"IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTIONS...."

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 152, 22 May 1942, Page 10

"IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTIONS...."

. Kamous Hollywood Director Replies To "The Listener" N November of last year, "G.M.," The Listener’s film critic, was invited by Paramount Pictures to send eight questions to Preston Sturges, Paramount director, in Hollywood. This was part of a publicity "stunt" for the latest Sturges film "Sullivan’s Travels," in which twenty of the motion picture writers or critics of the leading newspapers and magazines of the world were each invited to ask Sturges eight questions which he undertook to do his best to answer. "G.M." was chosen by Paramount to represent New Zealand; and after having been delayed for some months because of the war and because Sturges has been busy on a new picture ("The Palm Beach Story"), the answers to "G.M.’s" set of questions have just arrived from Hollywood, together with some photographs, and are printed here.

S I suggested when my questions to Preston Sturges were originally published in the Christmas issue of The Listener last year, I was hopeful of receiving some interesting replies in this international " Question-and-Answer Press Conference." Its main purpose was, of course, to draw attention to Sturges and Sullivan’s Travels, which he wrote as well as directed, but his previous work in such films as The Lady Eve, The Great McGinty, and Christmas in July, showed him to be a man of such originality and fertility of mind that his answers were likely to be very much more than mere stereotyped " puffs" for himself and his studio. The results are certainly not disappointing: Sturges has obviously taken the business seriously and put a good deal of thought into his answers. They will, I am sure, be read with interest by all who are interested in the cinema.

Here are the questions and answers, followed by a reproduction of the Preston Sturges signature: 1. Question: Do you think that, other things being more or less equal, the director is the most important person in the making of a film? I do, so don’t be too modest. Answer: Not of necessity. Shaw is the most important thing in a Shaw picture, no matter who directs it. 2. Question: ‘In your opinion, is there any chance, in British and American films, of directors coming to have a "star value" of their own with the general public, as has happened in France, and to a very limited extent with films directed, say, by Capra,

Korda, Lubitsch — and of ‘course Sturges? I mean, what possibility is there of the public being made "director conscious," so that they

will be attracted to a film as much by the " Sturges touch" as by the Taylor profile? Answer: : The chances are slight, I think, because the public is not conscious of direction, only of its results, Directors became very important in the silent days when they were also the authors, and this importance has carried over into sound pictures. 3. Question: Which do you prefer: that a critic should express his candid, personal opinion on a film, even though it may be most unfavourable, or that the newspapers and magazines, under pretence of reviewing films, should fill their columns with puff paragraphs from which the note of criticism is absent? Answer:. By all means let him express his candid personal viewpoint. Only let the owner of the paper be careful in his choice of a critic. Let us be sure that the critic is a critic. 4. Question: In the long run (or even the short run), do you think that candid criticism is (a) harmful, (b) helpful to the film industry? Answer: No true art can be driven from the theatre, as witness the strip-tease which flourishes in spite of all efforts to suppress it. Commerce can be injured by criticism, never art, (Continued on next page)

"The Screen Still Uses The Tradesmen’s Entrance" — Preston Sturges

(Continued from previous page) 5. Question: Do you think that the film industry of America in general is being used, consciously or unconsciously (a) to help bring the United States into the war; (b) to bolster up the existing social and economic order, and for this reason is more concerned to provide dope for the masses instead of making films which courageously tackle the vital problems of the day? (Note: This was written before America came into the war.) Answer: We are getting a little deep-dish here. This question would be better answered by a searcher for the deep truth who works on 16 mm. than by a simple commercial guy like myself; however, I imagine that the film industry, like any other prosperous industry, is on the side of the party in power at the moment and consciously or unconsciously promulgating its doctrines, defending its social and economic order and refraining trom constantly inciting revolution in the souls of its customers. That refers to the boys downstairs in front. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few people on the third and fourth floors who are occasionally permitted to do what they please. When the first floor is attacked too often by the third floor, there is a lull. (Note: It should perhaps be explained that the reference to "a searcher for deep truth who works on 16 mm" is to the makers of documentary or educational films. As for "the boys downstairs in front’, this is a reference to the big business who are located on the ground floor of the Paramount Studios; 6. Question: What possibilities and limitations has the screen as compared with the stage (that is, can the stage do anything that the screen cannot?). and

to what extent do you think that the screen’s possibilities have yet to be realised, particularly in the treatment of serious and controversial themes? (The success of Some of Shaw’s plays in screen form does seem to suggest that there is a big market for the more "adult" and intelligent type of film). Answer: The possibilities ot the screen as the modern theatre have hardly been scratched, partially due to the fact that the screen has not yet been " received." We still use the tradesman’s entrance in the temple of art. Our best theatrical critics would not be found dead in a movie palace. This will not always be so. The best minds will come to the pictures and then, as the song goes, " just you wait and see." 7. Question: What is your own favourite trick, or technique, of direction? Answer: The pull back and panning shot on a split screen. 8. Question: Which director’s work do you admire most of all (apart, if you like, from your own) and why? And if I’m not being too greedy in asking it, which film star do you admire most of all, and why? Answer: Lubitsch. Raimu, because he makes me howl with laughter.

HOSE answers don’t seem to call for much comment. They are, I think, very penetrating, and in general I find myself very much in agreement with them, but I would suggest that Preston Sturges’s view that there is only a slight modest in ‘answering Questions 1 and 2. In a Shaw film, "other things" are by no means "more or less equal" — the author dominates everything. And Sturges’s view that there is only a slight chance that directors will come to have a "star value" of their own is not only contrary to what many critics believe or hope, but is also at odds with the

opinions or many film executives and publicists. So far as the answer to Question 7 goes, I must confess it baffles me, ‘and also a technical expert to whom I referred it, and I have a suspicion that Sturges may have been indulging in a gentle but legitimate leg-pull. Raimu, whom Sturges names as his favourite film star in Question 8, is the famous French comedian whom we in New Zealand have seldom seen, though I seem to remember that he was the mayor who married his cook in Un

Carnet de Bal.

G.

M.