Page Twelve
CINEMA: Change
(Continued fromn' Pie 11) an interlacing dance pat
his earlier manner, but1
A Nous la Liberte seems to rise ;is given additional poin
to prophesy in the famous se- $ iorr's exhortin voice
quence in which an audience of V
1~VN s brefan{
magnates, harrangued by a patri- demonstrates that t
otic orator, crazily chases back soundtrack crled a not
and forith after a swirl of wind- dition, lere is little sen
blown money. It is as though turns the macnates' pu
Clair meant to predict the events nostalgic view -- fi
of 1936 to 1940. The director, shooting this scene fro
tern after
the scene
nt by the
over-view
ouch the
table trai-
ise in the
rsuit into
shionable
m above,
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
among some afficionadoes-that
the film can never match its
voiceless achievements. The mar-
velous artists of the silent screen
emerged . in the struggle against
an unnatural barrier; once the
barrier came down, hopeful ex-
pectation almost immediately
outweighed regret.
BOOK REVIEW:
Sinclair Lewis
In Retrospect
Sunday, November 11, 1956
JAPAN: I-
ICosslletfroin Pace7'
bring a stepladder and take
it down myself."
A: "Then, supposin you are ill
and vant a glass of water,
what would you say to your
husband?"
B: "I'd say 'I am terribly sor-
ry to bothor you, but would'
you mind giving me a glass
of water?'
A: "Sounds almost like solicita-
tion! I.'s nice to be coirte-
otis. Does your husbliid a; k
you to ido snom lin for
hin'?
B: "He keeps doin-u I,
A: "What dos he say, thent"
B: "Hey! Give me massage,
will you, I have a stiff neck.
sA: "Myoodness, it's a com-
tand'! Then what does lie
say when lie asks his mother
to do something for hiim'
B: "Veiy rarely he rdos, cnd
with constraint, 'Ihi other
dayh ccaid to his mother.
iWould you please kick that
ash-tvay toward me?' to cv-
eryone s amusement. He is
for
larriage
remiss but seems to hesitate
to bother his own mother.'"
A: "It's good to treat the aged
kindly. However, such a dif-
ference in attitude towrd a
mother and a wife in other
words, his mother is more
important for him than his;
wife!"
B: "Isn't that,namtial A moth-
er is a mother.
A: "I don't understand a Japa-l
nese man s attitude toward
wcomen, especially toward lhis
wife. A husband certainly
looks down upon her. He
talks to her with rude form
of lanuagte, never treats her
in a polite manner"
B 'I don't think a husband is,
particularly rude to his wife.
It's not a matter of being
rude or polite. It's simply al
A: "I am not simply thimkin
about language form. I Ve-
lieve that a Japanese hus-
band diies not know the
beautiful and democratic
See FOUR, Page 15
MUSIC NOW BRINGS i
T ER Through the mi
Long Playing R
---"L Language 4
~FRENCH OR
Also: Italian or German re
K4 " on 33113 RPM High Fidelii
Slashe dfrom
Thanks to the miracle of long-playing records, you can now
learn to speak French, Spanish, Italian or German from native
instructors, quickly, easily, at home in your spare time for only
$9.95! The 40 lessons of the famous "Living Language" Course,
formerly on 20 78 RPM records selling for $29.95, have now been
recorded on just four 33i/3 RPM discs, at a saving to you of $20.001
No Rules or Schools the Quick Living Language Way!
There's no easier, quicker way to learn a foreign language!
Simply turn on a record, relax in your easy chair, and listen to
people conversing in faultless accents! As you listen, look at the
words you hear in the Conversation Manual provided! Soon you
understand key words and phrases. The language grows on you!
After a while you can actually converse with foreigners almost as
if you were one of them ! All this for only $9,95 and just a few
minutes a day! The reason the "Living Language" method is so
fast and effective is that it was developed by the same
man who helped devise the U. S. Army's method of instruec-
tion for teaching soldiers to speak foreign languages in a
hurry-the best ever discovered! So learn French, Spanish,
Italian or Cerman the quick, easy way! Come in to our
record department, phone or mail the coupon below right 4IlJ,-
away!
Here's All You Need to Begin to Speak r STORE N
FRENCH, SPANISH, ITALIAN or GERMAN Fast! AND ADl
Please ser
4 Long-Playing r eords of un- COMPANION VOLUMES-Con - Language
breakable vinylite contain 40 versation Manual and 16,0000- GFrenc
complete lessons ! entry Iitionary iniluded ! Italian
' ' , a J I fIr' ii
} v Address..
cty, Zone, I
P......O.0.
