THE SCREEN
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
oil profiteering, skyrocketing prices, unemployment, im- sure of too rapid population growth on finite food sup- pending financial chaos, inflation, impeachment-as well plies; and (g) that...
...Renoir is Making the yellow martyr bide its time...
...d) who hire him at the beginning...
...twinkling lights embedded in a backdrop to suggest the Like Howard Hawks in this country, Renoir is a pluralcity...
...They all demonstrate that self-contentment and meal at all, and in the morning they are found dead abiding humanity which has pervaded Renoir's work with looks of contentment on their faces...
...Although the film's middle segment, a the snow along the bank of the Seine where they are satire on modern conveniences, is less sentimental then encamped...
...At issue He waits when she dries her slick hair in ropes are man's weaknesses, and how they may save him as To cut it like rushes they can lie in...
...First some swells going cessful grassroots campaign, led by the World Hunger out for Christmas dinner hire Le Clochard to stare Action Coalition and the organizations in which con- hungrily through the restaurant window, in order that cerned Americans are active, to secure acceptance by his misery might increase their pleasure while eating...
...the Congress and by the World Food Conference of a Then when the restaurateur gives him a meal of his world food policy they support...
...doctor is so guilty he tries to challenge his friend to a duel which he intends to let the friend win...
...I hope that the Catholic organizations, in particular, will continue to work within THE SCREEN this coalition, since it is wholly consistent with the teachings of the gospels and the Popes, and that the Catholic bishops, meeting around the time of the World Food Le Petit Thedtre de Jean Renoir is an old-fashioned Conference, will include in their annual statement a variety theater...
...What the optical effect suggests this time is some continuity between the play and the world THE WOMAN WHO COULD SIT beyond the stage...
...well as get him into trouble...
...The refreshing thing about Le Petit Theatre being made by the optical effect this time is very differ- de Jean Renoir is that it has always been so commodious...
...Leadership in helping the This country has been favored with an unprecedenthungry and poor in the rest of the world will not come edly high material standard of living...
...The old She flicks the moment and expertly dives, man brushes aside such romantically self-destructive Carrying with her her own wide pool of hair gestures, however...
...Everything about Renoir's treatment here is designed But it is important to be aware of the variety in to enhance our sense that this is a parable rather than Renoir's variety theater because much of his late career a slice of real life...
...The have to "vote their conscience" on foreign aid, because first act, for instance, has a rather artificial and formalthere is no constituency in the country for it...
...It is not a matter of charity, but of organizational know-how to orchestrate such a campaign justice, for, as everyone knows, peace is the fruit of and to draw up an agreed statement of world food justice...
...and (g) that we now have to share scarce comas the extra dimension of an election year...
...An even clearer of world where all feelings from cruelty to tenderness rebuttal to that conclusion, however, would be a suc- take on exaggerated proportions...
...ium stage he has used to introduce each of the three acts presented, and onto the stage he rolls a tiny marble 00000000000000 which suddenly becomes, in mid-flight, a Bocci ball rolling along the ground in the South-of-France village where CHARLES EDWARD EATON the play is set...
...c) that the food shortage is not temporary, but about them, for Le Clochard's own experience repeats chronic and requires a worldwide system of food reserves in a curious way the experience of the bons vivants under international management or coordination...
...As well as the skill of coming up for air, After some anguished deliberation, he has decided One white hand rising like the Lady of the Lake...
...The production put on in it has three strong endorsement of the world food policy and the acts just as a legitimate play would, but they are more subsequent efforts to put it into effect...
...to a considerable from any of these-for a variety of understandable, if extent it has been earned by hard work, but to a large not altogether commendable reasons...
...b) that quantity of food has to be bal- makes everything in that world contrived...
...yields to her passion for his best friend, a doctor, also Standing up was a wrenching upheaval, young, with whom she has an affair...
...His enactment of their that hunger and malnutrition in the developed world are fantasy at the restaurant window proves too much for an integral part of the problem, requiring simultaneous them...
...They have the year...
...The main character is an old tramp, Le ciple is to be commended, but the survey cited earlier Clochard (Nino Formicola), who lives in a crazy sort would seem to belie their conclusion...
...This is not to It was a sighing stroke, beyond arm's length...
...And in a fashion contrary yet parallel, the world hunger must protect the farmer's right to a just fantasies that Le Clochard and his wife have of a former return on his labor and his investment...
...Their prin- istic tone to it...
...An old man (Fernand Sar- Something that grew from her was holding her dou) has a young wife who loves him dearly, but who To earth, bending her back in agony...
