On Screen
MURRAY, WILLIAM
On SCREEN By William Murray M-G-M's Mau Mau; Note on Audiences Something of Value is a small, trashy movie out of a big, trashy novel by Robert C. Ruark, who writes with all the mannerisms and...
...They love each other very much, but one day one brother discovers he is black and this does a certain indefinable something to their friendship...
...Dana Wynter supplies the cool love interest, and some good actors, including Wendy Hiller and Frederick O'Neal, do their best to puff some life into their hollow roles...
...But it was understood that the making of movies was a purely commercial proposition and that the only tragedy acceptable to the intellectual critic was that of the talented playwright, actor or director corrupted and suffocated by easy gold...
...Guinness and Olivier are their idols, but they re even more pleased when the dialogue is in an exotic foreign language they cannot understand and the screen so dark they can t see what - going on...
...So black brother goes off in a sulk and joins a secret society dedicated to slaughtering white brothers in a number of picturesque ways...
...For two hours we wallow in gore, grunt with the impact of each bone-crushing blow, revel in the mutilation of helpless women and children, and then emerge into the street, our ears ringing with all those pious phrases about loving our fellow man regardless of his creed or color...
...Rock Hudson almost succeeds in being believable as while brother, no mean achievement, and Sidney Poi-licr docs as well as he can in the hopeless role of black brother...
...Today, however, the mass arts have become fashionable...
...it is now recognized that Chaplin is not only a great comic but a weighty philosopher as well: Westerns, with or without social messages, are grand...
...Movies were classified as entertainment, and you went to them without illusions and for emotional relief only...
...There are...
...It was ( and still is) tacitly assumed that no movie could be genuinely and uncompromisingly artistic...
...who will only go to foreign films...
...In her May 6 column Diana Trilling speculated on whether intellectuals go to the movies any more, and her thoughts on the subject set off a few of my own...
...The moral is that white man and black man must learn to live as brothers, that the Mau Mau is very naughty because it is dedicated to violence, and violence, as we all know, is not the way to achieve real brotherhood...
...are hailed as masterpieces...
...and movies about monsters from Outer Space are recognized as stimulating and courageously experimental...
...Eventually, of course, white brother and black brother meet for a climactic and colorful machete session which culminates in the tragic dismemberment of one brother...
...They're not quite up to date, but are still happily unaware of it...
...Note on Audiences Something of Value is a small, trashy movie out of a big, trashy novel by Robert C. Ruark, who writes with all the mannerisms and none of the style or real passion of his idol, Hemingway...
...gangster movies, especially the old ones with Cagney, Robinson and Bogart...
...If we can't have our Roman circuses, medieval torture chambers and public hangings, at least there is always M-G-M...
...I've often wondered if all those horn-rimmed glasses clustered behind third base make the pitcher nervous...
...of course, those people, mostly the enlightened members of the gray-flannel set...
...There isn't time to peruse Partisan Review any more because we're all too busy reading comic strips and going to baseball games...
...In any ease, if they went to the movies at all (and I'm referring, of course, to Hollywood movies), they went for escape, as a kind of breather between the innings of the real struggle being waged in the pages of Partisan Review...
...Although the movie purports to be a profound and heartrending examination of troubled race relationships in Kenya, with particular emphasis on the activities of the Mau Mau, it is in reality just another glossy example of sadistic entertainment...
...The plot has to do with a couple of young men who are brought up almost as brothers on a farm in Kenya...
...If we can't hope for that much, we must content ourselves with demanding a little less piety...
...More blood, boys, and less bushwah...
...I doubt it, unless it was to feel noble at showings of Golden Boy and The Grapes of IFralh, but I could be wrong...
...I wonder, for instance, whether the intellectuals of Mrs...
...I won't spoil it by telling you which one...
...I think what makes this kind of movie so reprehensible is that it masquerades its real intent behind such a sickeningly pious exterior...
...Trilling's generation ever went to the movies...
...Espresso, of course...
...And don't forget There's coffee served in the lobby...
...In ancient Rome, at least, there was audience participation...
...Art always crept in through the back door—in the comedy of W. C. Fields and Harpo Marx, the personal magnetism of Greta Garbo, the spectacular directorial touches of von Stro-heim...
...The intellectual personality-cult that began with Garbo has widened to include Joan Crawford and Judy Garland...
...What Gilbert Seldes started, the New School has finished, and we have been authoritatively informed that there is no such thing as a bad movie: There are only good-bad movies...
...Richard Brook's script and direction are faithful to the spirit of the novel...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 20
