CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE CINEMA .
THAT art is related to " escapism " is a contention which can gener- ally be relied upon to stir the gentlest gathering into a state of -animation ; the affair is likely to end by a schism into mortally opposed camps, or by a cool disagreement as to definitions. Yet The Brothers certainly sets one's mind nibbling at that little bit of chalky cheese. The story (L. A. G. Strong) concerns a convent-bred girl who works as a servant for a father and his two sons in a tiny village on Skye. The girl (Patricia Roc) is unwise enough to show interest in the scion of a rival clan, and this, coupled with the rivalry of the two brothers for her hand, brings her to a sad end. Yes, the " escapism " is there, from the first superbly photographed horizon of rock-encrusted sea, to the remoteness of folk who pay no heed to " Sassenach English laws " against distilling liquor, and take the law gruesomely into their own hands against kinsfolk who inform the Excise men. Yet the faithfulness to local idiom and atmosphere (the set-men even build a cave which looks like a cave instead of a geologist's delirium) pulls this film well into the art class, though not, I fear, into the art gallery. Besides photography, the direction (within the story's limits) and acting are good. But while the characters are all alive, it is only one side of their lives that we are allowed to meet—the " picturesque native " seen by sensi- tive, kindly but blinkered eyes. This, to me, represents escapism at an all-too-adult level. It is further reflected in the sterilised quality of the story. Nothing—bar the Excise men, whom we never notice— brings any touch of the outside world to this inverted, made to seem real Shangri-La. A convent is so convenient a background for the one stranger in the village. No ties, no mail from home, no one to write to. As if unhappy with these flimsy foundations, Muir Mathieson has allowed the music to be used sometimes to touch the bottom of banality, largely through triteness of timing.
* * * * Crime stories are probably the most popular escapist fare. Simenon, though, is an artist, and the treatment of his work in Panique is a joy to watch—at the hands of Duvivier. To im- prisoned British audiences, the warm people of a French provincial town are as much an escape, surely, as the Isle of Skye. The girl of this story comes from—though again we never see it—prison. But, bless me, she does talk about it ; it was a place she lived in. How The Brothers might have stood up as a film if Pat Roc had been allowed to suggest she had had something of a heartbeat, even in a convent! Though the setting does not .move outside the town, you feel, by the very way the butcher demands his 6 francs 25 for the meat, that here is a man who has to make a living, even if he is mainly there to shepherd us through a murder story. And the music, by Jean Wiener—that comes to us through the unlikely loud- speaker of a fairground.
A woman's body is found on a piece of waste ground just when the fair folk arrive ; three people are variously enmeshed in the crime. The escapist element lies in just this ; most of us don't get caught up in murders. But this escape is justified, because it could happen ; and if it did the people we meet could behave just like that. They could act out just that drama, for they are people seen in the round. Escapism becomes art. A thumbnail sketch might descr,lae Panique Its another Double Indemnity—but French. Yet for all the virtues, forced or unforced, of these two films, one is left asking: Must our story-escape so often be to murder, killing, death? Wouldn't it be nice to-have a little life about just for a change? I'd rather have a problem about life gone wrong than a simple extinction-of problems in death—or its retributito. It would seem a richer field for drama,
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