THE HAIRY APE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 298, 9 March 1945, Page 19

THE HAIRY APE

(United Artists)

INCE I have not seen or read Eugene O’Neill’s 21-year-old play, The Hairy Ape, I cannot be expected to get as excited over deviations from

the original as some overseas critics of the film have been. And since mast modern picturegoers are probably also in the same state of blissful ignorance, I doubt if they will worry much either. But there are some things in the film they should get excited about: one is the performance of William Bendix, that unbeautiful hunk of a man, as the anthropoid stoker, Yank; and a second is Susan Hayward’s portrayal of the heartless Society girl-another of those sultry, amoral dames to whom I have recently devoted some _ attention in these columns. Although I have not read the play itself, I have read a good deal about it; enough to be sure that the Ape has had many of the hairs plucked out of his chest by Hollywood censors. Anybody who is expecting The Hairy Ape to have been filmed as O’Neill wrote it sis forgetting that the Hays Office does not approve of the class war or of gutter dialogue, and that tragic endings are not regarded as being popular with audiences. Still, the film, as a film, -is well above the ordinary. Whereas in the play the, characters were apparently chiefly important as social symbols, in the film they are much closer to being real human beings; and occasionally — particularly in the case of Paddy, the poetic stoker (Roman Bohnen)-they do seem to be speaking genuine O’Neill dialogue. It is well worth hearing. But the picture stands or falls by William Bendix’s portrayal of Yank. It is his first starring assignment, in the role made famous on the stage by the late Louis Wolheim, whom Bendix fairly closely resembles. To look as dumb and to behave as stupidly as Bendix does requires intelligence of ‘an uncommon sort. In her own impassive way, Susan Hayward is almost as clever in the role of Mildred, that spoilt, utterly selfish heiress, who collects men and _ tosses them aside as casually as she does her expensive dresses. "You like to tease the animals but never feed them" is the bitter comment of one rejected suitor, With | one male animal, however, she goes too. far. Slumming in the stokehold on a voyage from Lisbon, she runs into Yank, recoils from him with the cry, away from me, you. hairy ape!" Till then his primitive mind .has found contentment in the knowledge of his Body’s great strength and in his proud belief that he is the man who makes the ship go. But the girl’s loathing shatters his self-esteem. He cannot rest until he has humiliated her as she has humiliated him. "¢ Bristling with inferiority complexes and Freudian repressions as it is, this is a difficult sort of theme to get on to celluloid. Some of it doesn’t stick, but enough does to make The Hairy Ape a meaty, adult melodrama. :