By SANDRA JOHNSON
"Architecture is currently in a
jumbled, desultry mess," Craig
Ellwood, prominent Los Angeles
architect, said yesterday.
This is partially due, he explain-
ed, to the moral climate of our
society. "Ours is the era of Madi-
son Avenue . . . of mass culture."
The architect today is forced
toward mediocrity both in his at-
tempts to create "sellable" build-
ings, and in his personal striving
for glory and recognition, Ellwood
explained.
This urgency to render every-
thing a work of genius produces
an architecture of novelty, base-
less innovations, and personal,
idiosyncracies. Architects seek to
create a new architectural style
with each new building. Rational-
ity of structure is neglected.
Criticizes Sensualism
Ellwood criticized particularly
"degenerative sensualism," that is,
designing projections or forms
merely because of the visual ef-
fect they create, not because of
any practical function.
"We are not sculptors," he as-
serted. "We are architects. For us
form is only valid when it is
shaped by structure, and perhaps
characterized by culture, climate
and fun':tion."
As example of the type of arch-
itecture to which he was referring
Ellwood showed slides of two
buildings that looked like birds.
Hunter's Decoy
The first appeared to be the
sort of decoy duck, hunters would
use, except that it was one and
one-half stories high. "The owner
is a Long Island duck salesman,"
Ellwood explained.
r
11
Great Architecture
"Great architecture is art; but
great architecture must also re-
flect measurement, technique and
reason," he added.
Many architects began design-
ing "sensual" structures, Ellwood
said, when lazy, untalented and
avaricious men began creating
buildings in a degenerate mech-
anized architectural style.
But new materials and machine
techniques have been developed
and, when creatively utilized, will
express logic as well as beauty,
Ellwood pointed out. There is no
longer a place for hand workman-
ship in our economy, with the per-
fection and beauty of mechanized
methods, he said.
Come One, Come All
to the
'."y
SCHWADEN INN
Try one of our
SCHWABEN BURGERS
215 South Ashley
L
r
Lab Playbill Sets
Shaw Production
The speech department will re-
sume its laboratory playbill series
with "The Dark Lady of the Son-
nets," by George Bernard Shaw,
at 4:10, p.m. today in Trueblood
Aud. The play was first produced
in London in 1910.
The Union Sponsors
CAREERS in,
MA
COMING TO OUR STAGE
JOSE GRECO
and phis Company of
SPANISH DANCERS IPrson!
S~ingers ant Musicianso
MICHIGAN THEATRE ORCH. $3.00 2.50 with FLAMENCO
at 8:30 P.M. ?BAL $3.00 - 2.00 GondSINGERS
Panel Discussion
Tues,, March 21
4:10--5:10 P.M:
Multipurpose Room, UGLI
I Lw
F ~~1
S 1
PAID ADVERTISEMENT
Cinemna quild
presents
Thursday and Friday:
THE NEW CHINA
Saturday and Sunday:
THE PICKWICK PAPERS
72 Watts in Kit Form
for $149.50 NEW LAYOUT
--- SAVES 20 HOURS---,
DIAMOND NEEDLES... $5.95
full year guarantee
--BRING YOUR CATALOG and SAVE MONEY-
ANN ARBOR
Hi Fi & TV Center
CAMPUS STORE
There was not a hint of pd-
litical differences between the
rulers of Russia and China
when The New -China, the
mammoth color documentary
we are showing Thursday and
Friday, was planned and made
several years ago. Harmonious-
ly the Central Documentary
Studios of Moscow and the ChV
nese People's- Republic Film
Studios of Peiping worked out
a five-section film: that culmi-
nates in a mass celebration of
the birth of the Republic. The
theme .of the film is the con-
trast between the old and the
new China, 'a comparison that
is unfailingly to the advantage.
of the regime that produced the
film. An inexperienced observer
would indeed be struck by the
emergence of this overnight.
Utopia and could only wonder,
If, in the passage of years since,
the Chinese people were not
now on the threshhiold lof per-
fection. A serious discussion of
the problems facing this coun-_
try, under-developed and over-
populated, with the great mass-
es of people illiterate, is never
attempted. Such an approach
would have placed it in the
stream of, the true documen-
tary, even though the answers
would have reflected the Com-
munist ideology. But that this
is not even attempted indicates
a wilful substitution of faith for
reason; an inclination to self-
congratulation, a tendency to-
ward wishful thinking that has
always been the bugbears of to-
talitarian socialism.
But there are many reasons
f or seeing this film, apart from
its importance as the Image the
Chinese government wishes to
project. In many ways, it is
adroit propaganda. Beautiful
and lavish photography, care-
ful editing, suave narration
make this an attractive film to
Western European governments
feel that if China were admit-
ted to .the U.N., she would be
committed to world responsi-
bility in a way that would make
unilateral decisions on her part
much less possible. Be that as it
may, every thoughtfulAmeri-
can can assess his own reactions
to The New China. He will then
be in a: better position to ap-
praise the course of conduct
that our country will take.
When The Pickwick Papers,
our feature Saturday and Sun-
day, appeared in 1954, it was
the twenty-seventh film based
on a Dickens work. Noel Lang-
ley,~ who. wrote , the script,
stuffed over 600 pages of com-
edy into a movie 109 minutes
long. And to give life to the
lively band of oddities that fill
Dickens' pages, Langley, who
also directed the film, enlisted
the finest character actors of
the English stage.,and screen.
Looking as if they stepped out
of the famous Phit Illustrations
that accompanied the original
"Papers".,arek Nigel Patrick as
Jingle, the man with the tele-
graphic speech habits; Her-
mione Gingold as Miss Tomp-
kins, the schoolmistress; Joyce
Grenfell as Mrs. Leo Hunter
whose "llterahry fawncy-dress
breakfast" provides some of
the film's funniest moments;
James Donald (the Doctor in
Bridge on the River Inwai); and
Donald Wolfit (who recently
performed Shakespeare at Hill
Auditorium).
James Hayter as the pouchy
Mr. Pickwick, the titular head
of the group of bachelors out to
study human nature, moves
through his role (as do all the
others) as if he were born that
way. As for Mr. Pickwick, being
trappedin a lady's -chamber
and being tried before' the most
corrupnt ndAhilariou ur iwn
SERVICE
NO 5-8607;
I
S.G.C. Cinema uild
TONIGHT and Tomorrow at 7 and 9 SATURDAY and SUNDAY at 7 and 9
DICKENS'
THE NEW CHINA THE PICKWICK PAPERS
(Color), documentary in English, rmmde in China with James H Donald,
"A. mammoth, picturesque, and terrifying import" wit Jaes ayter, JamesDoad
-.
I