Phone NO 2-2500 or NO 8-7200 Just
sci g r irned ts oex , ine "With Love From Gracie," by could never coic to recognie. tie
sceen tuirned to nl examination cest-beatig "culture peddler"
of life more intense and detailed Grace Hegger Lewis; Harcourt, for what they really were-simply
than had been previously possible. Brace; 355 pp.; $5.75. cheap forms of petty crooks and
Silence restricted the film to the By ROY AKERS tailoring-is never obvious. But
treatment of genecal themes, re- B Aparasites, who were either too lazy
current situations, universal di- , Tth Love From Gracie is ai or too stupid to join a syndicate.
lemmas-- Chaplin's Tramp, Kea- epilogue to what might have Sinclair Lewis in all of his lonely
toi's chd dpu figii-- or forced been a sonderful kind of love and restless life never cams o
diiectors to rec he ily pon 'nloe u ho oit s see the beauty in the sondrous
liles to adsice thticc plots, as in . and glorious and spacious land
Jeanne Ney. soon be nearing her twilight years, that is America. The good life, to
With sound, the film was free but she viewed the eventful begin- him, sas where you found it - in
to deal with the local, the parti- nsing of the ill-fated tryst as ithe Montmarte dive, the Roman
cular. the ideological: Clair's lithe. young girl with golden hair brothel and the Enelish pub
whimsical but desierate prole- who believed that a whispered It is for George F. Babbitt. more
tcions, Pabst's miners concerned cares, -like stardust and a silent than any other one character, that
with international boundaries, 1 troth-is forever. Sinclair Lewis will be remembered,
working conditions and Socialism. And in this her benediction to and rightly so For Lasis not only
And the marvelous continuity of a love found once, and then mis- created George F. sbt.t-he was
films like The Straw flat and placed, Grace Hegger Lewis has the original Babbitt of them all.
Jeanne Ney would no longer be both buried and resurrected the And his tagedy lay in the simple
disrupted by written titles. na iwhose heart she won and lost. fact that he could never face hiin-
Her one-time husband has b en self in the mirror.
The iherent necessity of sound too long deadd. His Cooks are period
wis revealed in the use of live iceis gatherin dust on the Jr HEmale char,ater, in the Lewis
musical background throughout library shelves. And the words books are, for the most part,
the whole of the silent era. Pres- he coined - Babbitt, Arrowsmith, crude, inentitive louts. The wom-
ent-day audiences forced by lack and Dodsworth are now outmoded en they marry, or with whom they
of proper resources to watch the phrases from the yesteryears. are enamoured, are the sleek,
silent masterpieces as accompa Harry Sinclair Lewis might be smcooth products of finishing
nied only by a projector's whirr' termed the official spokesman ior schools. With Love From Gracie
keenly experience the fact that the rip-roaring nights of the is, in a sense, merely a retelling of
movementthrough time - unlike Twenties, just as Tomn iWolfe was a Lewis novel.
the arrested motion of painters biographer and prose-prayer sayer Grace Heg.5er Lewis tells tier
and sculptors - demands sound c for the doubtcridden years of the story with s ntitivity and com-
Our eagerness to see the work of Thirties. But the Quixotic resem- passion. But here again we have
the silent artists under such con- blance between these two most an ugly, gawky provincial marry-
ditions cc our ultimate tribute controversial of American Novelists' ing a gracious, refined erl above
to them, does not end here-it merely be- his social bracket. Lewis might
The sound-track imposed a new gins. have understood Gracie ,r 'f first
discipline and new opportunities. he had only understood himself,
'ihat the work of those who first I NLOOKING back from 'he rainy His wife to him was like his son:
understood the challenge is stli side of the Nineteen Fifties it is they were nice to have around,
unsurp:assed is a mueasure, not not easy to conjure up the atmos- but he didn't know what to do
only of their genius, but of the Ihe in which such men as Sin- with a faily.
vast possibilities which lie before i Sinclair Lewis was not only close
!us osiiltrCsuci c eo lir ewL-s'iand Thomas- Wolfe
the youngest and most profound- mixed their clay and asf ttheir his chaacters; he was part of
ly popular of the arts. models. We live in a different and them, and in the telling of their
--- - .. - a ister hose. Amtdst te soat-hik mutual story his books have spun
ebraying of Elvis Presley, the piano a magic history of the prohibition
plinking of Liberace, and the and flapper era Certain passages
"truth squad" rantings of Richard In his novels touch so very deeply
o Nixn (o allpeope) i is ome-uon the problem that i uniquely
times hard to hear either cur Americas. The story of men iwho,
minds or our hearts spam in the rat racr for a bigger car
racle of through the coinfuson of the noise and a finer home, are too weary to
We are, added to this, stupified think and much too tired to love.
