29 JUNE 1944, Page 11

THE CINEMA

No Greater Love." At the Tatler.—‘. For Those in Peril."

To be generally released. Films on the Technique of Anaes- thesia. For special showing.

No Greater Love is a Soviet film about the war directed by Frederic Ermler. It shows a happy young Russian wife changed into a ruthless guerilla leader by seeing her child killed and her husband maimed by Nazis who sack her village. The part of the mother is played with distincton by Vera Maretskaya, and her performance, together with a few sequences visually well-composed, lift the film frequently above the level of propagandist melodrama. No Greater Love is more convincing in its friendships than in its hates and, best of all, when it dwells for a fleeting moment on some domestic detail of peasant life. The film suffers" an understandable failure in objective observation when it attempts to deal with the Nazi invader. English voices have been dubbed on with more than usual success.

For Those in Peril is a dramatised documentary dealing with the work of the R.A.F. Air Sea Rescue Service. The over-obtrusive story is of an R.A.F. officer anxious to fly who resents his transfer to what he regards as a humdrum duty. To disprove his belief that the " wingless wonders" of the R.A.F. motor launches have a cushy, non-combatant job, it is necessary to stress the hazards of picking up marooned airmen to a point where the steady, un- spectacular and perhaps more valuable achievements of this Service are unreported, but the encounters with enemy surface craft, with mines and with cannon-firing fighters are so convincingly enacted that the total excitement more than equals that of the average studio feature. Director Charles Crichton would have done better to devote more footage to the precise method of combined working of Walrus aircraft and armed speed-boats and less to the somewhat ponderous characterisation of the participants. The dialogue is poor —much of it quite unnecessary—and the acting is uneven, but the film contains some beautiful exterior photography by Douglas Slocombe and some well-edited sequences of factual description. It is a measure of the increasing power of monopolistic control in British film distribution that this workmanlike production should be denied a West End release at a time when new material is scarce and London cinemas are forced to display a higher proportion of rubbish than at any time during the history of films.

The screen has a part to play in every sphere which calls for the communication of facts, ideas and methods. At a time when the future of medical education is a subject of so much discussion the appearance of a series of films on The Technique of Anaesthesia is of importance. The series is being sponsored by Imperial Chemical Industries, and some of the items already completed hAve lately been shown to audiences largely drawn from the medical

profession. I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following notes:

"The series will comprise eleven films, covering the use of all the commoner forms of anaesthesia, as well as the method used in some of the indirect applications of anaesthesia such as Post-Opera- tive Shock and The Care and Handling of the Patient. Five of them, Open Drop Ether, Nitrous Oxide-Oxygen-Ether, Spinal, Endo- tracheal, and Part I of Intravenous Anaesthesia, have now been completed. Hitherto the screen has played little part in medical training) but there are signs today that teachers of medicine, as with other sciences, are beginning to appreciate the value of this medium. These films will, I believe, do much to stimulate progress in this direction. Though designed primarily for students, they contain many points that will be of interest to qualified medical men. Each film is divided into sections ; showing first the appa- ratus required and the general principles underlying the use of each anaesthetic ; then the technique of administration and main- tenance ; and, thirdly, examples of the dangers and difficulties that may be met with. The commentary in each case is clear and explicit, and the use of actual subjects is complemented by many moving diagrams.

" These films are so excellent that it is almost invidious to select one for particular mention. Open Drop Ether, perhaps the most diffi- cult subject, is extremely well handled. If I have any criticism it is that the information conveyed is perhaps too much to be absorbed at one sitting. This film, I feel, might have been better divided into two, leaving a break between the part dealing with the signs to be observed at each stage of anaesthesia and the longish section deal- ing with the dangers and complications, a break during which the teacher could underline and emphasise the main points. In Nitrous Oxide-Oxygen-Ether the clear diagrams of the use of the rebreath- ing bag are most valuable ; in Spinal Anaesthesia the ingenious use of a glass model of the spinal canal strapped to a living subject, into which a coloured anaesthetic solution is injected, conveys a clear and unforgettable picture of the way in which the light and heavy solutions work. Finally, in Endotracheal Anaesthesia the shots taken of the actual passage of the tube into the trachea through a laryngoscope are particularly noteworthy. The direction and photo- graphy throughout are excellent and Realist Film Unit who made these films in collaboration with the Westminster Hospital is to be congratulated on a sound job."

EDGAR ANSTEY.