Ci Tema
Second Time Round
By ISABEL QUIGLY The Girl and the River
and The Fanatics. (Cameo- Pol y.) — Let No Man Write My Epitaph. (Odeon, Mar- ble Arch.) Some situations are so filmable they can't help being overworked, and hot after Ella Kazan's Wild River, about the • TVA, comes The Girl and the River (L'Eau Vile) (director : Francois Villiers; 'U' certificate), about a similar project in France. And can you blame them? Wonderful natural scenery and all the Photogenic paraphernalia of modern engineer- l08 together; rivers seen at every degree of wild- ness and contrasting 'control; rivers close-to and ri"rs seen from a thousand feet up; rivers in spate, in trickle, in deliberate and undeliberate fin )d; houses pulled down with ropes and bull- dozers like sandcastles walloped with a spade; Villages eliminated, people removed to new ho nes, the intransigent old, the hopeful young, the indifferent technicians, human garbage along reedy banks and the inevitable doll, gazing up at the sky with china eyes and smile : it makes a Cinematic situation, pregnant with cliche if you like, but with point and power as well : a gift.
The Girl and the River is an odd mixture of styles and hasn't quite decided what to aim for; an unfortunate English commentary, spoken by Jean-Pierre , Aumont, makes everything too explicit, yet still it isn't quite explained. It's all about sly, nose-tapping peasants, and films of this kind (like Dominici family groups) seem anxious to convince one that the rural French are the least attractive people on this earth. Between brutality, raw comedy and pathos they blunder a bit, uncertain of their efforts and effect; but there are some scenes in the raw comedy category as good as anything of this sort, the Galumphing Gallic. But for one thing alone it's worth seeing: the natural scenery—not just the river but the villages, the interiors of houses (if you can call them natural scenery, as I think you can in such a worn way of life and of building), the flock of sheep in motion that is quite unlike our notions of a flock of sheep—more like a swarm of bees watched from a (relatively judged) distance, brown and restless and so huge you can't begin to imagine counting : a flock that floods a whole large village from end to end, every corner of the street blocked and the noise of bells and bleating .not a pleasant domestic sound but a savage racket only bearable in open country. Docu- mentary interest? Mostly, I suppose. Other situations sound filmable, but too many people have thought of them already. Time-bomb- in-aeroplane (The Fanatics: director, Alex Joffe; 'A' certificate): how many times have we seen it, or its equivalent? Even Pierre Fresnay, very small and shrivelled in modern unclerical dress, can't make you believe in it as anything but a crazy contrivance. Dictator to be killed; time bomb to he got on plane with fifty passengers; only way of planting it is to take it on oneself; therefore assassin must commit suicide. Plane full of attractive children; killer's neighbour fresh-faced girl in love with his (killer's) best friend, and full of plans for the future; dictator, during chat in the bar, confesses he wants to get away from dictating and paint. Bomb ticks inexorably; we writhe (just a little) on our seats, knowing exactly what's going to happen. And it happens.
Another situation that's been overdone is that of the poor talented priggish boy brought up lovingly by a floozie mum and her drunken, junkie, gaolbird cronies he gradually grows ashamed of. rd go a long way to see Burl Ives and Ella Fitzgerald and a fair way to see Shelley Winters (a sort of un-American anti-glamour girl, but still rather beautiful) but not in Let No Man Write My Epitaph (director : Philip Leacock; 'X' certificate), because it's all too depressingly pre- dictable and the script (apart from a good line or two : 'orphaned, illegitimate and black-- that's what I call starting at the top,' says someone) has everything you might imagine it having. Burl Ives, though one of the most moving hunks of (intel- ligent) pathos-there is, should be helped by having more convincing things than these to say (remem- ber Our Man in Havana).
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