CINEMA
"The Miracle." (Academy.)--" Neptune's Daughter." (Empire.) The Miracle is Signor Roberto Rossellini's forty-minute tribute to Anna Magnani. This magnificent actress plays the part of a nit- witted goat-girl who mistakes a passing seducer for St. Joseph, and finding herself pregnant assumes, with radiant humility, that once again a woman has been graced by God. Mocked and reviled by the community in which she lives, she climbs high into the hills and has her child, alone and untended, in a disused chapel. That is all, but such is the power of Signora Magnani's acting that it proved sufficient to turn an audience of critics to stone. Nobody coughed ; nobody scratched in his pocket for matches ; nobody stirred. The shuffling figure in torn skirt and wrinkled stockings, carrying a carpet bag and two empty tin cans, labouring (in every sense of the word) up the steep and stony way, held us as fixed as statues.
This brief encounter with two of the most brilliant craftsmen of our age, this rare glimpse of cinematographic art, has, of course, been the cue for intervention by the British censor. Alone, I believe, of all the censors in Europe, he has refused a certificate, and The Miracle must come before each local Council or Watch Committee in the land before it is shown. On the grounds of blasphemy I am convinced that the censor is over-sensitive, for the girl's delusion is treated with complete reverence, and the only un-Christian element is found in the behaviour of the Christians. On the grounds of indecency it might be supposed that even the English know that it hurts very much to have a baby, and Signora Magnani's pain should not unduly exacerbate the feelings of audiences nurtured on gangsters kicking each other in the stomach or on heroes being tortured by the Gestapo. I cannot understand why, save where the theme is demoralising or subversive, we should be guarded like hothouse orchids from suffering. Or for that matter, from religious mania. This is a beautiful film, as unharmful as it is sensitive, and I feel that the average Englishman is insulted by the censor's reluc- tance to let him decide for himself whether he is an adult or not.
In the same programme is an experimental film by Mr. George Hoellering comparing items of primitive and modern art. To the artistically minded it will be of some interest, but personally, unable to distinguish the primitive from the modern, or, it must be con- fessed, the modern from the primitive, I was only certain of one thing—that I disliked both.
* * * * I have no idea whether Neptune's Daughter is a good musical or not because after the foggy cold of Leicester Square it seemed so unbelievably bright and warm that my critical faculties became submerged in a wave of benevolence. Mr. Xavier Cugat, divorced for once from his papillon dog, played hot rhumbas ; Miss Esther Williams and various sparsely dressed girls plunged into Reckitt's blue pools, and Mr. Ricardo Montalban sang: "Oh baby it's cold outside!" on a sultry moonlit night. Thawing under the blaze of - colour, I smiled vacuously at Mr. Red Skelton's antics, and his efforts to mount a horse, though not novel, caused me unexpected and, I have a shrewd suspicion, uncalled-for bursts of mirth. I was, in fact, in an escapist mood, and, being out to enjoy myself, did just that very thing. Rather unorthodox, of course, but I don't suppose there can be much harm in it. VIRGINIA GRAHAM.
Previous page
