and World Peace," an editoria comments as follows: In Paris the International Motion Pictur congress has adopted a resolution urging pre ducers to abstain from making films "suscej tible of engendering hatred between nations. If they choose to act within the spirit of th resolution, producers can exercise a ret force for peace. It is said that lack of intercommunicatioi in former days, led to misunderstandings an wars. It is now being found that there ai also draw-backs to facility of communicatioi Mr. Kipling, for example, publishes a poei in which he makes a few unkind remarks i bout the United States. The poem is cablec broadcast throughout the United States, an an immediate resentment appears. What is true of the written word is eve more true of pictured action. The feeling poem caused in America is matched by tl; feeling "The Big Parade" caused in Englanc