THE CINEMA 4 4 Passage to Marseilles." At Warners.—" Uncertain Glory."
At the Regal.—" The Great Moment." At the Plaza.—" Under- ground Report." At the Empire.
AN inspection of new American films, and particularly of those released in London this week, seems to reveal a recurrence of the situation in which film magnates begin to look for sensational new' mechanical devices to eke out dwindling stocks of creative imagina- tion. With no miracle comparable with the sound-film waiting round the corner, but, to be anticipated instead, a waning of the present abnormal and indiscriminate demand for any kind of entertainment, the fiim industry seems to face as serious a slump as any it has yet known. Clearly the American industry is scarcely in the full flush of health when a leading Hollywood company, deciding to make Patrick Hamiltoif's play, Gaslight, once more into a film, finds it necessary first to buy up and destroy all the copies it can find of an earlier British version. This liquidation of competition from the past appears to reflect a certain pessimism as to the future. Also in the West End we may see a film, Passage to Marseilles, which has been created in slavish imitation of the phenomenally successful Casa- blanca. Producer, director and most of the excellent cast are identical in the new picture, and many of the successful ingredients have been repeated. Unfortunately no one had observed that the earlier film was compounded also of skill and imagination. Next we have Messrs. Errol Flynn and Paul Lukas treading again the cul de sac recently explored by Duvivier and Gabin. Uncertain Glory begins with the same situation which aroused our livtly expectations in The Impostor. A ,lucky bomb explosion releases a Parisian criminal about to be hanged, and he is finally persuaded by the sight of the Nazi persecu- tion of his fellow countrymen to lose his life to more patriotic pur- pose. The opening sequences are beautifully made. The narrative has been pared down to essentials, and the tempo transports us firmly and swiftly from one eloquent situation to the next ; but as soon as Errol Flynn begins his spiritual translation from underworld to underground all virtue disappears from a promising piece. We have been here before.
So much for the Hollywood sin of rehashing. Let us turn to Mr. Preston Sturges, who has an eclectic but original mind. With wit and his usual gamut of ill-assorted emotions, he tells us in The Great Moment the story of a nineteenth century American dentist named Morton, who first used gas for his extractions, and paved the way for surgical anaesthesia. How much of the story is true I cannot say, and my impression is that Mr. Sturges is less concerned with historical accuracy than with the ironies to be extracted from a strange tale. For although the end of the film is suddenly upon us with Morton (Joel McCrea) sacrificing a fortune in order to save a child from the unrelieved tortures of the operating theatre, and although this last scene is accompanied by Schubert's Ave Maria whilst rays of sunlight fall from heaven upon the innocent locks of the child, and upon the priest who seeks to comfort her, Mr. Sturges has previously been at some pains to reveal that the personnel con- cerned in this great scientific advance may safely be divided between the two categories of fool and rogue. Moreover, he has found it necessary to entrust the precious anaesthetic into the hands of an expert in screen slapstick, and to make the explanation of the biography's denouement as confusing as possible by hiding the clues at the least appropriate points in the narrative. Mr. Sturges is a screen anarchist, knowing, perhaps, more of the powers of the cinema than any other practising director, yet finding nothing he dare say sincerely, not even a persisting word in praise of the mercies of medical science. This, too, is a symptom (though a rarer one) of Hollywood industrial disease.
The cure will not be easy. The only ray of hope this week is in the new March of Time issue called Underground Report. This short film tries to say something about Occupied Europe, and to imply more about the new world which will grow from it. Here arc pictures (in many cases captured from Nazi sources), which show life and work in enemy-occupied cities without the empty auto- matic passion of studio propaganda. It finishes with a warning that Germany is not yet beaten. In spite of the power of the Under- ground (and here are the Maquis running up the flag of Free France on a corner of French soil they have conquered), Nazi Germany 'for years has been bringing the raw materials and the labour of Europe under her control. In the heart of Hitler's Europe there is a strong industrial and economic core which may yet be used as a bargaining counter in negotiations for a compromise peace. Here is a film which makes a resolute attempt to face a few of the facts of today's world. Hollywood is always turning its eyes backward to values whi have gone or are going. Motion Picture Herald, which speaks wi the voice of the American film industry, summed it up well in recent editorial note. Objecting to the thesis that the returning soldier will look for a new order at home, this periodical wet " They will want home as was. That includes a steak and potat a girl, an automobile—and the movies." It is undoubtedly to this post war specification that Hollywood is working. In my opinion, bu ness will be less than brisk.
John Grierson, Canadian Films Commissioner, who is at pees visiting, this country, recently raised kindred issues in a speech t the International Labour Office in Philadelphia. During his foun ing and leadership of the documentary film movement Grierson h ceaselessly campaigned for the film as an instrument of educatio in world citizenship. There appears now to be a growing dispositi in official circles to look more favourably upon the document medium for this purpose, and, if the commercial motion picture is survive on its present level of importance, then the feature fi industry too will need to look to its task with a greater sense social responsibility. In Philadelphia Grierson repeated a pre-sr plea for the adoption by the I.L.O. and similar international bodi of the film as an instrument of education in functional rather th academic terms, and on a global basis. Peace, when it comes, w provide Hollywood with comparable opportunities. EDGAR ANSTEY.
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