THE CINEMA
"You Only Live Once." At the London Pavilion-- wings of the Morning." At the New Gallery
Fferrz LANG appears to be qualifying as the Beddoes of the cinema ; his latest film is so savagely depressing that it makes
his earlier studies of mass-murder and mob-violence seem .positively flippant. The basic theme of You Only Live Once is that the community gives no chance to the discharged
gaolbird, and, after Futy, one may be forgiven for assuming
that Lang wanted to make something of a social document on this important problem. When, however, he presents us with a young man newly discharged from his third sentence, who is sacked almost at once from his job, goes back to crime, is falsely accused of a murderous bank-robbery (gas bombs ei la Mabuse), condemned to death, breaks out of prison, shoots the chaplain who is bringing him a last minute reprieve, and finally chases across America in a car with his wife, who inconsiderately has a baby en route—it is obvious that no
constructive idea can stand up to such an orgy of melodrama. The social problem involved is a real one. Melodramatic treatment makes it unreal. No compromise is possible—
especially when the film ends in a double death, to a full female choir, and the voice of the murdered priest calling from heaven : "Eddie, you are free."
Having established the necessary negatives, let me duly confess that the film has all the production values one has learnt to expect from Lang. It is well constructed, suspense and action alternate, in a quickening pulse of excitement reel by reel, and all the characters are excellently directed. Sylvia Sydney and Henry Fonda, as the unhappy girl and boy, undergo their string of disasters with a convincing sincerity, and in their last mad motor-drive in the rain achieve a simple intimacy in the true line of tragedy. Fonda, in particular, is turning into a fine screen-actor, with an economy of gesture somewhat in the Gary Cooper tradition. In the piling up of details, in the choice of camera angles, and in the elaboration of suspense and tension, Lang has no equal. All these qualities appear in this film ; but they are nullified by the original story ; there is Terror in plenty, but no Pity.
Henry Fonda is also to be seen (with Annabella, Irene Vanbrugh, Harry Tate, John McCormack and Steve Donoghue) in Wings of the Morning, the first full length film in Techni- Colour to be made in this country. The producers seem to have approached their job on the assumption that the public disliked colour—and must be cajoled by the introduction of an all-star cast and a continuous change of location, from gypsy camps in Ireland to the changing of the guard, and from rich drawing rooms to the Derby. The curious result is a hotch-potch of badly constructed and badly directed nonsense. However, it is a great success, and the producers are no doubt congratulating themselves on their acumen. They have undoubtedly advanced colour to a very strong position. The chief difficulty is still in green, which looks horribly unnatural in most landscape scenes, but otherwise the values are well registered. Flesh tints and complexions, which used to be a great stumbling block, have now become attractively fresh.
Furthermore, there are at least two points in the film where the possibilities of colour are revealed with considerable emphasis. Firstly, there is a shot which illustrates McCormack's rendering of" Killarney's Lakes and Fells "—a slow panorama of hills and sky and water, taken on a grey and cloudy day. There is no bright colour in the picture, but the gradations of tone between grey sky, grey hills, and grey water are quite breath-taking. There is a bloom which the black and white film can new r achieve, and such shots, though isolated, show the possibilit:es. It is worth noting that this shot is immediately followed by one of a hideously arsenical country lane. Secondly —the Derby. Flashes of jockeys mounting, their bright jackets vivid against a blue sky, yellow A.A. signposts, red 'buses, the shining flanks of horses—these things became fresh, airy, exciting, and had they been better edited would have made a first-class episode. Although Wings of the Morning denies every canon of decent film making, it has established colour, and colour is going to stay. Producers had better take some art lessons as soon as possible, for the task is not going to be
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