National Board of Review Magazine (Jan 1939 - Jan 1942)

14 National Board of Reviezv Magazine how much better they might have been without talk. So much of the conversation in the Howards, for instance, is sheer waste of time, besides provoking an uncomfortable suspicion that those people didn't really talk like that. Brigham Young, because of the words given liim to say and the way Dean Jagger says them, is admirable and authentic Yankee, but iie was never fancy in his language like the Peyton family into which Matt Howard so impulsively married. Brigham Young could much more easil}' be made to seem real in his talk than Thomas Jefiferson. And the love scenes ! Outside of comedies, the "I love you" business is usually embarrassing on the screen, the moi-e serious the more likely to produce wrigglings and mental discomfort, if not actual laughter. Only exceptional writing can make love articulate and moving at the same time, for the eavesdropper on what is after all an extremely private matter. J. S. H. In Camera EVERY master has disciples whose lives inevitably become tied up with the great man's living and doing. Usually the disciple's part is the propagation of his master's ideas and achievements, but often in the realm of art this propagation is widened to include actual ]Darticipation in creating the work of art. The disciple who is permitted to paint the wings of a background angel may sometimes share in the glory of the finished picture ; more often his handiwork is used to excuse his master's failings. Invariably he is confined Ijy the master's original sketch and conception ; he may fill in, touch up and complete, but he cannot spread himself beyond the already defined limits of the canvas. Eisenstein, and his cameraman Tisse, are the masters who supplied the outline and materials for Time in the Sun. They shot thousands of feet of film which they intended to make into a grandiose history of Mexico, culminating in the revolt of the peon against tyrannical landowners. And there they let the matter drop and returned to Russia, leaving behind them thousands of fragments — and an idea. For the disciples who come after them hoping to assemble these fragments, only one course of action is possible : they must follow the original conception to the best of their ability, and they must do it solely with the original material. If they fail they are made the scapegoats ; if they succeed the name of Eisenstein becomes more glorious than ever. We saw one assemblage of these fragments m Thunder Over Mexico a few years back. The present attempt is much better than the first : it makes its own choice from the original material and employs better judgment not only in selecting l)ut in assembling. Let us say at once that Marie Seton and Paul Burnford have done as well as could be expected of any disciples ; the major flaws in Time in the Sun were intrinsic in the film before they began to edit it. It is a film which bears all the stamps of a grand conception which was never thought through to the end. Its story of Mexico is a series of brief jottings moving only in a very general way towards a defined end. Its time sequence and continuity are loose and wa} ward, its emphases — when they exist at all — are indiscriminate and often without any adequate preliminary lead-up. Like its predecessor, Thunder Over Mexico, it collapses as a document of revolution, never going more than skin deep in its depiction of the rebellious peon and depending upon the agony of a tortured face in close-up where the situation demands careful and subtle development of the spirit of revolt. As a symbol of oppression it chooses a bloated landlord having his way Avith an innocent peon girl — a symbol reciuiring infinite artistry if it is not to sink to the entertainment level of the old gentleman on the cover of Esquire. One feels that no matter how often these fragments may be assembled the completed picture will always present itself as a film without a director. No disciple, however gifted, can supply what it lost when its fragments were first abandoned. And where the director's hand appears it is not in any way to the advantage of the film. Here we have only fragments to consider and any credit for them belongs entirely to the cameraman, Tisse. There are hundreds of such frag( Continued on page 17)