ecords on the one hand by too much Sinclair Lewis was biting; his
plenty and horrified, on the other, satire was cutting but, whatever
by the potential threat of the else may be said for or against
C o u rseatom bomb. Eerything-un to him, he kept fth with 'at he
C o U rse and icudinugele chronice on our believed to e the truth,
cars-has become sacred; every- This book, by his first wife, will,
Athing, that is, ecept God and the no doubt, cause a resurgence of his
right to think and speak in our works among current readers.
H wn way. Many of them will discover his
own way.finely-hi eled talent for the first
.ady March 15th And that, in essence, is what tinel-thesllenlyfsrethe
time, Others will only oee the
Grace Begger Lewis has so won-symbolismithere,and start reac.-
ty Recordings derfully resurrected-a man who sny their neigibors as the Bab-
both could and would speak and bitts. ' And' those who do will
9 5 95 the era in which, and for which. fall into the same mistaen line
he spoke. The tormented Sinclair of thought that has nearly ob-
Lewis was not something alien to scured one of America's finest
or apart from his world. And if writers. People are not alike; they
See These Remarkable Ad- the twenties were a time in which are different, and in all this world
vantages at Learning the a man emptied a fifth of bootleg there could probably not be a pair
'vngag eay.h whiskey with the aid of two jigger of more totally different en '
"Living Language" Way. glasses and then sat looking at hans two George F. Babbitt.
" learn At Hornet i iealnkdsu irrelta w ereF abt
No classes Just turn on ree.hos miserab.nakdsotminrored
or, re:, listen! It's easy, brilliantly in the clean, clear space 'HE craft of writimg is a lonely
t sfn, it's fast! between the empty glasses-well-
" Set YourOwn Hnimrml-- ete o(a-lokd thimng; somethimg that is neither
Most ie pe di n maybe it s easy to learn nor to live with. This
tes adaybutyoudecidehow and seen even this, than never
much time to spend yourself I to have looked at all. Silair Le'is learned in his own
" ChooseYourOwnClssmotest wretched way. And in reading the
Learn by yourself -or with But Lewis's own particular prob-~story of his first marriage we have
figoen oiy. No Iate enas were not omly rere relic-str
ho Cfe o r -ise aos sycome to meet the man who was
is the ame--only $9.951 tions of his time. The yokel from hidden behind the books. In a
" Your Teachers v uPatideec Sauk Center liad, as domany sense, too, we have met the woman
gotagy awrd,poe provincials, an nwho lived with him while his g::eat
entire lesson as ofiten as you for the elusive label that so often books were beinwrittenBut
wishi defies definition - te som ooktscer hem -v n- Bu
sh somethingafter leaving Gracie, Sinclair Lewis
or other called "Culture. 'This, never produced another book to
ome in, Phone, or Mall Coupon Today too, was the same affliction that compare either with his talent or
Thomas Wolfe, another provincial his fame,
AME from Asheville North Carolina, The carrot-topped man from
DRESS was to learn to suffer in common Sauk Center won many honors in
na me at once the cooplete iing with Mr. Lewis. life but, while making a fortune
e coarse for at writing and being awarded the
h p Spanish AN EEw idbt h oe
nM iart ) On)erman M iarl AND hERE ee fied bus the Nobel prize, he never found the
similarity and variance that elusive thing Caled happiness. He
ch uor dee ide $.ei I was at play in the writing person- seemed to have overlooked it in his
I alities of two unique, American own back yard.
-....-_.... I...talents. Lewis and Wolfe were With Love From Gracie is indeed
I both grossly enamoured with all told with love. It's not what she
-._.C.. ....._- things "foreign"-only the foreign says exactly but the way she says
language, the foreign painting, and it, that makes one wonder whether
s-a_---.-...._.--.-- the foreign writing were "cl- Sinclair Lewis didn't pass up the
itred." All things less were too greatest honor of all much too
too American and provincial. e;rlyin life. For back in them
Tom Wolfe, unlike Iewis, finally there rip-roaring days of the
300y found his bearings. Wolfe came to Twenties, Gracie Hegger Lewis
realize that culture - like good must have been a pretty special
West of Hill Auditorium manners, kindness and perfect sort of blonde with whom to have
Sinclair Lewis to his dying day been in love.