Poetic Whimsies

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 16 (Supplement)

Poetic Whimsies

English Film Writer s Comment on Year of Eloquence on the Screen WORDY FANCIES IN EMOTIONAL SCENES

It has been a year of brave, brilliant eloquence in the cinema. Heroes and heroines have faced up to life, looked it straight in the eyes and answered it back with fine, glittering words. TheyJiave jollied it along, laughed it out of its sulks; ana, when it has smacked.them down, they have smiled back at it ana tossed off a couple of gallant wisecracks (writes Leonard Wallace in the London Film Weekly).

WHEN Joan Crawford, in "The Bride Wore Red," felt that she could not return to the diirt and degradation of the city's rottenness, she yearned audibly to get away from everything to some place where the grass was cool and green and smelt of morning dew, and little birds would come to greet her \vith a song. A few months before that Miss Crawford would simply have announced intensely but tersely, "I've got to get out of here!" and left it at that. But that was before the dialogue writers became inspired. Before that time, also, young lovers, sitting under the moon, were apt to fall soundlessly into clinches, and that was that, too. Not so to-day. To-day, it goes something like this: "See that old moon up there, darling. He's shining specially for us." Epigrammatically Soulful "That's not the moon. That's my heart up there in the sky, glowing so proudly because I'm in love." "There's a man in the moon. "There's a man in my heart. "I love the moon." "I love the man in the moon."

She makes a tentative thawing noise. She says: "Remember the night we took the hedgehog and put it in George's bed?" He says: "Remember the night we roasted chestnuts and ate them in front of the fire in your apartment?" She says: "Remember the time we danced on the bench and the cop thought we were crazy?" He says: "Remember the chipmunks?" And then it is all over, bar whatever it was they stopped short at just before thev quarrelled. It is worth noting that there has been no instance among the year's offerings in which a quarrel has been solved by one character saying "Sorry ' and then the other character saying "Sorrv, too." It might be good enough for life, but it is not good enough for the movies.

And then -a cloud comes over all symbolic, and passes over the moon, and they go on to some night club and have a big misunderstanding. You will have noticed scenes like that in Chaser" and "Thanks for the Memory" and quite a few others, but courtslrp scenes have not all been as epigramiiuiticallv soulful. The brighter young people just look at the mpon and talk about something else. For instance:

"Kind of wish I was a chipmunk 1" he says suddenly. To which she replies, as though a light has dawned: "Sort of furry and kind of cuddly? Lovely!" "Just laze around in a hole in a tree." Love with a Laugh "And have a lot of fun with the wallabies and Koala bears." "And no hangovers." "Swell! I've always wanted to be a chipmunk, too." This sort of thing shows that they have sympathetic natures and creates a bond.

Heroes and heroines like these are the ones who take their love with a light laugh.

Having discovered that they bo want to .be chipmunks, they make t!

rounds of a series of very uncomfortable night-clubs, drink lager beer out of large glass mugs and end up by driving home on a borrowed milk-waggon, she wearing the milkman's hat and he crooning Western torch songs to the horse, which they have christened "Magnolia." "Thanks for the Memory" Joan> Fontaine had quite a burst of this sorft of thing in "Maid's Night Out" and Dennis O'Keefe and Maureen O'Sullivan indulged in a spot of it in "Hold That Kiss." Irene Dunne's whole life was changed by it in "Joy of Living." You may not think it's much like life, but the Hungarian dialogue writers who most frequently produce it probably know better than you. Then theire is the "thanks for the memory" interlude. Quarrels used to be made up with a quick rush of feet and an all-in wrestling embrace. The modern man and maid remember their whimsy even under the tautest emotional strain.

Suffering, which used to be either silent or cachinnatory, is now almost poetic. Mr. Gable, tortured by the loss of one of his flying friends in "Test Pilot," gave us an eloquent speech about the seductions of "Miss Up-there" and "Miss Alice Blue Gown" (his whimsical way of referring to the sky), and how she's a hard mistress, a siren who opens her arms to a man and lures him up and up, only to smack him down. Other gentlemen with mechanical allegiances have also expressed themselves wittily and pithily about their affection for their ships, cars and railway engines. But perhaps the most striking bursts of brave and brilliant volubility have been those which have tumbled from the lips of heroines who have been discarded by their respective young men. Whimsy with Tears

Even with the tears shining in their eyes and a bitter ache in their they remember to keep their chins up, upper lips stiff and their whimsy pliant. Miss Loy has been particularly eloquently gallant in these circumstances, especially in "Man Proof," "lest Pilot" and "Too Hot to Handle." A vintage Loy renunciation goes something like this: "I'm not sorry. I'm glad. So glad. We had a wonderful ride. We went nil through the gears, »nd we felt the wind of life rushing us along and leaving the silly old world behind. It was wonderful out there rushing downhill, leaving everything behind. And now the skids are under us. I'm not sorry. I'm glad." Of course, it would be more sensihle for her to go away and have a good cry. But writers are not paid to be sensible.

Miss lAy is not, of course, the only lady who has suffered this year with an almost verbose gallantry. There have been many others, and when you see "Spring Madness," you will also see Maureen O'Sullivan suffering gallantly as 110 heroine ever suffered before. No Scene Too Awkward I could go on citing examples of this sort of thing for several pages. I could give chapter and verso for any number of examples of whimsically eloquent childhood recollections, statements of ambition, expressions of such pungent philosophies as "It's wrong to steal."

They meet, very formally, but quite soon they are on the balcony, looking at that view.

The dialogue writers of the past year's films have found no scene too awkward, no situation too difficult for them to embellish and round off with a spot of fine or whimsical writing. They have even written Lionel Barrymore into back-slapping terms with God.

She says: "Same old moon." He says: "Not any more."

Myrna Loy—we keep coming back to her —once said in a film, "Everybody wants the movies to be more like life, but 1 wish life were more like the movies."

Personally, if this year's crop of poetic screen oratory is the kind of thing she is-after, I, being whimsical to the last, will take vanilla.