THE CINEMA
"The Fountainhead." (Warner.)—" The Blum Affidr." (Academy.) —" The Barkleys of Broadway." (Empire.) The. Fountainhead is a pretentious film with characters who speak in riddles with tremendous gravity and whose search for personal integrity is carried on without one relieving ray of humour. The message this film has to offer is that the creative man must at all costs be true to himself, absolutely and always ; that on no occasion must he sacrifice his ideals to the community.
Mr. Gary Cooper, as solemn as fifty owls, is the architect of genius who, on finding that in his absence his recently-erected buildings have been tampered with to conform to popular taste, blows them up with dynamite. It was indeed courageous of Mr. King Vidor, the director, to show us so many of Mr. Cooper's architectural feats, for though it is true they have no bearing on the ethical problem in hand, they are so very dreadful that with the best will in the world one cannot but dread the day when architects with as rampant an individualism as his will be given their freedom.
In a way this is. an interesting film and the cause it pleads is, a worthy one, but however true it is that the real artist only creates to please himself and is therefore a supreme egotist, and however true it is that the community-spirit requires a man to sacrifice his ideals, it cannot be necessary to propound these truths with such intense solemnity. The photography, the music and the extra- ordinarily unnatural dialogue aid each other in creating an atmo- sphere of sombre harshness more suited to high melodrama, and neither Miss Patricia Neal, who incomprehensibly marries Mr. Ray- mond Massey so that Mr. Cooper, who loves her, shall not get hurt, nor Mr. Robert Douglas, who has a sinister power-complex, bring any fresh air to the general suffocation. Integrity is a sacred thing no doubt, but one can die for it without a two-hours memorial service.
* a * * A German film, The Blum Affair, based on an actual case, is set in 1926, and in its sequences we see the slow but obdurate budding of the dark flower called anti-semitism. An ardent nationalist com- mits a perfectly straightforward murder with robbery as its motive. To protect himself he makes up a story which implicates a Jewish industrialist and, because it is desirable politically, this story is given full credence by the police regardless of lack of proofs, regardless of the Jew's good character and the murderer's bad one.
What is frightening about this film is that prejudice is here so disguised as to bear every mark of justice, and one can sec how easily men of honour, with only a modicum of wishful-thinking to assist them, can distort facts to suit their political creeds. Blum is saved by the intervention of an unbiased detective doing a routine job of work, but it is just by chance that he is called in, and one knows that in another decade justice will have become the handmaid of the swastika. Then the most blatant evidence will not save the Blums from destruction. This film must needs make even the smuggest heart feel uneasy, for how many of us believe a thing to be true because we wish it to be, and not because it is ? It is brilliantly directed by Mr. Erich Engel, acted convincingly by an as yet unknown cast, and is well worth a yak
The thought of Mr. Fred Astaire and Miss Ginger Rogers dancing together again sent me to The Barkleys of Broadway in a golden haze of memories. Perhaps my expectations were too high, or perhaps I am so old I have forgotten, but at any rate I was disappointed. Not, I hasten to add, in the dancing which is still superlative, but perhaps because I now find that dancing is not enough. It seems I need good music, good lyrics and at any rate a moderate script, and all these are lacking. The only time I felt the ancient wonder and excitement, the sense of glamour which once hung like an aura round the enchanted pair, was when they sang and danced to an old tune of Gershwin's, "They can't take that away (trim me." ApparentlY
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