Film Culture (1956)

dissolve on movement, can see it most felicitously adapted to the stage in the scene transitions in the musical-comedy hit, My Farr Lady, especially in the breathtaking transition to the ball scene. Did anyone ever remark on the affinity between the complete bordello scene in Stroheim’s The Wedding March and the Feast of Trimalchio described by Petronius in The Satyricon? And has anyone remarked on the growing resemblance of Judy Holliday to Harpo Marx? High Moment: Seeing U.F.O. (Unidentified Flying Objects) with Fritz Lang (whose Frau im Mond 1s still by far the best science-fiction film ever made, dealing with a rocket-trip to the moon) and Willy Ley (special assistant to Lang on Fraw im Mond and internationally renowned rocket authority). Said Ley at U.F.O.’s conclusion: “They ask ‘Who made them?’ But they don’t ask, ‘Wat made them?’ They (the “‘flying saucers”) could just as well be unexplained natural phenomena.” Lang on big screens: ‘‘They’re good to show snakes and funerals—and soldiers marching. But I don’t want to see soldiers marching anymore, on any kind of screen, A special version of The Big Parade was made for France, toning down the “American angle’? somewhat, despite which it was violently attacked by the pioneer French critic, Leon Moussinac, for rose-tinting the war and giving the impression America won it single-handed. Marshall Joffre, generalissimo of the Allied Armies, praised it highly however. The most charming little theatre in America devoted solely to the showing of old movies is in the basement of John Grigg’s home in Englewood, N. J. Two Doug Fairbanks classics, The Black Pirate and The Gaucho, have been prepared with narration (adapted from the original titles) and music for television by this writer . . . intact and faithful to the originals. Someone who saw Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin abroad recently told me he could make nothing of it, that it reminded him of what the critic, Victor Llona, once said of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, “I don’t know what to call it, but it’s mighty unlike prose.” Von Sternberg once wanted to make a film on the “white trains” that carry pilgrims to the shrine of Loreto, Italy’s counterpart to Lourdes. De Sica made such a film. “Her name begins like a caress,” said Cocteau of Marlene Dietrich, “ and ends like a riding whip.” Lewis Milestone’s favorite among his films is The Front Page. The “Swedish Orson Welles,’ Arne Ragueborn, 25, has written, directed and stars in a film, Ma Souris, in which his feminine co-star was a prostitute who tried to pick him up one night. Marc Sorkin, ex-assistant to Pabst, once made a film with the great sexologist, author of Ideal Marriage, Van de Velde, called Women’s Need in Love. Professor Unrat, the novel by Heinrich Mann (on part of which The Blue Angel was based) was autobiographical. “The film was born in the laboratory and reared in the counting house. Filthy hands taught it to walk.” (Harry Alan Potamkin, The Eyes of the Movies, 1929). “The development of the cinema suffers under the biblical curse unto the third generation because the first film makers were mercenary business men instead of responsible artists.’ (Dr. Hans E. Mutzenbacher, ¥956): “A scorpion asked a frog to ferry it across the river. If I take you on my back, said the frog, you'll sting me and I'll drown.’ ‘Where’s the logic?’ replied the scorpion. ‘If you drown, I drown, too.’ Whereupon the frog agreed and tock the scorpion on his back. Midway across the river the scorpion stung the frog. ‘Why did you do that?’ said the frog, as he was about to sink, ‘Where’s the logic, now?’ Replied the scorpion, ‘I can’t help it—it’s my character.’” Here's to character!” (from Orson Welles’ Confidential Report (ex-Mr. Arkadin) . In the coming issues of FILM CULTURE: ANALYSES OF WAR AND PEACE, MOBY DICK, GIANT. REPORT ON EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL, John Grierson. REPORT ON VENICE FILM FESTIVAL, Guido Aristarco, Lotte Eisner. THE WORK OF CAROL REED, Andrew Sarris. THE WORK OF GEORGE STEVENS, Eugene Archer. A SURVEY OF THE INDEPENDENT AND EXPERIMENTAL SWEDISH FILM PRODUCTION, Edouard Laurot. NEO-REALISM IN AMERICAN MOTION PICTURES, Jonas Mekas. THE SILENT WORLD OF SLAPSTICK, Mark Sufrin. THE WORK OF RENE CLEMENT, Lotte H. Eisner. Also articles by George Amberg, Georges Sadoul, Richard Griffith, Herman G. Weinberg, George N. Fenin, Jay Leyda, and others. 23