World Film News and Television Progress (Apr 1936-Mar 1937)

FROM Sarah Bernhardt TO Flora Robson An early Queen Elizabeth. Sarah Bernhardt in the 1912 French version acquired by Zukor for Paramount \'iscoL'NT Mersey's recent motion in the House of Lords urging the government to take steps to ensure accuracy in historical films raises important issues. In demanding from the historical film the same standards of correctness as from the scientific or educational biology film. Viscount Mersey in effect denies the right of the artist, whether his medium be the film, literature or the paint brush, to use history as a subject for artistic creation. For a work of art, of whatever type, is essentially different from a scientific textbook or demonstration film. The ideas, the conceptions of life, expressed through the medium of historical themes in art differ widely in character. They may be straight propaganda for specific social aims, they may be more subtle attempts in which a particular situation of the past is held up as a mirror to the present, or they may be pure means of escape into the realms of fancy clothed in the settings of a former age. Most frequently they combine the elements of more than one of these types. Even where the aims of the artist are best served by as accurate as possible a picture of a given historical theme, it is essential for him to dramatise his subject. The first epoch-making example of the historical film as a means of straight propaganda was Griffith's Birth of a Nation. For the basic theme of this film is the action of the former Southern slave owners who, despite their defeat in the American Civil War, reconquered their former political monopoly by force of arms and constituted themselves as the Nation. A similar example is provided by the cycle of films glorifying the reign and campaigns of Frederick 11. of Prussia (Fricdericiis Rex, etc.), released in Germany during the early 8 years of the Weimar Republic. The support given to this type of production by the Reichswher authorities and the enthusiasm with which they were greeted by the "nationalist" middle classes clearly expressed their longing, whipped to fever heat by the Ruhr invasion, for the return of a "glorious past." On the other hand the great Soviet films from Potemkin and the End of St. Petersburg to Chapaiev exhilarated millions throughout the world with their stirring chronicle of the Russian workers" struggle for the establishment of a new world. The fashion for history films which has swept the Anglo-American cinemas since the release of the Private Life of Henry VIII at the end of 1933 differs materially in the nature of its appeal from the other historical cycles. Its main accent is placed not on the epochmaking, but rather on the intimate personal aspects of the past. Its sphere is not Grand History, but the "Chronique Scandaleuse" (more or less discreetly veiled for censorship purposes) and the historical pageant. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that in the majority of cases history has become historical biography. There could be no clearer indication of this tendency than the title of the film which opened the cycle. Henry VIII, more perhaps than any other monarch in English history, broke down the bulwarks of a whole epoch and paved the way for a new form of society. He created a new ruling class and established a national church. Yet, from his film "life" all his public actions without exception are eliminated and the attention of the audiences is directed exclusively to his private love affairs. A legion of Rasputins, Catherines, Nell Gwyniis, Queen Christinas. Du Barrys, Don Juans followed to exploit the public interest in the erotic foibles of the great, or at best in the psychological problems of historical personalities, portrayed on a background of pageantry. This type of appeal was nothing new for the film public. Even the figure of Henry VIII had been portrayed from this angle by Jannings in a film called .4nne Boleyn (1924) and the same actor had provided superb examples of the psychological problem biography or character play in such films as han the Terrible and Tartuffe. America had seen a Private Life of Helen of Troy and a Madame Pompadour (Dorothy Gish). both in 1928, and a Du Barry in 1930, to mention only a few examples and to omit a whole series of .Abraham Lincolns, .Alexander Hamiltons and George Washingtons. Moreover, only a short time before the release of Henry VIII Anglo-Saxon audiences had been thrilled with continental films such as Congress Dances and Rasputin (both Conrad Veidt. 1932). Until the release of the Korda film, trade experience in the English-speaking countries had proved the unprofitability of the "period picture." Even if due allowance is made for a quint-essential concentration of the recipe (human foibles of royalty plus pageantry) in Henry I'lII and for its technical qualities, the outstanding success of that film cannot therefore be accounted for on that score alone. It must rather be due to the fact that that recipe was just what was wanted in the Anglo-Saxon markets at the time when the film was released. History, the story of actual events, was sufficiently real to attract the interest of a public too absorbed in actualities to put up with fairy tales. Yet by transporting its audience to the past it avoided the dangerous ground of contemporary controversy.