Festivals
Venice Observed
By BETTY BEST ALONG the sunlit terrace of the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido, the cineastes lifted their heads from their international reading mat- ter (Variety,Time,Paris Match), from their international drink (tomato juice) and from their international toy (the match- box-size transistor radio) to watch the faded blonde. They all remembered Leni Riefensthal. Twenty-one years before she had walked the same terrace on the arm of Dr. Goebbels. That year in Mussolini's Italy her Olympia won first prize at the Venice Film Festival. Leni was one of the Third Reich's most skilful, obedient, and of course best paid, moviemakers. This month she came back to Venice which was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the festival. In fact, it all looked a good deal older. The movie industry, according to the Boulting Brothers, is not dying but in transition. The face it showed to the world at Venice looked as aged as the Doge's Palace.
This time the biggest personalities were Jean Renoir., Otto Preminger, Vittorio de Sica, Elsa Maxwell, and youngsters like Rossellini and James Stewart. Sex appeal? Perhaps, but bald heads and grey beards obscured the cheesecake and the beefcake. La Lollo came and went but the festival only began warming up with the promise of a visit by Clark Gable. Alas, his planned dash from location in Capri was this time beyond even that veteran. The young hopefuls, who have spared nobody's blushes in the past trying to catch a producer's eye, were missing. Perhaps they have found out that 'You ought to be in pictures' Is not the proposition it seems to be. The girls who were there looked young and hopeful enough two gondolas away. Their 'baby doll' outfits had the nymphet look which has been in fashion this sum- mer but behind their dark glasses they were very big girls indeed. Meanwhile the men sought extra stature with shoes built up on sole and heel as much as two inches.
In all its aspects this was a festival of the old. Talk in the marble halls of the Palazzo del Cinema most frequently began with : 'But do you remem- ber . . .' after the screening of the day's new films. They did, most of them, with far greater joy than they contemplated the current product. Hitherto in all art forms, except the cinema, values tend to increase with age. Here the best has supposedly always been the newest. As the non-millionaire 'collector' of films has no storage place for his treasures other than his memory, no gallery to visit other than the rococo edifice of nostalgia, he has come to rely upon film festivals as the handiest market place where he may add to his collection. Here, come the pick of the new cel- luloid cubists, impressionists, neo-anything-ists. Here, he may select replenishment for the walls of his mind. At least, this was true until recently. But if this Venice festival is any criterion of the future, the first-hand Section of the market is suffering a severe slump. Ont of fourteen major features com- peting for the best film award (from eleven dif- ferent countries) none revealed the new spirit the cinema is alleged to be seeking.
Confronted by miles of mediocre celluloid, the Venice jury did not, as it did three years ago, with- hold the Golden Lion award for the best film, but split the poor beast from mane to tail between Roberto Rossellini's II Generale della Rovere and Mario Monicelli'S Le Grande Guerra: The Ros- sellini choice was a sentimentally popular one, especially for the Italians eager to welcome him back to the fold he had once ruled. His film was an enjoyable piece of slow character work, adroitly strolled through by Vittorio de Sica, who has dealt with this kind of thing so often it makes it hard to remember the most apposite case. But an original film—no. Except that Rossellini was forced, by the approach of the Festival, to com- plete the movie in two months—an unprecedented dash for him.
La Grande Guerra showed Italy in the First World War. Many Italians applauded it for show- ing their nation on the right side. Others abhorred it for its ridicule of the Italian fighting man. Every detail from mud to firing squads at work in the grey of dawn was shown with photographic finesse, but All Quiet on the Western Front, What Price Glory and The Young Lions have shown the futility of war more precisely and movingly for international audiences. Ingmar Bergman's Ansiktet (The Face) had a special mention for 'Poetic Beauty,' which seemed a fair comment, for the Swede had nothing new to say. James Stewart's award for the best male performanCe was in- comprehensible. In Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder he plays a slow-speaking, woman-shy lawyer. The part fitted him like his own skin as well it should after wearing it in a score of movies.
French actress Madeleine Robinson's prize for her role as the misused wife in A Double Tour was so long overdue a recognition of her talents that it was justifiable even though the film was one of the least convincing to come from any country. Sadly, it is the work of Claude Chabrol, a leader of France's much-publicised nouvelle vague. SO far removed from probability were the neurotic crew enacting his Technicolor murder that one could hardly feel they had anything to offer in word, thought or bizarre deed. Britain's The Boy and the Bridge opened the festival and earned us a barrage of criticism. 'Dull . . . pretentious . . . stupid . . . old-fashioned'--nobody missed a shot at it. Its seagull alone got near a prize. Everybody agreed it was the best seagull seen on the screen this year.
Even so, The Boy and the Bridge brought an English producer and a London critic to blows in the swanky bar of the Excelsior. The Italians were delightedly surprised that Englishmen should fight over art. In fact, the fight did more for our prestige than the film. Even so, I thought The Boy and the Bridge a good deal better than Hun- gary's weary argument against capitalism in Almathm Evek (Sleepless Years). It is certainly more likely to entertain than Japan's interminable Enjo (Torment), Spain's Sonatas or Italy's Esterina.
It was lucky, then, that Venice kept up her tradi- tional practice of showing many films outside the competition in the informative and retrospective sections of the Mostra. Here, our collector could feast on masterpieces proved not only by time but also for originality and brilliance. They so out- shone the young fry that they seemed to come from another higher medium. Not only critics (frequently imperfect judges of past glories as their own lives are so irrevocably bound up and milestoned by them), but the general public, too, were unanimous in praise of the old films as opposed to the new.
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