THE CINEMA
" Hostages." At the Paris.—" Undercover Doctor." At the Plaza.—" The Modern Miracle." At the New Gallery.
" Man About Town." At the Carlton.
ACADEMIC critics are apt to refer to the comedy of humours as an historical curiosity belonging to the time of Ben Jonson, as though it were not still the most common form of comedy
— from Mr. Coward upwards. Hostages is a very charming and intelligent example. This is not a realistic French village, the kind of village Pagnol cuts accurately in celluloid. The dispute between the mayor and the landed aristocrat about a right of way—a dispute that survives war, foreign occupation and the danger of death—doesn't belong to human nature as we know it: it is human nature simplified and reconstructed and legendary. There is one big difference between these modern humours and Jonson's. Nowadays we want flattery, and these petty, quarrelsome, but, at the pinch, noble figures, make us feel that, after all, man is a fine creature: there's no harm in us really, and if we dispute one day over a parcel of land, we will die extravagantly the next for love of our village. It is a fairy story, but it makes the most agreeable film to be seen in London.
It is the story of a village on the Marne, of the outbreak of war, and the sudden arrival of the German cavalry while the Mayor, the barber and the landowner quarrel about strategy in the cafe and stick little flags into a map—gloved fingers suddenly descend and alter their arrangement. A love story goes dimly on in the background between the Mayor's daughter and the landowner's conscript son: a Uhlan is shot in a barn by the boy, who escapes to join his regiment, and the grotesque little Mayor drives the body out by night to bury it in the woods. But the Germans find it and threaten to destroy the village if the murderer is not found. The Mayor offers himself as a hostage instead, and is told there must be four others. In his astute provincial way he haggles over the number—but the German commandant is not com- mercially minded. The Mayor and the landowner claim the privilege of being hostages, and the other villagers draw lots — the poacher gate-crashes by a ruse into the company of these respected men. The clerk, the policeman and the braggart draw the winning cards, and the braggart hangs himself : so the scared barber is invited with ceremony to take his place. Of course, at the last minute, the taxis of the Marne drive out of Paris, and the hostages are saved from the firing squad. Then the quarrel begins again whimsically . . . I have said it was a fairy story. All the same, finely acted and magnificently shot, the picture does again and again strike the right legendary note : the little lay figure under the lamplight at the door of the Mairie raising his best bowler with depressed dignity to the German officer ; the scene in the silent square at dawn when the hostages gather for their long walk to German headquarters, and the walk itself, the finest piece of symphonic cutting on the screen since Pepe took his last walk—the early morning light over the flat French countryside, the mayor in his sash of office and the landowner in his top hat, and human self-control failing—in the barber first—and the hasty embarrassed dodging behind the haystacks.
Undercover Doctor—like Persons in Hiding, another story out of Mr. Hoover's casebook—is realistic and convincing:
the story of a doctor who gets his first valuable patient out- side the law and rockets up the financial ladder with the help
of gun-wounds. It contains a brilliant piece of neurotic act- ing by Mr. Broderick Crawford (a new name to me) as Public Enemy No. I : it is exciting, well worth seeing, and alongside Hostages nowhere at all.
The Modern Miracle is yet another awful example of good taste, another sober pompous film biography, this time of Bell, the inventor of the telephone. I find Don Ameche a very unsympathetic actor, with the large white face of an advertisement hoarding, and his ecstatic gasps and mouthings at the prospect of becoming a father supply the most embarrassing moments in the cinema this week. As for Man About Town, it is just one of those doggish American films of sexual and social ambition which sadly recall Davenant's definition: " Humour is the drunkenness of a Nation which
Previous page
