The Evening Star TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1958. THE FILM AND PROPRIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 19790, 14 February 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1958. THE FILM AND PROPRIETY.

Wiikn an English poet was inspired a year or two ago to make a thoughtful study of the film industry, the opinion was expressed by him that the picture drama will never become an art, as the written and spoken drama can be an art, till a corps of writers has grown up who will criticise it with the same seriousness. One or two outstanding pictures have provoked quite a storm of criticism recently, but it has been rather on grounds of good taste and public expediency than on grounds of.art. There was the American film called ‘The King of Kings,’ concerned with the Life .of Christ, which appeared to be an extreme example of how not to do it to many English critics. There is no sound argument, it has been said, against the dramatic presentation of sacred scenes. They were the subject of the earliest drama. But they are almost certain to go wrong when the main motive in producing them is business and not religion. ‘ The King of Kings 1 went very wrong, according to opinions passed on it. Hollywood was at its worst in handling that subject. The picture art is an art of broad effects; a first principle of it, as it has been developed, would appear to be that nothing succeeds like excess; it has its own ideas of what can be depended upon to constitute popular dramatic interest; and when those are made the methods of a production of -which the first need is reverence the result cannot be other than disastrous. All that will be altered when artists are moved to plan picture plays, as the best of them still write ordinary dramas and poems, to express their deepest convictions and not for money, but that day is still to come. ‘The King of Kings’ was a picture of Hollywood more than or Palestine. Though I,oooft had been cut out from the American version in deference to British susceptibilities, what remained seems to have been a good deal of an outrage. A repellent hy-plot had to be introduced which showed Mary Magdalene in love with Judas. There was small feeling of sacredness in the Gospel story. There were two good moments, it has been said—when the crowd surges into the Temple to make Christ King and when it comes again to shout for Barabhas. The film could do that to perfection. For the rest, “ the audience who ate chocolate made the right comment on the whole thing.” Someone likened the Ascension scene to the conclusion of a grand ballet. Picture art is not suited, it was said, to the most serious themes.

That surely was too downright a verdict. We have seen-it refuted this week in Dunedin, where another sacred film is being shown, whose restraint and reverence have made it impressive to thousands But ‘ Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ,’ had the advantage of being written, not for the box,office, by a man of true devotion, who undoubtedly felt the story, and was not thinking of effects when he wrote it, and the screen adapter has been content to follow his story. It is surprising, however, how often the film fails when it deals with the greatest themes. One would have thought that a film of Kitchener might have been full of interest for any British community. But ife* sals, fibs si the hind thnt has been

attempted was a film that sought to deal with a still alive. The picture of Edith Cavell, entitled ‘ Dawn,’ which has been disturbing German susceptibilities, has been questioned on political grounds, not on those of art and reverence. The German Foreign Office has demurred to the exhibition of it in Great Britain and Belgium on the plea that such a film “only revives painful memories, and may embitter the relations between the countries. 1 ' The plea derives some addition of force from the fact that ‘ Dawn,’ in picturing a German soldier who had shot a nurse and another who refused to shoot in the firing squad, takes its own liberties with history. Probably there would not be much risk of hostile, feelings being revived in England, to any mischievous extent, by the showing of this film; but if there is risk at all, Nurse Cavell would never have taken it. Her last words, usually but halfquoted, were: “Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred nor bitterness towards anyone. 1 ’ Nor is it seemly that her sufferings should be capitalised to make a commercial film. Mr Shaw’s play, ‘Sc. Joan, 1 can be admired now in every country. But a play on Joan of Arc within a few years of her death would have been the most difficult of all plays to make.