Film Culture (Winter 1963-64)

‘The Aunt is in extremis and can’t talk, so she writes what she has to say on a slate. In the ab‘sence of a bridal veil, the white mosquito netting -of a bed serves Kitty for the wedding ceremony. ‘The photography is like velvet, the purest kind of painting with light. The direction shows that he hadn’t given in an inch, even at that late date, even after all the disappointments and frustrations... -stubborn but wonderful to the end. THAT’S-THE-WAY-THEY-ALL-LAUGH Dep’t: “His (Sol Lesser’s) closing remark, which ‘dealt with his experiences with Eisenstein’s Thunder Over Mexico, left his audience laughing. ‘Have you ever tried to edit 50,000 feet of clouds?’”” (Daily Variety, Hollywood, Oct. 2, 1963, reporting a symposium, “Editing Reality,” “of the American Cinema Editors in cooperation with the Hollywood Museum and hailed by Mr. Lesser as “the first historical contribution to knowledge in which the Hollywood Museum has taken part.”’) Ricky Leacock on the photography of Halledujah the Hills: “That’s how you make love with a camera.” Everyone dotes on the song Autumn Leaves (by the talented gnome-like Joseph Kosma) but who remembers the Carné film, Les Portes de la Nuit, from which it comes? A sad and wistful idyll that came and went and is probably all but lost to film history. Yet it was this bitter little film that inspired this haunting and unforgettable song. Did you know that the genesis (conscious or not) of the episode in Queen Kelly where Swanson as a nun loses her underpants is from Carl Sternheim’s Die Hose, a turn of the century German satirical play recently revived off-Broadway? Hans Behrendt made an incisive silent film of it in Germany with Werner Kraus as the dumbcluck German husband (a withering comment on the German bourgeoisie) and Jenny Jugo. Its story of the 100% echt-Deutsche model of respectability who is made to wear horns by the reigning Duke of a small German principality in the early years of this century, and how the horns fit him so well that he shows them off, irritated the Nazis so that they killed both Behrendt and Sternheim, which goes to show how right Behrendt and Sternheim both were. So, if you want to live, play it safe, laugh at the idea of cutting “50,000 feet of clouds,” Hollywood’s contemptuous reference to Que Viva Mexico, and throw your lot in with the establishment .. . . the guys in the saddle. I'd like to pack someday the way they do in the movies .. . two or three items flung in a valise and, voila, it’s done, and they’re off to the door, only they seldom make it, that’s the only thing. Something invariably happens and they seldom get through the door. Did you know that the mystique of the pyramid is Heaven, Earth, Man? They symbolize its three corners. Michelangelo’s notes contain this observation and it is no accident that the entire design of Que Viva Mexico is based on this ancient concept. LA DOLCE VITA or CIVILIZATION, 1963: “Sybil Burton was in Trumbull Barton’s party in El Morocco’s Champagne Room last night. She was about to go downstairs to dance, and I whispered to her that Eddie Fisher was downstairs. It did not deter her... Then I sat with Fisher, who asked me to signal when Mrs. Burton came off the dance floor. I did, and he greeted her. They hadn’t met since Rome. We all went up to Burton’s table, where Fisher had a drink, chatted a while with Mrs. Burton, and then left. It was casual, pleasant and civilized.” (Leonard Lyons, NY Post, April 18, 1963) Talk About Wuthering Heights: “Inhabitants of the island of Mykonos, Greece, have decided to erect a monument in memory of Alphonso, the American pelican who died after a long hunger strike induced by his distress over his wife’s infidelity. Alphonso and his wife, Omega, came from Louisiana to serve as companions for Peter, a famous pelican of Mykonos. But Omega fell in love with Peter. Alphonso went on a hunger strike in protest and died as a result. Now the inhabitants of the island will erect a monument on which they will place a small statue of the unlucky bird and carve his tragedy in three languages on the marble. Meanwhile, Peter and Omega are honeymooning happily, unconcerned by the grief over Alphonso’s death.” (A recent Reuter’s dispatch in the N.Y. Times.) What is to me the mystery of Muriel as against the revelations made possible by the archaeologist-physicist, Lerici, who has invented instruments which “see” through the crust of the earth and which has made it possible to discover ancient buried tombs of the Etruscans, thereby uncovering a whole culture and its art (often scarcely less beautiful than ancient Greek art)? Or as against the wistful smile of Nikolai Kolin at the end of Secrets of the Orient (Ufa-Wolkoff-1928) in which is revealed the nostalgia of the world for its most rapturous moments? What Lerici and Wolkoff were concerned with was mystery, too, but mystery that contained within itself revelation. FILM CULTURE 59