Screen and Stage

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27386, 11 May 1950, Page 2

Screen and Stage

by JAXON

THINGS TO COME It would seem, from a brief glance at films made, edited, or projected, that the post-war cycle of war films is nigh upon us. Films were, of course, in their infancy during the First World War, but parallel trends showed that public interest in war " entertainment ” flagged for a few years immediately after the war and then picked up to a point which was fairly consistently maintained. That has been “the case this time—war books are now idle on library shelves and war films have done poor business. But the beginning of the up-swing is visible overseas, and several fair-quality films with war backgrounds have come out in the past few months, with more on the stocks. It is probable, however, that they will always be slightly suspect until such time as the present “ Cold War ” ends. Then, no doubt, every conceivable war theme will be well hammered and every factual or fictional hero the studios can discover will have their exploits' documented on celluloid. The only trouble is that, inevitably, things will get out of hand. Wars of the past have ceased to be mere material for costume dramas with the film-makers—-they have started on a rehashing process which turns the old familiar stories into costume musicals with a background of alarums and excursions. It is not a happy combination, but it is likely to be even more depressing when given contemporary backgrounds. Writing in The Times of London a few years ago. Campbell Dixon w r as gloomily prophetic concerning the super-films with the World War II basis which we might expect in the distant future. This is what he had to say: The year is 1985: Hollywood’s latest and greatest romance' of D-Day is on the floor. Shot 1: General Eisenhower (Napoleon Eddy II), singing the passionate Song of Freedom which we shall hear in reels 2,3, 5,7, 9. and 10. stands on the White Cliffs of Dover, his arms outflung towards the shores of France (Shot 2); Fifi la Blonde, the Free , French sweet-

heart of his Bohemian days in Paris, stands waiting to be rescued. Facing (Shot 3, close-up) the Gestapo chief with a gallant toss of her head, she cries: "You do not ave a t'ing on me, mong colonel," and defiantly takes up the theme song—slightly off-key, perhaps, but then patriots are often shrill and it’s the thought that counts. Shot 4: Colonel von Schlappendauner gives her a long, hard stare, lets his monocle fall in token of defeat, and stamps off as French fishermen join in the chorus, to the accompaniment of a hidden orchestra of 60. And so on. . . . We may have to wait for this production. but don’t worry—it will come. # # # Picasso, the painter, made his English debut as a playwright with one of the maddest, most pointless and unsavoury plays ever performed on a London stage, wrote Cecil Wilson in the Daily Mail recently. It was called “ Desire Caught by the Tail,” but for all that it meant to me it might as well have been called “ Boiled Beef and Carrots ” or “ Love Among the Cabbages." If it had any purpose at all, I suppose it was to put a Picasso painting into words and convey the hunger, cold and general frustration of life in occupied parts. It was written, said the programme note, in “ four cold, dark and hungry days in 1941 . . a strange dish, sweet and bitter, in which the main love theme is expressed chiefly in culinary terms." There are passages of such stark obscenity that no censor would ever pass them for public performance. The play is so formless that it could never really be acted. Hilda Simms was ” The Tart,” Valentine Dyall was " The Big Foot ” (they were presumably in love) and they were passionately joined in their mellifluous gibberish by “ The Onion,” “ Silence,” “ The Two Bow-Wows," “ Fat Anxiety,” ’ Thin Anxiety,” and others. Dylan Thomas, the poet, sat at the side of the stage, dividing the scenes by striking the table with a mallet and describing them. Three times as many people as the hall would hold applied for seats at this one-night private performance. Three times as manv actors as it needed clamoured for This is the kind of dialogue they yearned to read: The Tart: Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. aye. The Cousin: Aye, aye. aye, aye. Fat Anxiety: AAAAAAAA A A. All I can say is that I hope Picasso confines himself in future to painting or some other art in which I am not involved. * * * Film producers are growing less bloodthirsty and losing the old urge to chill spines. The drift away from horror is shown in figures issued by the British Eoard of Film Censors. The 1607 films from all over the world which they reviewed in 1948 included five “ horror certificates, but not one of last year's 1804 films receivsd this label. Four of the films, however, were totally rejected for various other reasons (compared with three in 1948), and six were shelved as suitable for showing only to aduit audiences. Mr A. T. L. Watkins, board secretary, said: “ We cannot place these six pictures in the present ‘Adult ’ category because we do not consider that children under 16 should see them in any circumstances, whether accompanied by adults or not. ‘ The Snake Pit ’ was granted a special ‘Adults only ’ certificate, but only as an isolated concession. We cannot yet make a general practice of passing films under that heading.” Three hundred of last year's films received censorship cuts ranging from one line to a complete seme. They affected films of all nationalities. Mr Watkins attributes many of these cuts to the postwar emphasis on brutality and sadism —the subject of a recent warning from his board to producers in Britain and America. » * » Noel Coward protested in New York recently that the censors had cut out the rnost important scene from the American print of his new film, “ The Astonished Heart,” which has had a poor reception from the critics. ”It is awfully difficult to do an adult picture when you are up against that kind of censorship,” he said. The Americans, on the other hand, are seeing other scenes which their censors have restored after the British censors had cut them for home audiences. Anton Karas, the zither player from a Viennese wine-cellar whose fame resulting from the film “ The Third Man ” has brought him more money than he knows how to handle, is now in New York. He will spend fopr months in the United States making personal appearances to publicise " The Third Man.” which is already repeating its British success in the American cinemas. His zither music—the " Harry Lime Theme ” —has sold nearly 1,500,000 records in Britain and 250,000 in its first few weeks in the American shops. It has brought an initial order of 25.000 from gramophone dealers in Egypt. Anton Karas, shy and spectacled, was scraping together a living by handing his saucer round the wine cellar for Austrian schillings before Carol Reed heard him playing his zither and swept him to world fame. * * * T. S. Eliot’s " Cocktail Party,” taking £BOOO a week on Broadway after failing to find a West End theatre, will be put on in London with Rex Harrison and Margaret Leighton this month. * * * Another star named Danny arrived in England recently to launch the London Palladium’s new variety season—a comedian with as frenzied a following in America as Danny Kaye's in England. He calls himself Danny Thomas. He finds that easier to handle than his real name, Amos Jahoob. He is a 38-year-old Syrian, with sad black eyes and the longest nose in show business. That nose is his pride—a facial phenomenon as arresting as Joe E Brown’s mouth. Film producers and well-wishers generally have begged him to shorten it, but Danny refuses to meddle with nature. “If you’re going to have a nose have one." he insisted. ” I don’t know how you folks manage to breathe through those perforated warts.”