WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 18963, 9 June 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

HOW RIDICULOUS!

(By

“Criticus.”)

Maurice took me to the pictures. He had assured me that the advertisements were most, enthusiastic about the principal film which had as its title, “Missing Husbands.” There is nothing unusual about a missing husband—the missing wife is rare in th»se days of women’s cricket—but he assured me that the film was French and that settled it. French husbands have a habit of going missing in intriguing fashion. So Maurice took me. He paid for the tickets and induced the haughty wielder of the revealing electric torch to find us a couple of seats. . . . There had been other pictures, but I was concerned only with the one for which Maurice had paid. At last it arrived to the accompaniment of gurgles and squeaks from the orchestral pit. The bored operator had not unwound very much of it before we discovered ourselves in the lost continent of Atlantis. I have always marvelled at the manner in which Atlantis travels. It has been found in the Pacific, and Cutcliffe Hyne discovered it somewhere between Europe and Asia; now we come across it in the wastes behind the Alegrian desert. This time the ruler is a woman, who is the possessor of extraordinary eyes. I watched her carefully and decided that in whatever else the movie man had failed he had managed to reproduce the eyes of the ruler of the French Atlantis. These eyes are the engine of the picture. It seems that all men fall in love with the owner of them and she, when she has tired of her suitors, turns them into gold statues —an artistic way of removing a lover who has ceased to be interesting. Of course, she struck the man who was impervious to her charms and promptly tumbled headlong into love herself—a mighty splash she must have made, too—but (here was the Gallic touch) she promptly decided to use another suitor to despatch him. ’Twas done neatly with a silver hammer—for what more could he have wished —and presumably he joined the other golden memorials. The officer who executed her revenge then escaped to Algiers All this we discovered as the escapee was unfolding his bewildering story to a brother officer. What happened then? Ah, the frenchman showed what stuff he was made of. He had been wandering about Europe for three years and he was even now on his way back to An tinea, the lady with the “eyes”! Then came one of the shrewdest of the author’s moves. The officer who had heard the story, the inevitable transformation into a gold statue and the brevity of Antinea’s love, decides to make the journey to Atlantis! Thus are we always lured to danger by the hope of adventure and the glance of bright eyes. . . .

As we were leaving the theatre I heard other members of the audience dismissing the picture as utterly ridiculous! These frank and downright opinions rather perturbed me because I had rather enjoyed the novelty of the situation and the French touches at the corners, and I turned hopefully to Maurice for some enlightenment. ‘‘Why do they call it ridiculous?” I asked. “Are not all the pictures ridiculous? As soon as man steps in to weave a story that is not merely a recounting of facts, as soon as he moves from journalism to*imaginative writing, he emerges from the dull realms of the sensible realities into the glorious fields of fancy, of the ridiculous. You know, Maurice, without the ridiculous we could not move, we would stagnate. A new idea is utterly ridiculous. It offends against the stern utilitarianism of the groove-dwellers, it jolts our settled ideas and finds us ready to scoff. All Art is ridiculous if it moves off the beaten track. Maurice, we must remember that it is but a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous; a short step down or up ? Ah, who knows? But it is a long, long way from sublimity to the unhealthy marshes of mediocrity, where we cannot step high because there is too much of the weight of convention sticking to our feet. There is nothing more ridiculous than trying to bust a universe, Maurice; but if we were all content to push lawn mowers and wear wool next to the skin, what advance would we make. God Save the Ridiculous! That is the National Anthem for a people pressing hot on the heels of progress. Out of the ruts, away from the multiplication of conventional art, away from those sternly practical men who supply us with foodstuffs in a perfectly sensible manner, or take our shilluns’ from us with righteous dignity! Away from them Maurice, if we are to move forward. Art is ridiculous; so were Beethoven, Chopin, Shakespeare; so am I at times, but I hide it! For the extraordinary, Maurice, for the unusual! That is where we should be heading. R is . ridiculous to try to introduce a new political idea and yet on these things is our progress based. . . .Now that picture, Maurice, struck a new note and technically the story was clean off the beaten track and yet these seasoned picture-goers, who should welcome something new, condemn it as ridiculous and tie us to a further instalment of uniform mediocrities. It is not the pictures that are ridiculous, Maurice, it is the audience, and you as a steady picture-goer shculd be the first to applaud my view. . . .” Maurice did not answer. I looked round ior him and found that he was gone! When all the crowd had gone he was still absent. Maurice went to pictures every week and was used to crowds—perhaps he was still glorying in the novelty of that film!

I went back into the theatre and there I saw him still snoring peacefully in his seat.