On Screen:
DWORKIN, MARTIN S.
On SCREEN American Sexploitation Unfair to Foreign Films By Martin S. Dworkin FOREIGN FILMS are enjoying an increasing success in the United States. In practical terms, this means that there is...
...the roles of the ballerina's uncle, a minister, and a male dancer are obscure--perhaps because of cutting...
...But the sequences between May Britt and Berger Malsten are remarkably sensitive to the excitements and poignant discoveries of first love...
...It is not only unfair to the film to exaggerate the importance of a few sentences of dialogue which are about as libidinous as the teasing of adolescents around a soda fountain--or of a few distant views of a young lady's nudity which are considerably less revealing, and especially less licentious, than any advertisement for lingerie...
...In practical terms, this means that there is both a growing audience for them and more theaters where they can be shown...
...Not a great film in any respect, Lili does have piquant charm--largely because of Leslie Caron, who dances, acts, and projects a personality that is utterly unsuited to the kind of massive publicity buildup to which the industry is normally geared...
...The story is occasionally opaque...
...They can even wait for the audience for an unusual film to create itself by word-of-mouth and critical support...
...By the time Lili does get out into the theater circuits, it will have prestige enough to add to its "arty" profits and probably will do as well as the more commercial "product" of the studios...
...But it is only since television began to force the closing of economically marginal theaters that the "art" theaters began to grow in number...
...This may attract transient audiences into fourth-rate houses, to see films which are almost always disappointingly respectable and often shockingly serious...
...Small in size, with relatively low overhead, they can make money out of the smaller but often steadier audiences which attend foreign and off-trail films...
...But the presentation of foreign films, particularly those which are strange or subtle in any way, is still a matter of much confusion...
...The distribution system within which most American theaters must operate makes this practice--so vital in presenting unusual films--almost impossible...
...Consider, for example, those who have been enticed to--or kept away from--Noel Coward's and David Lean's penetration of respectability, Brief Encounter, by blurbs and posters proclaiming it to be concerned with the "frank portrayal" of extra-marital amours...
...Miss Caron, incidentally, by then will have established her personality and will have a following for future films...
...The critics, moreover, unwittingly abet this sexualization of foreign films by paying too much concern to how close they may come to the edge of a largely illusory conventionality...
...With unusual insight, M-G-M chose to treat the film as if it wasn't American-made at all, spotting it in a leading foreign-film "showcase" in New York, where it is now in its second year...
...Illicit Interlude, for example, the critics were led on by the publicity to the extent of complimenting the film principally for dealing with sex in good taste...
...This affair ended tragically, marring her life...
...In the case of the current Swedish import...
...It is now a well-established publicist's convention, for example, to treat almost any foreign film as if it is a photographed orgy...
...An example of how art-film promotion techniques can build up even an American film which would be otherwise hopelessly overwhelmed in the jungle of double-billing is Lili...
...To begin with...
...The rehearsal of her memories eventually refreshes her spirit, enabling her to face the future with new hope and a new love...
...These emphases on the part of publicists and critics bespeak our immaturity and inconsistency of moral outlook rather than any impropriety of the film, which is not intended to shock but to explore proveniences of passion...
...But it also repels many of those who would make up the natural audience for such films...
...Gunnar Fischer's photography graphically implements Ingmar Bergman's perceptive direction, which is pervasively romantic without saccharinity...
...Illicit Interlude is horrendously mistitled...
...More than this, the breathless expectation of pornography is not the best attitude to encourage, either for entertainment or for serious engrossment, if we wish to assist in creating that climate of maturity that is ultimately and vitally prerequisite to the promotion of truly mature cinema...
...In it, an "aging" ballerina approaches a crisis of love and is reminded of a summer's idyll with a young student years before...
...Because of the stress on the possibility of naughtiness, even an unfavorable opinion can be milked by the publicists for quotes to titillate audience prurience...
...This may appear as an obvious example of supply and demand...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 47
