World Film and Television Progress (1937-1938)

Five Films There is, on West End screens, a very pretty sense of how the public peace or complacency can be best disturbed. At a time when the country is asking what is wrong with the Labour Party, Messrs. Attlee, Bevin and Greenwood might learn from it. In easy foot work, length of reach and unexpectedness of crosses, they are by all odds inferior in equipment to the Marx Brothers. I recommend A Day at the Races as a classical exercise in Opposition. Messrs. A, B and G may catch from it, if they care, that secret of high anarchy without which no body of criticism (His Majesty's or any other) was ever worth the bother of maintaining. It may help them if they regard Groucho's home for rich neurasthenics as a pleasant commentary on our Defence Departments and the plight of the unfortunate race horse Nelly — so pestered by duns that it has to be accommodated on the fifteenth floor and fed on the bedroom mattresses — as not dissimilar to that of the League of Nations. But, as people who are too serious by half and not enough, they will mostly learn from the Tactic of Inconsequence. When faced with the Sublime (Niagara, Baldwin or Mussolini) Kant from Koenigsberg recommends, like any trade union leader, a snivelling glance to the starry heavens above, though it is difficult to see why when he so accurately defines the sublime as "that the mere ability to think which shows a faculty of mind far surpassing any standard of sense." Being less provincial philosophers, the Marx Brothers take the definition at its word. With a whoop they are round the corner of Nonsense and what happens to the Kantian devotee is nobody's business. At the very least it is what Groucho does to Margaret Dumont in the operating theatre of his neurasthenic sanatorium. In what my critical stable mate across the page describes as a "nightmare tangle of voodoo, dentistry and hairdressing," the one thing which is finally disentangled is the divine symposium of the dignities and snobberies which Miss Dumont so happily represents in every Marx Brothers comedy. 24 Sociological students will appreciate that nothing is so likely to perform this feat, as a "tangle of voodoo, dentistry and hairdressing." It may be that others, more gently, have applied the same critical tactic, and all good satirists do. The special secret of the Marx Brothers is in the physical quality they have been able to add. We have had nothing like their sense of direct action since Gulliver invited the insults of the arboreal Yahoos. The mechanistic persistence of Chico's crookedness, the enthusiastic sacrifice of sense and sanity to speed and certainty on the part of Groucho, the mad dashes of Harpo after any and every indiscriminate suggestion, have a passion about them which no statement in a slower medium could hope to match. It is in this that the Marxes make their chief contribution to the cinema. They have made its physical speed an essential part of their art. Anyone who has seen the relatively crude efforts on the music-hall stage to achieve a similar frenzy — whether in the antics of the Crazy Gang at the Palladium or in the vaudeville version of the Marx Brothers themselves — must recognise the importance of this cinematic asset. In one matter A Day at the Races represents a dangerous deviation from the true Marxist doctrine. It has been described by good critics as "striking a perfect balance between fantasy and reality," meaning that the background of young musical comedy love, with tearful heroine and hero bellowing to the moon (reality), fits with perfect balance into the extravagance of the Marxian antics (fastasy). The other view is that having gone so far to debunk the niceties of human intercourse it would have been simple decency on the part of the Brothers to debunk love's young dream as well. In previous films they have done it and I am sure only considerations of the box-office has dictated respect in this instance. Their previous treatment of love's young dream has lost them half a million dollars a picture. Be that as it may, there is enough in this epic of social sabotage to make A Day at the Races a very distinguished performance. Our students, Attlee, Bevin and Greenwood have only to find political equivalents for mixing a Negro sing-song with the Pied Piper, middleaged romance with paper hanging, Ascot with a traffic jam and a ceremonial reception with a night in Haarlem ; and the quality of His Majesty's Opposition will be up to standard in no time. What is left of Humpty Dumpty after the Marx Brothers are done with him is, with almost equal skill, reconstructed in Easy Living. This is a racy and amusing film which, in technical nicety, must be the despair of every director in Britain. If Cinderella stories must be told and the miracle of coincidence by John Grierson A Day at the Races An M.G.M. film, directed by Sam Wood, with the Marx Brothers. Easy Living A Paramount picture, directed by Mitchell Leisen, with Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur and Ray Milland. Said O'Reilly to McNab A Gainsborough picture, directed by William Beaudine, with Will Fyffe and Will Mahoney. brought to solve the problem of poverty and wealth, then this is as good a day-dream as any. The girl is pretty and deserving, without being a bore about it ; the young millionaire is too up-to-date and knowing to give any hint of patronage; and the contraption by which they are brought together is as happy and various in invention as anything out of Heath Robinson. The sable coat falls from heaven on the shoulders of the passing poor and, invested in this badge of plutocratic favour, it is simple logic that every other luxury should follow. We have the evidence in our own beloved film trade of how confidence, a cigar and the broken accent of Art can take a cool million from the City. It is a mere matter of arithmetic what a sable coat and a suspected liaison with Mr. Bull of Wall Street can do to the more innocent gentry of the hotels and the sales rooms. Faith, as ever, delivers the necessary limousines. What I find most interesting about the film is that, in reducing the parties to their common human elements, it effectively abolishes the distinction of rich and poor altogether. Who can complain of Wealth when he beats his wife like any honest man, allows himself good-naturedly to be called a "greasy capitalist," and knows rather less about finance than the lucky pin of his secretary? He is obviously a pleasant and human fellow. Beat your wives happily together, the film seems to say, and what's in a bank balance? I had better mention too, the British film, Said O'Reilly to McNab, which I saw, as it ought to be seen, in Glasgow. There have been better Glasgow accents than Will Fyffe's — he could not compare in virtuosity with the late lamented Tommie Lome — but it will ring a bell anywhere between Bridgton Cross and Gilmorehill. Here, Fyffe and Mahoney play out a Scots-Irish comedy in which canny and uncanny crookeries are evenly matched. The humour is robust rather than subtle and so is the acting, though Fyffe, if encouraged, might easily lose his