The Movies ... and the People Who Make Them (1939)

"The MOVIES • • • • 1939" FOREIGN FILMS in the UNITED STATES — JULY by Nigel Dennis In recent years we have watched the Russian film turn gradually but surely from a broad, impressive art-medium into a narrow, strictly defined groove of propaganda. Propaganda has always been a major consideration, of course, for as long as there has been a Soviet cinema, but in the years between Potemkin and Lenin in 1918 the chief of productions has changed slowly from a maker of movies into a bureaucrat. Where once the onlooker was convinced and inspired by Soviet themes — often in spite of himself— through the vitality and sincerity of the screen presentation, he is now faced by a series of Stalin versus Trotsky feuds, comparable only to a hillbilly wrangle in childish reasoning and hollowness. As with all generalizations there have been exceptions; pictures which stood out markedly in recent years as signs that propaganda could be more than an interoffice memo. Peter the First was one of these, as was Professor Mamlock, and in Alexander Nevsky the ghost of the old days fought a losing battle with artificial spectacles and petty interludes. There were sequences in Alexander Nevsky that will always remain in the minds of those who saw it — the black monk sounding his organ on the battlefield, the symbolic effects of the dress and headpieces of the Teutonic knights, the lovely opening scenes of the Mongol lord on his journey through Russian land. But sequences are not enough and, while the Russians retain much of their old power of castigating and satirizing their enemies, they are fast losing the ability to discriminate between the mature and the juvenile in their propagation of Soviet aims and ideals. LENIN IN 1918 Lenin in 1918 is the latest example, it is a sequal to last year's Lenin in October and deals with one of the most stirring periods of Russian history — when the new Soviets were fighting on every front against their own people and their former World War allies. With these events coincided the fight against grainharbormg farmers and the attempted assasination of Lenin. The film runs around two hours and a half. Perhaps “runs” is the wrong word, for after ninety minutes of finely-planned, dramatic cinema the final hour is an endless totter down the home stretch, with Stalin edging home by the length of a Chester Conklin mustache. For the moment I find it hard to remember any Russian picture so deliberately sabotaged by its producers, so full of,, fine material that is sacrificed in its latter half to wordiness and staged situations. We have come to respect tremendously the naturalness of most Russian casts, and here again we are not disappointed until the folly of the scriptwriters finally succeeds in turning the actors into stooges. For an hour and a half we watch them in as promising a drama as ever came out of Russia, and full credit must go to Mikhail Romm for direction that handles so many aspects of national strife without once obscuring the main elements of his story. There is big variety here, with the scenes ranging irom intimate, personal dramas to mass movement and sweeping action, and through all oi them the same reality and Human feeling grips the attention and sympathy, the plot against Lenin’s life is handled superbly, with a fine building up of suspense in the intriguing sequence that precedes the firing of the almost fatal shot. Along with all this come excellent character studies of Lenin himself (Boris Shchukin), the various plotters and defiant kulaks. It is these admirable elements of Lenin in 1918 that cause one to speak so bitterly of the hour of anticlimaxes that follows them — when the producers realize that as yet Stalin has been no more than a voice on the longdistance wire and has had no chance to show his affection for children, while Trotzky, Kamenev, Zinoviev et ah, have escaped without a blemish. These lapses are remedied in the final hour, as unimaginatively and cheaply as their pointlessness demands. Go to Lenin in 1918, if only to see how utterly a studio bureaucracy can break the back of a promising drama. AMANGELDY The second Russian offering of the month, Amangeldy, is pretty much of a routine job. A Mongolian setting is the only fresh element: tor the rest it is an ordinary story of a Mongol hero who learns from the Soviets the methods and ideals of Soviet leadership. If Russia were to settle down to turning out Westerns ("Mongolians” might be a name for them) Amangeldy might serve as an example of the general run. * * * I shall have to make a small digression at this point to reply to Mr. John Cleveland who does the column on adaptations in this paper. Mr. Cleveland lodged formal complaint in his last column against my including pictures made in England in reviews of foreign films, citing Chips and The Mikado as pictures that should be credited to America's MGM. Chips, and similar cases, are open to argument, as the New York Critic’s Circle and The National Board of Review discovered when trying to place The Citadel in their lists of the Ten Best from home and abroad. You have an American company, operating in England, usually an American director, along with English producer, cast, writers and personnel. How should the production be classed? MGM, when asked, say definitely that these,, are English pictures, made to conJorpjM^ith •English quota regulations. The simplest? thing, it seems, is to consider them Anglo-American, and go fifty-fifty on them with Mr. Cleveland. This is the general attitude of the Ten Best groups. On The Mikado, of course, the situation is perfectly clear. Mr. Cleveland generously gives this to Metro also, although Universal is distributing it here and it was made by an English company: Gilbert and Sullivan Productions. I claim this, along with any future Beachcombers, Pygmalions or Vanishing Ladies that may come along, as foreign product, and call on all patriots to Keep Mr. Cleveland out ot European entanglements. Next thing, he’ll be asking us to guarantee Danzig. FOREIGN FILMS IN NEW YORK I think, lot the Summer at any rate, the best locations for those interested in the foreign film will be the World’s Fair and New York's Fifth Avenue Playhouse. The latler has just begun its Second International Film Festival, and is presenting a selection of outstanding films from more than twenty countries. The showings of these will continue until midSeptember, and programs can be got from the Playhouse at 66 Fifth Avenue. For variety and choice it would be impossible rc find a better international list. At the World’s Fair foreign pavilions you will find almost nothing but documentaries, the exception being the Soviet Pavilion, which shows Russian features in the auditorium, and documentaries in the open air after dark. The British Pavilion will have about one hundred documentaries to draw on in the course of the summer, any selection of which is worth a visit. (Those British documentaries, however, which suggest the existence of slums, unemployed, malnutrition etc. in Great Britain, are conspicuously absent, despite the fact that the fame of the British documentary rests as much on its outspoken truthfulness as on its technical progressiveness. We note, however, as a pure but strange coincidence, that one of the first acts of the new organization known as the Association of Documentary Film Producers (of America) has been to arrange for the showing of these lepers in the Science and Education Building.) On Mondays and Saturdays, the Australians take ever the British auditorium in the afternoon, for showings of interesting and novel shorts of their country. And the French have got under way too, now, with a wide selection of domestic and colonial material, and the promise of new work by Rene Clair, Jacques Feyder, Jean Renoir and other top-ranking French directors. ( I 184