3658943594

More documents

Recommendations

Info

An uncanny play possibly owing something to Outward Bound. Six travellers find themselves stranded by chance at a country inn which in fact does not exist, and a murder which happened there exactly a year earlier is re-enacted in front of them. As a result the various personal problems which brought them there are solved. The dialogue is convincing and the mysterious atmosphere is well worked up, but the play's weakness is that the problems of the six main personages are of such a nature that it is impossible to take them seriously. The clergyman has lost his faith because his brother died of pneumonia, the young society beauty finds her life hollow, etc., etc. Although cast in 1940, the play makes no reference to the war, direct or indirect; bourgeois peacetime life, with all interest centring round financial success, motor-cars, divorce, etc., is apparently looked upon as something eternal. Miss Louise Hampton gave a very fine performance as Joanna Spring, successful journalist and editor of the Women's Page ("Write to Auntie Madge about it"), and the acting as a whole was worthy of better material.
Film Review Time and Tide, December 21, 1940 The Great Dictator; Prince of Wales, Gaumont Haymarket, Marble Arch Pavilion France, 1918, Charlie Chaplin, in field grey and German steel helmet, is pulling the string of Big Bertha, falling down every time she fires. A little later, losing his way in the smoke screen, he finds himself attacking in the middle of the American infantry. Later he is in flight with a wounded staff officer, in an aeroplane which flies upside down for such lengths of time that Charlie is puzzled to know why his watch persists in standing up on the end of its chain. Finally, falling out of the aeroplane into a mud-hole, he loses his memory and is shut up in a mental home for twenty years, completely ignorant of what is happening in the world outside. At this point the film really begins. Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania, who happens to be Charlie's double (Chaplin plays both parts) is directing an extra-special purge against the Jews at the moment when Charlie, his mind restored, escapes from the asylum and goes back to his little barber's shop in the Ghetto. There are some glorious scenes of fights against Storm Troopers which are not less, perhaps actually more moving because the tragedy of wrecked Jewish households is mixed up with the kind of humour that depends on mishaps with pails of whitewash and blows on the head with a frying-pan. But the best farcical interludes are those that take place in the Dictator's palace, especially in his scenes with his hated rival, Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria. (Jack Oakie, in this part, has an even closer physical resemblance to Mussolini than Chaplin has to Hitler.) There is a lovely moment at the supper table when Hynkel is so intent on outwitting Napaloni that he does not notice that he is ladling mustard on to his strawberries by mistake for cream. The invasion of Osterlich (Austria) is about to take place, and Charlie, who has been incarcerated for resisting the Storm Troopers, escapes from the concentration camp in a stolen uniform just at the moment when Hynkel is due to cross the frontier. He is mistaken for the Dictator and carried into the capital of the conquered country amid cheering crowds. The little Jewish barber finds himself raised upon an enormous rostrum, with serried ranks of Nazi dignitaries behind him and thousands of troops below, all waiting to hear his triumphal speech. And here occurs the big moment of the film. Instead of making the speech that is expected of him, Charlie makes a powerful fighting speech in favour of democracy, tolerance, and common decency. It is really a tremendous speech, a sort of version of Lincoln's Gettysburg address done into Hollywood English, one of the strongest pieces of propaganda I have heard for a long time. It is, of course, understating the matter to say that it is out of tune with the rest of the film. It has no connection with it whatever, except the sort of connection that exists in a dream—the kind of dream, for instance, in which you are Emperor of China at one moment and a dormouse the next. So completely is the thread broken that after that the story can go no further, and the film simply fades out, leaving it uncertain whether the speech takes effect or whether the Nazis on the platform detect the impostor and shoot him dead on the spot.
Page 2 and 3:
All Art Is Propaganda George Orwell
Page 4 and 5:
Text set in Garamond MT Designed by
Page 6 and 7:
