SPEAKING CANDIDLY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 71, 1 November 1940, Page 21

SPEAKING CANDIDLY

THE MORTAL STORM (M-G-M) When man was new upon the earth he was frightened by the dangers of the elements. He cried out, "The Gods of the Lightning are angry, and I must kill my fellow man to appease them." As man grew older, he created shelters against the wind and the rain, and made harmless the force of the lightning. But within man, himself, were elements strong as the wind and terrible as the lightning, and he denied the existence of these elements because he dared not face them. The tale we are about to tell is of the mortal storm in which man finds himself to-day. Again he is crying, nes must kill my fellow man!" Our story asks: How soon will man find wisdom in his heart, and build a lasting shelter against his igeorant fears? With these words as a prologue Hollywood, through M-G-M, launches another frontal attack on Hitlerism and carries it on through many an exciting and moving scene; but when the end comes the question which the story is supposed to have asked is still unanswered. As indeed it had to be. The best Hollywood can do-and it is a good bestis to quote as a tailpiece those lines which the King used in his Christmas broadcast: "I said to a man who stood at the gate..." And it is some comfort to have those lines to go out from the theatre into the darkness with: for it is not exactly gay entertainment, this film of Phyllis Bottome’s best-selling novel. It is, however, forceful and absorbing entertainment and, for Hollywood, very courageous. Courageous in the sense that it defies the tradition of the happy ending, when

by the slightest twist of the tale the curtain could have been brought down with the anti-Nazi lovers re-united in safety, the wedding bells pealing, and the Gestapo foiled. You can see in the film the exact spot where the producer wrestled with his conscience (and perhaps with his shareholders) to decide whether the box-office or artistic integrity.should have the last word. With Freya (Margaret Sullavan) and her rescuer, Martin (James Stewart) racing on skis toward the frontier, it would have been easy for the producer to allow their Nazi pursuer, Fritz (Robert Young) to put his boyhood friendship with the fugitives before his loyalty to the Fuehrer. Fortunately, the box-office lost (or perhaps it didn’t, for filmgoers may have changed and may prefer truth these days to orange-blossom). At any rate, a bullet gets to the border at the same time as the refugees, and Martin crosses it alone. To emphasise the tragedy, his sanctuary is-Austria. But that is only half the story. The other half deals with the impact of Aryan racial theories on an eminent Jewish professor (Frank Morgan) . and his family from 1933 onward. This is a tale that has been told before-and more dramatically-in the Russian film "Professor Mamlock," but that is not to decry Morgan’s fine performance or the performance of the other players. As in "Mamlock," there is heroism and adventure based on internal opposition to Hitler: but unlike " Mamlock," the opposition does not come from Communists or even Socialists. There are no such creatures in "The Mortal Storm": curiously, the only people who stand up to the Nazis (in this film) are called "pacifists"! oe ee ae 5