THE SEARCHING WIND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 32

THE SEARCHING WIND

(Paramount)

HIS screen version of Lilian Hellman’s play reminds one of the man who gets up to speak at a public meeting with’ something on his mind

but neither enough words nor the right words on his tongue. The film certainly has something on its mind, and that is sufficiently unusual in a film to be worthy of praise as well as,comment; but unfortunately its desire to speak is not matched by its ability to do so. Consequently the "message" only just manages to get across; the delivery is fumbled, muffled, practically inarticulate. The "message" of The Searching Wind so far as I can understand it (and even on a simple issue like this it is by no means clear) is that a lot of dithering, well-meaning, but incompetent diplomats got the world into the war just ended and that if we don’t look out we shall be landed in another. Miss Hellman, the writer of the play, appears to be particularly angry about "appeasement" and so far as she is able, or Hollywood will let her, gets in some rather telling jabs at those people-particularly international bankers, members of the social élite, compromising statesman, and so forth, who thought that Mussolini, when he appeared in 1923, was either the good strong man needed to pull Italy together or that he need not be taken seriously, and that Hitler in 1928 also had much to commend him, and who did nothing about the ‘dictators, except encourage them, until it was too late. I am all in favour of honest anger of this sort, but I do wish that some of these people who attack "appeasement" would make it plain that what made such behaviour utterly’ damnable was the fact that the sacrifice it entailed was not, at first anyway, self-sacrifice but simply the sacrifice of others in order to avoid self-sacri-fice, * * * HE SEARCHING WIND is _ not nearly searching enough to uncover such a distinction as that; it blows gustily, erratically, and rather exhaustingly, from a point a little left of centre, through half the chancelleries of Europe in the period between the two Great Wars, following the career of an American’ ambassador (Robert Young), who is intelligent, amiable, and easy-going, so anxious to do "the right thing" that he frequently does the wrong one, and as wanting in real firmness in his private life as in his public one. So almost against his best intentions he becomes a prop of the status quo, which in effect means an appeaser of the dictators; this lack of decision being paralleled in his domestic set-up by his marriage to a society girl with an admiration of Fascists (Ann Richards) instead of to a woman journalist of the militant but rather vague Left (Sylvia Sidney) whom he really loves but whose philosophy he finds disturbing to his complacent outlook. The playwright, in fact, has used an eternal triangle as the forum from which to deliver her political sermon. This is (continued on next page) «

(continued from previous page) a trite deyice and it frequently leads to stagey situations which too clearly reveal the firm’s origin in the theatre. But it does have the advantage of relating the Ambassador’s private character to his public behaviour, which is certainly a valid point. It is also something for a Hollywood film to recognise that it is "not enough merely to be in love" for domestic as well as international problems to be solved; and this is another mark on the credit side for The Searching Wind. But I am not sure that it is altogether a fair wind. I am willing to believe all sorts of things about diplomats and the kind of official language they | use; but try as I may, and as the playwright wants me to, I find it hard to credit that any ambassador would send off such a fatuously-worded and indecisive report to his State Department as this one does on the eve of the Munich Agreement. And while it is true that) diplomats have knowledge and power, and therefcre responsibility, not possessed by ordinary men, to expect them to have realised in a flash in 1923 and 1928 that Mussolini and Hitler were wrong ’uns and to have taken action accordingly, seems to me to be demanding a prescience equivalent to that of: the Oracle at Delphi or some of the Old Testament prophets. Miss Hellman would appear to have got her wires rather badly crossed here, since so much of her story is occupied with proving that this particular diplomat was just a frail and fallible mortal. * * * HE film contains some good acting and, of course, some very good lines. For instance, the remark that "when

people tell you that you shouldn't take sides it usually means that they have already taken one." Robert Young, Ann Richards, and Sylvia Sidney form a competent triangle; and the supporting performances of Dudley Digges (as an ancient cynic), and of Albert Basserman (as an equally ancient German diplomat) are very noteworthy. I am afraid I cannot say as much for the acting of a certain young man named Douglas Dick, who is hailed as a new "discovery." The only discovery I have been able to make about him is-that he is out of his depta in the rather deep waters of this film; and this is a pity because, as the diplomat’s son, who has been severely wounded in the war which his father failed to prevent, he is given the main burden of Miss Hellman’s sermon to ‘deliver. He does this so pontifically and at the same time so ineptly that he is often almost incoherent. Clearly we must have no more appeasement, but it is not made clear whom we must now avoid appeasing. The young man is also quite definite that we must Do Something and that he Loves his Own Country, America --both admirable sentiments no doubt, ‘but not markedly helpful contributions ‘towards a solution of the international | situation. However, even though the thinking is frequently confused, The Searching Wind is at least a film of ideas. As such I applaud its intention while regretting some aspects of its performance.