...degree it has also resulted from good fortune...
...He shoots his film on location Moves, a great, coiled, wondrous, excreted thing: rather than on sets, and he puts no particular construc- One can smother, plunge, almost be cut downtion on his plot...
...Directors of such versatility are of course they dance...
...delegation to the World Food proclaim, and that is what we should do...
...Eventually the old A powerful gesture but alienatingfellow discovers the truth, quite by accident, and the What can one do with the follicular bulb...
...oil profiteering, skyrocketing prices, unemployment, im- sure of too rapid population growth on finite food suppending financial chaos, inflation, impeachment-as well plies...
...simply to forgive his betrayers because he loves them But the man on the shore carries the sword, too much to do otherwise...
...Even the anced by considerations of quality of diet (i.e., nutri- episodes of the plot have a specially constructed quality tion...
...The sets are obviously all just that has also been a reaction against the postwar trends and -sets with soap-flake snow, papier-machd walls and schools in filmmaking which he considers monomaniacal...
...Since the characters this time are people, not types, Renoir's treatment is a com- It hangs, the head's own static waterfall, pletely naturalistic one...
...it differentiates itself from the first one...
...since World War II...
...I saw the woman, a siren in the sun, The real significance of this vignette lies in the way Combing through the thrill of expectations...
...He has directed crime melodrama and comedy of fanciful, has a crucial role in this little morality play manners, screwball comedy and social protest, social when the two old lovers' fantasies are suddenly pro- satire and musicals, contemporary think films and jected onto the bleak stone embankment along which costume epics...
...When she sat on it, it took hold in soil If the first act of Renoir's little theater is a fable, the Of buttocks, pulling back her heavy face last is a mere anecdote, just the sort of tale that might Like an exposed bulb, the thick roots spreading...
...That is what the World Food Conference should policy that the U.S...
...They leave in disgust and bickering without havand equal attention...
...Here Renoir stands beside the model of a proscen- COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...The emotions here, truer to Modern, theatrical, nonlegendary...
...like vaudeville acts, each one being distinct from the Men of good will on Capitol Hill often say that they others in its billing, performers, content and style...
...Moreover, an optical effect that is very fancy, and ist...
...12 July 1974: 380...
...own to get rid of him, he and his wife are, though In addition to recognizing and acknowledging the starving, too moony with love to eat...
...life, are accommodating rather than absolute...
...We should This leaves us-and perhaps properly-the religious not pretend that we are better than others, though we groups, the charitable organizations, and the internation- are luckier...
...The cause- modities, rather than our former abundance...
...Although their fantasies have always been an Commonweal: 379 alternative to the life they live, rather than a grotesque an auteur in the true sense of the term, and the acts put complement to it, the effect is the same: they cannot on in his little theater are all recognizable as the work eat their meal either...
...actually be drawn from life...
...They have no place in his world...
...f) that equal life of wealth also prove more powerful than their attention has to be paid to measures to relieve the pres- hunger...
...This revives their fantasies so completely that the other two, all three segments are pretty warm-bloodthey lie down to sleep without having touched their ed...
...dying out...
...Development," said Pope Paul VI, "is the new expertise and the experience, the moral stature and name for peace...
...There are groups are articulate and effective, but they stress almost no more surpluses, but there must be reserves...
...say we wouldn't have guessed the stories making up She gathered up enough for daffodils, this film were all directed by the same hand...
...longer-range development assistance, especially for the As the film's scriptwriter-director, Renoir therefore small farmer...
...Conference can advocate and support, a policy that will assure that the impetus that gave rise to the Conference will be stimulated, rather than dissipated, by it, a policy LE GRAND THEATRE de JEAN RENOIR that will permit all of us to see that we have reached, at most, another "end of the beginning" in the field of 00000000000000 international development...
...and we cannot pretend that it is right for ally civic-minded, who have begun to work together in 6 percent of the world's population to consume, even a broad coalition on this matter, without in any way partially waste, nearly half of the world's product every compromising their particular identities...
...Instead they get up and dance in of a single man...
...He is purely a problem, the policy statement should, as a minimum, storybook character in a perverse kind of storybook also emphasize (a) that food aid is no substitute for world...
...But in their prime they were men who alThe film's third section begins with a similar match- ways suited their treatment to the script, as Renoir ing cut from one background to another, but the point does here...
...e) that any program to relieve ing eaten...
...exclusively domestic issues...
...Renoir personally participates in the ON HER HAIR game of the drama this time and identifies with the characters...
Vol. 100 • July 1974 • No. 16
