Huston Develops Th Black Film Aunt Edna and London Tb A Report on New Plays in Great Brit (Continued from Page 9) fThen he rade three reputedly fine -documentaries for. the War Department-including Battle of San Pietro, "perhaps the finest film to come out of World War H11 (to be shown by Gothic Film Society next month). After the war he returned to the gangland milieu with two screen plays for other directos- Three Strangers, about fortune seekers Greenstreet and Lorre which ends, as usual, ironically, and The Killers (recently remade for television). The latter film, a- cording to its director Robert Si- odmak was adapted by Huston anonymously-he was then under contract to another studio-from Hemingway's short story, and fur- thermore, is the only film version of that writer's works which Hem- ingway himself likes. Huston used the original story only for the hard-boiled opening sequences in the lunch stand, then expanded the story via flashbacks to explain the characters and the situation. The milieu-mobsters. an ex-boxer, and a payroll robbery --was right in Huston's line, ANOTHER crime film, this time directed by Huston, wasMax- well Anderson's Key Largo ('48). It lacks the movement necessary to make it a great picture, nor, in spite of the talkiness of the filmed stage play, does it provide, ade- quate motivation for the ecynical ex-G.I. Bogart or the deported mobster E. G. Robinson. It has some good moments, such as Bogart losing his nerve in the face of a gun duel proposed by the snarling Robinson, later to re- gain it in a tense final gun battle on shipboard (borrowed from Hemingway's To Have and Have Not). This movie, like Across the Pacific, was produced by Jerry Wald for Warners, -and much of the blame for its relative failure can be laid at his doorstep. Hus- ton was so angry after Wald had "all the good speeches cut out of it" that he quit Warners to work independently and for other stu- dios. (It might be noted here that Wald is now turning out glossy trash like No Down Payment and Best of Everything). Some years later Huston was to have difficulty in working with an- other major producer, David Selz- nick, on the '57 remake of Fare- well to Arms, and he finally walked out just before the start of pro- duction because of a clash of two strong personalities. ONE PRODUCER, on the other hand, who has backed some of Huston's best pictures is Henry Blanke. He gave Huston his first opportunity with the Falcon, then produced another of his master- pieces, Sierra Madre, in '47. Hus- ton returned to the Mexico of his youthful cavalry experience and to mountainous terrain similar to that of High Sierra to create a rugged outdoor drama called by Time Magazine one of the best things Hollywood has done since it learned to talk . . . the movie can take a place, without blush- ing, among "the best ever made." their preparation for the jewel robbery, is occupied by a long, detailed portrayal of the robbery itself, and this sequence "has fre- quently been imitated but never equalled." (Archer). IN MANY respects Jungle is the best of the black film cycle. Its character painting is as bril- liant as the Falcon's, but includes several more excellent cameos, even Marilyn Monroe in a small role. Sam Jeffe's unforgettable de- piction of the master brain, Erwin "Doct' Reidenschneider, won him the acting award at a European festival. No less admirable are the rest of the cast, including Jean Htgen's gun moll, . Marc Law- rence's nervous bookie, and James Whitmore's sullen lookout. A few critics have accused the director of streotyping some of the characters, but the overall l beautiful execution, called by Wellek and Warren "complexity and coherence," redeems any, possible minor faults in that line. After this peak Huston's devel- opment levelled off with an occa- sional slip downhill. His next film, Red Badge of Courage, was per- hapes over-arty and difficult toa follow, with the result that MGM chopped it down to 70 minutes,. and its collapse at the box office saddled Huston with the reputa- tion of bein'g a poor commercial director. By JOHN DIXON HUNT IT TIS A long time since Kenneth Tynan first took his Aunt Edna to the London theatre. The occa- sion was "Separate Tables" by Terrence Rattigan and the fol- lowing Sunday marked Mr. Tynan's debut as dramatic critic in The Observer, his review taking the form of a dialogue between his aunt and himself. Auntie has now become a leg- endary spectre, stalking the stalls of West End theatres on opening nights and the columns of the critics in the next editions. Edna is easily pleased and that does not satisfy Mr. Tynan. After the mad rush, of her congenially dull day she likes to luxuriate in her seventeen-and-sixpenny stall, while over the footlights exces- sively competent or even brilliant actors waste their talents on plays about people just like Aunt Edna. Slightly unusual winds blow in act one, by act two the com- plaisant pond of daily incident has ripples upon it, and after bar sales boom in 'the second inter- mission act three puts all to rights as was to be expected. Plots, however, offer wide va- riety: teen-age girl burglar, play- ed by Anna Massey, is found in bachelor's apartment: American! wife of Scottish laird refuses to3 cooperate over producing an heir after six attempts which only re- sulted in umanted daughters; wife takes over husband's incom- petently managed dried fruit busi- ness and profits soar. trap" rolls into its eighth year and her other, "The Unexpected Guest," is not doing so badly either. This insistent and ubiquitous 'round of conventional farce, com- edy and drama is made palatable by uniquely high standards of act- ing. This