THE OUTLAW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 424, 8 August 1947, Page 24

THE OUTLAW

(Hughes-United Artists)

RDINARILY aa critic should be slow to anger, but there are occasions when he may be justified in losing his

temper. This, I think, is one such occasion; especially as I have let the sun go down twice on my wrath before starting to write, and still think the same about The Outlaw as I did when I saw it. It is a wretched film: nothing good can be said about it. If that were all one could say about it, then it could be ignored along with many another shoddy piece of screen merchandise. Unfortunately The Outlaw, which has been a storm-centre of controversy for the last five years, opens up some very much wider issues, involving the ethics of the film industry and problems of local and general censorship. Pe * * \WHAT angers me particularly about the film is that it is a Western melodrama. The wild old West, one felt, was almost the last oasis of decency on the screen, an evergreen, region of fantasy and wholesome adventure in which the young in spirit of all ages

could with safety be recommended to roam. The Western is the oldest type of movie narrative there is, and its traditions have up to now been almost always uniformly good. Whatever else they may have been-and often they were preposterously childish — these films were at least healthy. But now comes the multi-millionaire independent producer Howard Hughes who, not content with the fortune has made from designing aircraft- and several earlier box-office pictures, has proceeded to exploit all the perennially-popular elements of the Western-the gun duels, the poker games, the feud between the sheriff and the bad man, thé fine horses, the Red Indian raids, even such semilegendary figures as Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday. His method of exploiting this material is to infuse into it a strong flavour of salacity. The Outlaw is an outdoor film smeared with some of the most disagreeable aspects of the sexy bedroom farce. * * * ‘T HIS is bad enough, yet the charge against The Outlaw does not rest there. The film is not merely nasty: in spite of its having cost two and a-half million dollars to make, it is also unutterably

cheap. I don’t want to sound sanctimonious and old-fashioned: I don’t want to be quoted with approval by all the wowsers and habitual blue-pencillers. Very great latitude can, and should, be allowed the cinema in the handling of adult themes and situations; but we should at least demand that they be handled in an adult way, with artistry, discretion, and good taste, not with vulgar clumsiness and sniggering suggestiveness. The Outlaw, however, is not only meretricious: it is also puerile-an incredibly bad job of picture-making. Only its photography and the performance of Walter Huston are tolerable. As Doc Holliday, Huston does manage to convey to the audience the impression that he regards the whole proceedings with contempt, and there may be something gloomily prophetic in the remark he addresses to Thomas Mitchell, "This finishes you and me for good and all." One might, indeed, feel sorry for the plight of two such stalwarts as Huston and Mitchell were it not for the realisa--tion that nobody compelled them to prostitute their talents in this way. Tchaikovski, who is dragged in to provide a musical background for all the sexy passages, had no such choice. For the rest, the dialogue is mostly fatuous, the climaxes grow depressingly phonier, and the acting would be amateurish even in a high-school play. As the so-called heroine, Jane Russell is not even an apology for an actress: as one wit has put it, she has only two

points of interest, and the producer leaves nobody in any doubt about what they are or why he chose her for the part. Jack Buetel, playing Billy the Kid, is not much better. Seldom can so much money have been squandered to such unworthy purpose. * * * ANY film censor has a difficult and unenviable task, and on the whole ours in New Zealand discharges his with tact, tolerance, diligence, and good sense; with the result that our film censorship system compares favourably with those of other countries. Not wishing to make his task more difficult, I am reluctant to say that, in his treatment of The Outlaw, our Censor has blundered. But, surely it needs to be said. Personally, I.dislike all forms of censorship on principle and, with certain positive safeguards, would be prepared for a much greater relaxation of control than the average person would, I "think, be likely to tolerate. Yet, if you are going to have censorship at all-and in our present imperfect society few would be willing to discard it entirely -then surely this was an occasion toe % ee apply it with the full rigour of the regu- * cannot be justified on the ground that it is good art; whereas even on the ground that it violates the elementary canons of screen censorship by "glamourising" crime and immorality and per(continued on next page) o lations. As I have argued, The Outlaw.

(continued from previous page) mitting the wicked to escape retribution it would seem to deserve suppression far more than several films which have in the past. been‘ banned. Where our Censor has failed most sadly, however, is not so much in refusing to ban the film in its entiretya@. course which I would not advocate even for The Outlaw--as in ‘passing it with a "U% Certificate. In other words, it is Approved for Universal Exhibition! I would myself have favoured releasing the film with a Special "A" Certificate ("entirely unsuitable for children"). After all, if responsible grown-ups insist on muck, they should probably be allowed to have it; but with children and "adolescents, the case is considerably difoabevte They need some degree of protection against films like this. As it is, that "U" Certificate is a positive encouragement to’ parents to let their children sée it. This view was corroborated for me by a mother who said ‘that, relying on the Censor’s certificate and the fact that it was a Western film and thereis certain to be wholesome. enough, e had let her 12-year-old daughter go on a+ Saturday afternoon. "Mummy," reported the child on returning home, "it was a very rude film." But the evidence which really establishes the case against The Outlaw is the audience’s Teaction. If I had seen this film by myself, I might peehaps have thought I was imagining things: my impression, however, of its inherent nastiness was wholly confirmed by the manner in which an audience consisting to.a large extent of adolescents-attracted beyond doubt by posters and publicity’ photographs devoted almost exclusively to what Time called "the flaring femininity" of Jane MRussell-greeted many sequences with catcalls and ribaldry. Possibly our Censor was impressed by the fact that, in spite of protests, the British Board of Censors also gave the film a "U" Certificate. I don’t think he should have been. If he hasn’t failed on this occasion, then our censorship system itself certainly has. % se O much for the question of local cen sorship. But what of the wider issue? Why was the film permitted to be made by the Hays Office in the first place; and why, having been kept on the shelf in America for four years (it was completed in 1942), was it finally taken down and released? Was the delay just a Hollywood publicity stunt? One is reminded of C. E. M. Joad’s definition of a hypocrite as "one who combines the smooth. appearance of virtue with the solid satisfaction of vice." Joad was, in fact, referring to the policy-makers of American film censorship when he said that; and when one recalls the Hays Office’s pious disapproval of the Restoration bosoms in The Wicked Lady and when one contrasts that film with The Outlaw, it’ is easy to understand what he was getting at. The film industry does itself no good with productions like The Outlaw. I have more than once been taken to task yet saying that what is basically wrong with the cinema, and is the greatest brake on its progress to higher standards, is the crude commercialism of too many of the men who run it; but I repeat the statement now: It was commer_cialism in its crudest form which gave us The Outlaw. To say that, however, is not to condemn the cinema itself or to say anything that could not be said ut all of the other art-forms. The ‘tmedium which produces the Bible,

Shakespeare, and Tolstoy also produces the sewage of the pulp magazines. But the film, because of its history and complexity of structure, is highly susceptible to debasement and corruption. If the industry resents the kind of things I have been saving this week-and there is evidence that it does, more and more-ex-hibitors as well as producers should not merely adopt but strictly adhere to a kind of self-denying ordinance, a code of internal ethics similar to that observed in some professions. If they did that-but I’m afraid they won’t-a film like The Outlaw would be outlawed.