The Illuminated Bones of a Fish —That is Broadway, Manhattan

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 21, 4 December 1936, Page 12

The Illuminated Bones of a Fish —That is Broadway, Manhattan

English Film Critic Looks at New York Shows.

F I turn.slightly to: the left and look out of ‘the window and:down about seventy stories or more, I can see laid out below me the orderly skeleton of this fish that the sea washed up-I mean Manhattan Island, said Alistair Cooke, the B.B.C. film critic, in a talk broadcast in New York recently. | This is,-of course, an exciting sight for anybody, but it I were a critic here, I would have a

standing arrangement with the landlord of the Empire State Building for Radio City-if any such gentlemen are not already heading. across Siberia. It would'be that any. time I had to write or ‘talk about -films, I might be allowed to come up as high ag this, so that I should not need to carry a lot of notes around about the films that were running on Broadway ;. for if you let your eye follow the illuminated bones of this fish, you will come in time on a patch of light rather brighter’ than the rest, that looks ‘like a section of a lung under X-ray treatment: and this is Broadway; and all the film critic needs to-do‘is to wander over to this window and look down on the left and see the titles of all the current films blazing -away .there. At the moment, I can see a streak of red and yellow, saying "Dodsworth"; a white line panting out the news that "The General Died at Dawn"; there is another splatter of light announcing "Ramona" in: technicolour; there is "Nine Days a Queen," Robert Stevenson’s movie, which we called "Tudor Rose"-a movie as popular as all English costume films seem to be over heres and then there is "Swing Time," the new Mickey Astaire and Minnie Rogers film; and separating the "Great Ziegfeld" from, the "Girls® Dormitory" is a catherine-wheel that spells three words-‘Romeo and Juliet." All this is very impressive at this distance, but as Tallulah Bankhead said of a very elaborate production of a very thin ‘play: "There’s less’ in this than meets the eye"; for Broadway is only the shop Window of the Island’s entertainment. Inside the shop there are some special lines that have to be brought out from under the counter. BroadWay does not reflect the habits "of all the people who go to the movies, It is as well that I. should .remind myself that the names I have just quoted are the names of the newest films, but if I-had been asked what there was to see in New York-in the way of movies, the first two. recom-, mendations that would have come to mind ‘are Max Linder and a.Chinese talkie. On Forty-second Street there is a Flea Circus where for a nickel you can regain your youth; I mean you can see John Bunny and Flora Finch

and Max Linder performing their ancient antics through downpours of that pre-war rain. . Nearer to the patch of lung we are working on, there are two Italian films, uptown a Spanish music hall with Spanish talkies ; next door to a Yiddish theatre is a new and brilliant French’ comedy, "Carnival in ‘Blanders." Way down-town you might meet

Mr. Pond Wing, who gets films rushed straight from Hong Kong films that have no English titles, so the censor. has to see them, with Mr. Wing shouting himself hoarse translating all the time in case there is a line an American might object to if only he understood. It is very likely, I think, that a film critic in New York would constantly forget his job of keeping an audience -informed on the latest films-at least for his first two years. But however much fun I got out of a Chinese film called "Crazy Detectives" it is an experience that is not likely to be‘repeated in London, whereas .that more conspicuous patch of light does advertise the films that you are seeing, and the films that you will see before many months are out, which brings me back up-town and round the corner to the catherine-wheel and "Romeo and Juliet." HOPE as I talk about Hollywood's latest Shakespearean = effort, that, whatever sounds are managing to swim into your loudspeaker, you don’t detect a sneer. It became almost the automatic duty of every English film critic when "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" was produced to damn the film in advance, I never did see why it should be so funty that Hollywood’ tackled ‘ Shakespeare. I have seen some funny productions of Shakespeare myself. The funniest, as 1 remember, was one of "As You Like It" by Beerbohm Tree, in which one of the real sheep fell into a trombone. Well, compared with that, the present "Romeo and Juliet" is a miracle of taste and under-statement, in fact is so. tasteful and so wunderstated that it almost manages to say nothing at all. Mr. Oliver Messel’s work with Adrian’s on the costumes and settings is as careful.and authentic as any Renaissance painter could wish posterity to think him, and Mr. Mill has done a beautiful job.? There is the dance in the Capulets’ home. And there has gone into. the actual performance, .especially from Norma Shearer, much easy and beautiful speaking. It is a:terrible thing when a film critic longs for the stage performance of.an adapted play, and somehow I was wanting somebody to pull the cameras back and let :us -see

in the shape and postures of their bodies the tender agony and intensity of first love. Instead, you have a series of close-ups of two faces, speaking nice lines simply and carefully, and it so happens that neither Miss Shearer nor Mr, Howard are at their best in close-up. So "Romeo and Juliet" is another album-though the best-of Mr. Cukor’s (the director’s) tasteful ecllection of family postcards, And they are good posteards carefully composed and affecting to look at for a little while, but he can never flick them fast or trickily enough to turn them into a moving picture. BEFORE the Louis Pasteur film came out, you may remember seeing in London a straggling line of men marching up and down Regent Street in front of the New Gallery Theatre, They, were carrying boards which warned in- ,’ tending movie-goers that Pasteur was a cheat, a hoax, a quack, and everything in fact which scientific and medical pioneers are-usually called before their discoveries are verified by the legally licensed practitioners. The film of Louis Pasteur’s life could not have had @ more appropriate and dramatic advertisement. I hope and wish that the same Society is repeating its crusade in every town in HEngland where the Pasteur film is showing. I imagined that. the actual biography of Pasteur had been absurdly parodied and theatricalised, until the other day I found myself in a library composed as it seemed almost exclusively of lives of Pasteur. And now I am astonished only’ at the restraint and the sensible calm with which Hollywood has viewed the whole proceedings. "TNJUSTICE" is a film which has had no publicity, no notices, and is, I think, not far behind Fritz Lang’s "Fury" for its blunt and candid presentation of a social evil, I suppose every country in the world except three still puts out books about slums and prisons. There seems less risk of libellous insults by committing these things to black ink on paper. But if this film "Injustice" had: been made iy a Frenchman about France, by an Englishman about England, I doubt if a single foot of it would have been seen ‘on the screens of either nation. I "have been trying to discover the motive which makes Hollywood just now turn out small films which lash so resoundingly some crookery in the political or social life of America. Now this leaves me very little time to deal with the last film. "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" is the iatest of Frank Capra’s masterpieces. It is further away from the comedy of actual American life than any of Mr. Capra’s films have been, and it is nearer to a comedy of ideas than I hope Mr, Capra will ever come again. But it has his incomparable speed and’ lighitness, and I should say ‘the best acted’ -performance of the year from-of ‘all peopleGary Cooper. I don’t care how many miles of celluloid were snipped and reassembled in the cutting room, nobody but Mr. ‘Cooper could be-respons-ible for tlie organisation of ‘looks and limbs which makes.’ Mr: ° Longfellow Deeds one of the few characters in ‘the movies that it is hard"to forgéet" * ~