can even at times en- tirely disguise the aridity of script and plot. "The Grass is Greener" -a terribly stately home opened to the public and along comes an urbane American and tries to make pff with the countess and would have succeeded hadn't Earls been born with counter-cunning and stiff upper-lips-all that is made bearable and admittedly funny by the performances of Hugh Wil- liams, Celia Johnson and Joan Greenwood; the latter's kittenishly sexy dive, head first, into an arm chair is one of the few delights of the season. Whenever the casts of such plays contain the talent and ex- perience that we associate with actors like Miss Greenwood, Sir Ralph Richardson or Dame Sybil Thorndike then an evening at the theatre assumes some importance and interest. And perhaps, as The Observer said of Kay Hammond's latest show, 'it wouldn't be fair to expect a play as well.' T HERE ARE, however, a few theatres where it is possible to expect both and to these Aunt Edna rarely goes with comfortable enjoyment They are not usually Mob bYDick "Heaven Knows Mr. Allison" is one of the more recent films that John Huston directed. Here Huston broke away fromt the urban underworld settings of his previous films while retaining and even enriching the character- ization of the same small motley group of greedy adventurers (Bo- gart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt, Bruce Bennett, Alfonso Bedoya, Barton Maclane) who operate outside the law. Sierra Madre, although unsuc- cessful financially, took three Os- cars (Huston's direction and adap- tation of B. Traven's novel, and his father Walter's supporting acting). A recurring Huston theme, final ironic failure after the prize is gained, appears again as the prospectors are cheated by fate of their fortune in gold dust. The closing device of the treasure blowing away in the wind later was utilized by Stanley Kubrick in The Killing ('56). The musical score for the film, was another in the line of Max Steiner's fine compositions dating back to The Informer and Gone with the Wind. JOHN HUSTON followed with one of least known works, We Were Strangers ('49). Produced independently,. it had a cast en- tirely different from Warners' old warhorses-John Garfield, Jenni- fer Jones, Pedro Armendariz-and dealt with what should be a very contemporary topic, the Cuban revolution of 1933. In addition, its main theme was the dispute over the moral justification of armed revolution and killing-a very Dostoyevsky- like theme. Since it is too old to be making the rounds of the neighborhood theaters, and too new for television, it remains for some film society to bring back what should be an intriguing mo- tion picture. In 1950 Huston took another W. R. Burnett novel, The Asphalt Jungle, and fashioned it into what Eugene Archer considers his "most distinguished achievement . . an almost perfect example of a minor genre . . . the work of a director at his technical peak and at the height of his-intellectual in- volvement with contemporary so- ciety and the conventions of his modern environment." This marked the climax of Hus- ton's American period and also of the genre of the crime film based on a big theft. The central por- tion of Jungle, after introduction of the members of the gang and HE THEN decided to follow his own precedent of Sierra Mad- re and left the U.S., since which time ('51) he has become an "in- ternational" director, making films; in Africa (African Queen, Roots of Heaven), France ( Moulin Rouge),! Italy (Beat the Devil). even Japan (Barbarian and the Geisha). The last two are considered to be his weakest productions since the war, although some of his international pictures have retained all the pic- torial genius or the story-telling mastery of his earlier period. Unfortunately, however, these have not ordinarily been reunited in the same film-e.g., on the one hand, the loosely plotted but beautiful Moby Dick, or on the other, the excellently directed and acted African Queen. The major defect of Huston's international period has been the loss of contact with the source of his earlier inspiration, American real life. Huston is certainly not alone in this tendency ,to make the BIG expensive spectacle with interna- tional casts and excessive length. Probably the worst case of this kind among veteran U.S. direc- tors is that of the once great King Vidor, who recently inflicted Solo- mon and Sheba on film audierfees. Huston has given up his old re- liable actors and his concentration on t he dramatically satisfying, well-knit plots to make large scale, multimillion dollar foreign epics. Nevertheless he has gained not a little in the transition, including the avoidance of "type-casting" of himself in certain genres. He has had an opportunity to work with widely divergent performer' (e.g., Robert Mitchum, Jose Fer- rer), andhas enjoyed consider- able independence in filming some of his later works. WHAT ABOUT the future? It bears much promise, which can be confirmed only after re- lease of the two pictures on which he is now working: The Unfor- given,. shot in MexicQ again, for Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, with Burt. Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, and Audie Murphy, and The Misfits by Arthur Miller, starring that playwright's wife and Clark Gable. Huston, gained significance in the American cinema during his first decade. Either as screenwrit- er or director (or both), John Hus- ton worked on seven of the moreA important pictures in the black1 genre, including what may be the1 first High Sierra, the most influ- i ential Maltese Falcon, and the cycls e's ulmination Asphalt Jungle. The influence of his probable masterpiece, Jungle is detectable in later films of carefully planned land executed robberies like Das- sin's Rififi, Kubrick's The Killing, and Robert Wise's Odds ,Against Tomorrow. The forthcoming Scv- en Thieves (British) will most Ilikely follow in the same line. The concentrated characteriza - tion in depth of the criminal band, first exhibited in the Falcon, be- came a cardinal trait of the black any good picture should, they re- flect life in all its various shades." the basic elements of life and as genre, and the ambiguous, hard- boiled good badman, the Bogart. typl, has become the inevitable trademark of black films. Later directors took up the series and added something of their own to it such as Dassin's refined violence in Brute Force. OF ALL the directors who fol- lowed Huston in the cycle, Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep) seems closest to Huston's own tongue-in- cheek approach of the Falcon, never taking the characters and involved plot too seriously. For all its negative qualities, the American black film has been a substantial national contribu- tion to world cinema art (so much so that the French have written a full-length book about it). Siodmak states the case simply: "These pictures contain big emo- tions: love, hate, jealousy and more often than not, cold-blood- ed murder. In fact they contain the basic elements of life and as any good picture should. they re- flect life in all its various shades." IMusical Revues Continued from Preceding Page ville production partakes of the qualities of the revue, is evidence that the Amperican public still craves the variety which the revue off ers. THE MIGHTY spectaculars of Florenz Ziegfeld have vanished; Radio City Music Hall is the last surviving outpost of spectacle on the American popular musical stage. Television has absorbed the revue into its format. Television needs the review. And so does the American public. Al- though musical comedy provides the unity and coherence it desires in a musical production, the revue provides the variety, spectacle, and consequent sense of expectation which it finds equally stimulatinig. CHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE John Dixon Hunt, an in- structor in the English de- partment, reports on recent trends in the London theatre. in ~ m Anin the theatre-land of the West UNT EDNA might find a more End, and if you wish to go you serious theme in something need patience, fortitude, and a like "Flowering Cherry," where Sir subway and bus map to get you Ralph Richardson gave a superb there in time for the curtain. performance as the insurance The Theatre Workshop performs agent, one of life's failures who under Joan Littlewood's dynamic{ takes refuge in the dream of the direction at the Theatre Royal, fruit farm he will one day acquire. Stratford, in East London. The Thrillers can always be found for English Stage Company, John Os- Auntie to take her elder nephews borne's Alma Mater, is to be found and nieces to (except Mr. Tynan): at the Royal Court, Sloane Square. Agatha Christie's "The Mouse- The Arts Theatre Club is nearer though it was the Elizabethan type of stage. But we first had a musical adaptation of Fielding's K "Rape, Rape, Rape" ("Lock Up Your Daughters") for which it was impossible to get seats and now "Treasure Island" which, ru- mour has it, is booked up until 1962. BUT BERNARD MILE'S predica- ment is symtomatic. An estab- lished theatre, let alone an en- tirely new venture like the Mer- maid, ihust provide what the majority of theatre-goers, the Aunt Ednas, want, if it is to survive the (Concluded on Page 12) One-Way Pen I ALBERT M r~a Paintings and . Ceramics by Pot, Forsythe ( . 201 NICKELs ARCADE - 'S ______________ _______________________ ORIGINAL JEWELRY by LAKE -RTS/RFTS - IMPORTED New Creativity Quest - JADE -- IVORY - EBONY -ONLY FOR THOSE SEEKING THE UNUSUAL in. We all had high hopes of the Mermaid Theatre, Bernard Miles's! brainchild, away among the cranes and warehouses of Puddle Dock; here at last was a chancer of theatre in the city again, the I first time since Shakespeare, even the natural shoulder suit with m atching. vest for men who require the latest correct Ivy styling. Ovr "Tulane" and "Authen- tic" models area made to fit wide-shoul- dered, narrow-hipped men without ex- tensive altering. Shown in neat herringbones and hapsacking $59.50 to $69.50 STATE STRE.ET AND L IBERTY m (Continued from Page 8) cause of the free social climate. One only can guess if anything will' be left, after today's plays, with which future dramatists will be able to shock their audiences or will there be an audience revolt. Such a revolt occurred when the restoration theatre became too bawdy and didactic plays filled with the sentimental became the fashion. SOPHOCLES' Oedipus with its tasteful handling of incest, suicide, and self mutilation should serve for contemporary play- wrights as the example of how unpleasant things can be pre- sented in an artistically accept- able manner. Sophocle's secret was his unerring use of good taste in the tragedy. Although every dramatist can't reach the Greek tragedian's levell of artistry, he can follow the mas- ter's example of not using sensa- tional elements in and for them- selves, but rather for the sake of story and mood. The future of this trend is spec- ulative. But fair warning should come from remembrance of the Roman destruction of the Greek drama by over-concentration on its sensational aspects. It took cen- turies for drama to recover from what Rome did to it. - CONTEMPORARY JEWELRY LfIHG DGESJIfS 209 S. STATE ST. (Below Marschall's Bookstore) SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1960