THE CINEMA
Justice is Coming" and" The Actress." At the Tatler. 66 The
Eve of St. Mark." At the Odeon. "Gibraltar." At Studio One
ustice is Coming is probably the most remarkable piece of record-
In ever to be photographed. It consists almost entirely of a visual nd verbal report of the Kharkov trial of three Nazi soldiers and a ussian collaborationist accused of atrocities. It culminates in their eing hanged before a vast concourse of Soviet citizens. A some- hat hysterical English commentary has been added, but what counts the immediacy of the record, the statements of counsel and the
cused, the tense faces, the imminence of death. The film opens "th an accumulation of atrocity scenes from Kharkov and district, hich provide completely convincing evidence of the bestiality of e retreading German Army. Most of these pictures have been reviously seen, but the result of collecting them together is to onvince us as never before of the capacity of the human race for humanity. In the court-room there is something equally inhuman, ut in an opposite sense to the grimy dumps of charred and mutilated pses and limbs. We have seen the open graves examined by earching peasants in an agony of distress almost too painful to watch, ut in the court-room, apart from one moving recital of horror from bereaved wife, there is no flicker of emotion from Nazi or Russian. 'en the citizens of Kharkov packing the benches appear to applaud e verdict mechanically. The accused, speaking in the case of the azis through interpreters, are only too anxious to describe their imes in detail. The interpreters and the Soviet counsel for prose- don and defence appear primarily to be concerned with the efficient onduct of the legal proceedings, and one has a strange sense of amwork between each accused and his interpreter' the microphone lways moving from one to the other at precisely the right instant s if they %ere presenting some nightmare radio-play. To see ersons about to be hanged (were they or were they not aware of eir probable fate?) searching hard for the right word with which describe the Nazi "extermination waggons," seeking le mot juste conscientious lecturers, Is a spectacle which bewilders me. erhaps so much horror has deadened the senses of all participants the significance of the events described. The prisoners are by no cans defiant or proud of their work. One of them eloquently ut still dispassionately) lays the blame at the door of his Nazi aders ; and, indeed, the accused, though no doubt richly deserving eir fate, do not appear to be instigators. Outside, amongst the owds milling about the four gallows, there is a little more excite- em. By contrast with the court-room the prisoners are here andled none too _gently by their guards, and then the gruesome tacle is soon over. Seen from a distance, the prisoners seem quite nmoved. The crowd is mildly excited, and some faces show easure. I imagine this film contains extremely valuable material r the psychologist, as well as reminding us sharply of the hard actical issues arising from the questions of war guilt. The Kharkov ial is presumably the forerunner of many. As a deterrent from cue conclusions on the general subject, this astonishing record mild be widely shown.
In the same programme (and no more inappropriate than would any other fictional film) is The Actress, a slim but pleasant tie comedy-drama in which appears Galina Sergeyeva, a musical- medy star, glamorous in the Hollywood rather than the Soviet le. The film makes propaganda for the importance of maintaining tertainment and the arts in war-time, but the tiny inoffensive pill pleasantly sugared with leisurely but warm humour and excerpts om one of those curious Soviet operettas which appear to be deous, though no doubt unconscious, burlesques of Anglo-Saxon tertainment.
With all its faults, The Eve of St. Mark is a film with considerable mpensations. It must be admitted that during the course of it an erican soldier in the jaws of death carries on by long-range tele- thy a philosophical discussion with mother and fiancée, and that and similar situations have become a somewhat over-publicised Pect of military operations in the Pacific, but if the sentimentalities be forgotten there are several sequences in which American Ps (and their girl friends) behave unusually like human beings-. he Eve of St. Mark is from a successful play by Maxwell Anderson, the legend to which it owes its name and theme has almost PPeared from the screen version in obedience to someone's need an inept happy ending. There are first-rate sequences, beautifully pted and acted, in barracks .snd in a disreputable cafe where, reshingly, the girls are no better than they should be. What a relief it is to have American girls presented for once without a halo labelled Glorious American Womanhood. Ruth Nelson gives a nicely restrained performance as the hero's mother, and Vincent Price speaks well the verse with which the moral is garnished. The dialogue is outstandingly good, and there are times in the film when a pattern of words and an aesthetically satisfying counterpoint of line against line is allowed to develop in a manner most unusual in the cinema. In this matter, however, I may be an unreliable guide. Mr. Maxwell Anderson's Winterset also appeared to me to be a film of aesthetic inerit, a judgement in which I have been able to gain little support from friends whose solemnity I respect.
Gibraltar is revived at Studio One. This is by no means one of the better French films, and it is these days unaided by a curious but well-meaning Gallic caricature of British Army life and behaviour. The story is exciting and extremely well photographed, and presents the great Von Stroheim as a spy operating from Tangier and Gibraltar with the purpose of raising an Arab revolt against the British. The issues are now somewhat unreal, but Von Stroheirn is substantial enough in body and spirit scarcely to need a plot at all.
Film-making has recently suffered a tragic loss in the death of Carl Mayer. For many years he had lived in England, assisting younger film-makers from the depths of his own great professional experience, and with that warm human insight which contributed so much to the Golden Age of the German cinema. Mayer was a writer for the screen who numbered amongst his productions, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Last Laugh, Tartuffe and Sunrise. He was the intimate friend and counsellor of such directors as F. W. Murnau and Lupu Pick. In this country he was never afforded the opportunity to repeat his achievement of the twenties, a body of
work which will live as long as the cinema. EDGAR ANSTEY.
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