London Film Society
THERE was a time in the early film days when Turin ranked almost as the world's leading production centre. Since the War very few Italian pictures have reached this country, and The Table of the Poor, shown by the London Film Society. last Sunday, is the first Italian talkie I have seen. It features Raffaele Viviani, a well-known Neapolitan character actor, in the story of an impoverished nobleman, the Marquis Fusaro, who struggles to keep up the charitable traditions of his family while he and his daughter have scarcely enough to eat. Round this theme Alessandro Blasetti--clearly a gifted director with an eye for facial types—has woven a very human comedy, and Raffaele Viviani—who has been called " the Italian George Arliss "—plays the Marquis with expressive restraint.
Also in Sunday's programme was an excellent short French sound-film, Le Monastere, which gives a vividly detailed impression of daily life in a Trappist monastery and needs only a few English captions to be well worth a place in ordinary cinema programmes.
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