THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 362, 31 May 1946, Page 32

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

| (Paramount)

‘THIs is billed as Paramount’s "modernised. production" of Cecil B. De Mille’s 1933-vintage spectacle-a claim which I just

refuse to take seriously. For the modernisation consists merely of a contrived and unconvincing opening sequence in an American bombing plane over Rome, and an end-piece of a glimpse of bombing planes flying home again; this being apparently designed to point the film’s moral of what the world owes to the sacrifices of the Christian martyrs in Nero’s day. But coming as it does right on top of the film’s rather effective original endinga simple, symbolic representation of The Cross upon the door through which the marftyrs have just entered the arenaI can only regard this final "modernistic" touch as the work of either qa cynic or a dolt. As for the De Mille "epic" itselfthe supposedly topical past which is thus sandwiched in between the present -it is interesting to see it after all these years; but to me the interest was mainly antiquarian. The film is a museum piece very much closer in technique, particularly acting technique, to the silent era of movies than to that of 1946. Though The Sign of. the Cross was made about five years after the coming of sound to the screen, all that you really have here is dialogue added to the over-emphatic "emoting" which we once took for granted in silent films. The De Millean spectacle has survived fairly well; but as one watches the studied mannerisms, the emphatic gestures of the cast (especially Elissa Landi, who is absurdly coy as Mercia, the Christian heroine), one realises how far cinema acting has developed towards naturalism since 1933. The way in which some of

the players "register" emotion fortissimo is so ludicrous that I would not have been surprised if the audience had given these sequences the bird. But not a single laugh was heard in the theatre the night I was there: was this because the audience failed to appreciate the absurdity, or were they giving the film the benefit of recognising that it was out of date? * * a |F the appearance of this old-stager means that we are in for a series of revivals I am all for it, though I can think of many old films more worthy of resurrection, and of much greater interest to the student of the historical cinema, than this. But The Sign of the Cross does at least provide us with a fascinating opportunity to notice how at least three popular stars of the present day have developed in the last 13 years. Here is Charles Laughton, a good deal slimmer than we know him now, as that sybaratic monster Nero; rolling his eyes and mincing his words as he lolls on his throne or plucks his lyre over burning Rome. Here is Claudette Colbert as the Empress Poppaea, the em- bodiment of seductive evil. And here is a very much younger, more handsome, and more dashing Fredric March as Marcus, the Prefect of Rome, who went to the lions for love of the Christian maid (compare this performance, if you can, with that he gave recently as Mark Twain). However, in all these performances, though the influence of the silent era is still heavy upon them, one can discern signs that the real quality of acting was there, and that given the opportunity by directors and producers these three stars could successfully adapt themselves to the changing demands of the screen. But it is now equally apparent that (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Elissa Landi never was a good actress at all, however good we may once have thought her. While in the others there is the clear suggestion of latent possibilities, in her case there is nothing except pose, posture, and affectation. So it is not surprising that, while the others have gone on to greater successes, she dropped out of sight fairly soon after this film was made. I don’t think this is simply a case of being wise after the event: the evidence is there if you like to look for it, Bs ae ae OWEVER, it seems to me that The Sign of the Cross emphasises something which genuine admirers of the cinema should face up to: that the medium is a transient one, unfitted by its very nature to creating work able to withstand the test of time, in the way that literature can in the novel. This is largely because of the film’s attention to details: it is too much interested in the imm®diate effect. The cinema will probably always belorfg to the day rather than to the decade or the century. But I don’t find this fact upsetting. There has been no stabilisation yet of screen technique and there may never be; but this fault of the cinema in relation to other media of expression is its own peculiar virtue, giving it an immediacy which no other art-form possesses. ae % * "[ HERE remains the religious "angle" of The Sign of the Cross. De Mille was presumably sincere about this and must, I suppose, be given the benefit of any doubt-but I think it rather hard to do so because of the relish with which he exploits sex and sadism (witness respectively the famous bath-of-asses’-milk sequence, and the torture scenes and the Games in the arena). I am not forgetiing that this was a licentious and cruel age-crueller probably in degree if not in extent than anything for which the Nazis were responsible-but "relish" is the key-word in what I have just written. Notice, for example, how De Mille lingers lovingly over Poppaea’s bath, the precision with which he adjusts the level of the asses’ milk. Incidentally, I think the censor now allows

us to see rather more of Poppaea in her bath than he did on the previous occasion (not that it matters). But it is worth remembering, if only perhaps in justice to the film, that The Sign of the Cross was made in the pre-Hays Office era, before Hollywood morals came under close supervision; and __ this accounts for our being treated to a rather more generous display of epidermis than would now be permitted. At any rate, whether De Mille ‘was, or was not, filled with religious zeal when he made it, the film can scarcely have much evangelical value, since it unfortunately tends to give the impression that vice-as represented by Nero, Poppaea and Marcus-is rather good fun, whereas virtue (personified by Mercia) is merely dull.