The Cinema
The Crusades." At the Carlton Mn. CECIL DE MILLE'S evangelical films are the nearest equivalent today to the glossy German colour -prints which sometimes. decorated mid-Victorian Bibles. There is the same complete lack of a period sense, the same stuffy horsehair atmosphere of beards and whiskers, and, their best quality, a childlike eye for detail which enabled one to spend so many happy minutes spying a new lamb among the rocks, an unobtrusive dove or a mislaid shepherd. As the great draw- bridge falls from the besieger's tower on to the walls of Acre, you cannot help counting the little cluster of spent arrows quivering under the failing block ; when Richard of England takes the cross from the hairy hermit, the camera, moving its eye down the castle walls, stays on a couple of pigeons nesting in a coign of masonry. But one chiefly enjoys in Mr. de Milk's fihns their great set pieces ; he handles, as no other director can, an army of extras. It is not a mere matter of spending money. The cavalry charge outside Jerusalem, the storming of Acre : these are scenes of real executive genius. No clanking of tin swords here, but a quite horrifying sense of reality, as the huge vats tip the burning oil down on to the agonised faces of the men on the storming ladders, or when the riders meet at full gallop in the plain with a shock which jars you in the stalls.
But these moments occupy perhaps twenty minutes of a very long film. For the rest of the time we must be content with a little quiet fun at the expense of Clio, not always clean fun, although Mr. Shortt has given this film the Universal certificate he denied to Boys Will Be Boys... Richard Coeur- de-Lion, in Mr. de Mille's pious and protestant eyes, closely resembled those honest simple young rowing men who feel that there's something wrong about sex. Richard Aook the Cross rather than marry Alice of France, and when the -King of Navarre forced him at Marseilles .6 marry his daughter (the alternative was to let his army starve), he merely sent his sword to the wedding ceremony, which was oddly enough carried out in English by an Anglican— or possibly American Episcopalian—clergyman in the words of the Book of Common Prayer. There is, indeed, in spite of the subject, nothing Romish about this film, which has the -air of having been written by the " Oxford " Group. Only -when his wife had been captured by Saladin did Richard allow himself to pray, but he found prayer as effective as did the author of For Sinners Only, and his- wife, whom he had learnt to love, was restored to him. Richard shyly confessed, "Last night . . last night . . . ," and Berengaria encouraged him with bright tenderness, " You prayed ? But Richard wouldn't go quite-as far as that. " I begged,''. he said, " I begged . . . ," as the great Buchman heart melted at last and Berengaria slid to dry dock in his arms.
Neither of the two principal players, Miss. Loretta Young and Mr. Henry Wilcoxon, really get a chance in this film. The programme says all, there is to be said about them. Mr. Wilcoxon is " six feet two inches tall, weighs. 190 pounds. He was nicknamed WT.' as a child." Miss Young five feet three and weighs 105 pounds." The informal:1ms is not as irrelevant as ,it sounds, for the acting .can roughly be judged in terms of weight. Mr. Wilcoxon leads over the hairy hermit, played by Mr. Aubrey Smith, by six pounds, and Miss Katherine de Mille, who has an agreeably mediaeval face, as Alice of France beats Miss Young by ten pounds. ,(To quote the programme again, " She avoids starches, sugars and fats ; eats all greens and only enough meat to get the necessary proteins.") As for the oilier groupers, there was a delicions moment when I thought the Earl of Leicester said " Aye, f2elonel," to Richard when he was told to attack, but I -think the din before Acre may have confused my ears. The Earl was made up distractingly to resemble Mr. George Moore. He had one of the few English names in a finely orchestrated east which included Sven-Hugo Borg, Fred Malatesta, Vallejo Gantsser, Paul Sotoff, Hans von Twardowski, and the name I liked best, Pedro de . Cordoba. One had to. judge these actors by their names as their weights were not given.
GRAHAM GREENE.
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