CONTEMPORARY ARTS
CINEMA
The Battleship Potemkin. (Continentale.) Hell Below Zero. (Plaza.)—Arena. (Rialto.)
The Battleship Potemkin is one of the great screen classics. Made by Eisenstein in 1925 to commemorate the Russian Revolution of 1905, it was in itself a revolution, the proto- type of a totally new technique the study of Which enormously influenced future direc- tors. Eisenstein was the first documen- tarian, the first to take actualities, separate their elements and present them in imagin- ative sequence. He was the first to discard the professional actor, to seek the types he needed, in the unprofessional world, and in The Battleship Potemkin his hero is the masses with a capital M. Although we have become accustomed to his form of presentation, to crowd effects, to the association of different objects prompting a single idea, to the detailed pinpointing of seeming irrelevancies, the force of some of his shots is still percussive. The most famous of these, the descent of an occupied but unaccompanied perambulator down the Odessa steps, is as potent in the cause of horror as ever it was. The smiling crowds facing the harbour to wave at the ship's mutinous crew and unaware of the threat behind them, the sudden shattering impact of the firing soldiers, the wild surge of humanity down the steps, the quick vivid close-up—the legless cripple, the middle- class lady with her emblethatic parasol, the jackboots and rifles, the bald man clutching his head, the woman with her murdered c, bad, walking against the stream to meet his assassins—all these make a formidable Pattern of tragedy. , Of course, although a musi :al score by n-rYukov has been added to ihe film, the silence of its players and the extravagance of their gestures do, to the modern viewer, seem t,,° be a weakness, and it is only when Eisenstein leaves the individual for the collective, which I may say is often, or when he Points his camera to the beauties of ship and shore that one can wholly forget one is looking at a classic and exchange reverence for enjoyment.
1*
To talk of another unfading work of art, it is no wonder that Alan Ladd is a popular contemporary figure, for in a shifting world he remains as constant as the pole star, moving it is true from one film to another and changing his hats, but otherwise altering not a fraction. He is eternally good 1°°1(ing, poker-faced, and phlegmatic save as regards his fists, which are also reliable in their way. In Hell Below Zero he is on a Whaler in the Antarctic, the catching of "ales being a mere sideline to the catching of the criminal who has pushed Joan retzei's father overboard. Based on Ham- Mond Innes's novel The White South, and directed by Mark Robson, the film is entertaining in a rough, slap-happy way, the Settings to the slaps being original enough t° invite attention. Joan Tetzel makes a pleasant heroine, Basil Sydney, Stanley Baker and Niall McGinnis give solid sup- port, and both Mr. Ladd and the whales are Arena is, alas, a 3-D picture about a rodeo. To obtain a clear view of steers charging one's stomach and horses kicking in one's teeth it is necessary to wear special glasses and these, like their predecessors, have a deleterious effect on the eyeballs. Gig Young, Jean Hagen and Polly Bergen are probably excellent, but when they move across a moire background which after a time becomes dotted with spots, some black, some scintillating, all dancing, judgment flees before nausea. With the best will in the world I cannot commend a film which made me Teel sick.
VIRGINIA GRAHAM
Previous page