Writers and Leviathan • 337 Revie
Page 8 and 9:
overstatement and attack; his talen
Page 10 and 11:
specialization in writing, too litt
Page 12 and 13:
He is wrong in these essays about E
Page 14 and 15:
"Writers and Leviathan." There is e
Page 16 and 17:
eady phrases, you purge your langua
Page 18 and 19:
actually makes it more difficult to
Page 20 and 21:
English public has always been a li
Page 22 and 23:
has very little direct power. Unlik
Page 24 and 25:
Dickens sees clearly enough that th
Page 26 and 27:
comparatively sanely treated, no no
Page 28 and 29:
curriculum, a little watered down.
Page 30 and 31:
puritan tradition, which is not dea
Page 32 and 33:
culture. But never anywhere does he
Page 34 and 35:
childhood ... But I held some stati
Page 36 and 37:
this red-headed animal's, remained
Page 38 and 39:
a novelist, like Dickens himself. W
Page 40 and 41:
memory; but, as usual, Dickens has
Page 42 and 43: fond sister, the same in the love o
Page 44 and 45: child, who wasn't hungry, was playi
Page 46 and 47: hard to hold that young man off of
Page 48 and 49: Tolstoy is not. Tolstoy's character
Page 50 and 51: Dickens's photographs, though it re
Page 52 and 53: eading one or more of them. The Gem
Page 54 and 55: of characters in Dickens. Needless
Page 56 and 57: the British Empire, by Australians,
Page 58 and 59: That's soon enough for me Gonna get
Page 60 and 61: for the Modern Boy none of them is
Page 62 and 63: is led to identify with a G-man, wi
Page 64 and 65: 23 period and not of recent controv
Page 66 and 67: English boys, including many who wi
Page 68 and 69: Inside the Whale Inside the Whale,
Page 70 and 71: ecognisable experiences of human be
Page 72 and 73: In mid-nineteenth-century America m
Page 74 and 75: 2 When one says that a writer is fa
Page 76 and 77: women as something unattainable. Wh
Page 78 and 79: that there are no waves of generosi
Page 80 and 81: information or statement. The first
Page 82 and 83: activity was libelling the Labour P
Page 84 and 85: personal immunity. The attitude was
Page 86 and 87: implicit throughout his work. Every
Page 88 and 89: Catholic-feudal one. But it is cert
Page 90 and 91: actually burbling about a renaissan
Page 94 and 95: How good a film is this, simply as
Page 96 and 97: sensible men have no power and, in
Page 98 and 99: schoolmasters sniggering over their
Page 100 and 101: the faces grinning and vacuous, the
Page 102 and 103: days, in out-of-date-looking evenin
Page 104 and 105: proved. Now, it is doubtful whether
Page 106 and 107: No, Not One Review of No Such Liber
Page 108 and 109: quite a lot who wins, and the usual
Page 110 and 111: Rudyard Kipling 1 Horizon, February
Page 112 and 113: ealising that the "box-wallah" call
Page 114 and 115: facetiousness of his stage Cockney
Page 116 and 117: "East is East, and West is West. Th
Page 118 and 119: come back into your mind and seem b
Page 120 and 121: He knew that thought clings round d
Page 122 and 123: One is no longer disposed to say it
Page 124 and 125: Can Socialists Be Happy? 1 Tribune,
Page 126 and 127: Holy, holy, holy, all the saints ad
Page 128 and 129: thinks that happiness consists in n
Page 130 and 131: A year earlier than this Dali had "
Page 132 and 133: at his paintings. And these two set
Page 134 and 135: in. Take away the skulls, ants, lob
Page 136 and 137: Propaganda and Demotic Speech Persu
Page 138 and 139: language is like. But this is nothi
Page 140 and 141: espond to. At present propaganda on
Page 142 and 143:
sudden dramatic changes of fortune,
Page 144 and 145:
Several other points need noticing
Page 146 and 147:
till recently there has always been
Page 148 and 149:
to give me the feeling of having lo
Page 150 and 151:
Most of these have been prolific wr
Page 152 and 153:
The Prevention of Literature Polemi
Page 154 and 155:
"romanticism" and so forth, are mer
Page 156 and 157:
concerned, there is not much differ
Page 158 and 159:
value. Prose is a different matter,
Page 160 and 161:
Meanwhile, if he wants to safeguard
Page 162 and 163:
"(3) On the one side we have the fr
Page 164 and 165:
mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltu
Page 166 and 167:
this essay. Professor Laski (1) use
Page 168 and 169:
conditions, and that we cannot infl
Page 170 and 171:
Confessions of a Book Reviewer Trib
Page 172 and 173:
The best practice, it has always se
Page 174 and 175:
one would deny that Gulliver's Trav
Page 176 and 177:
The Houyhnhnms, Swift's ideal being
Page 178 and 179:
that the impulse to make constructi
Page 180 and 181:
dissident opinions be tolerated? Th
Page 182 and 183:
what? In order that the same proces
Page 184 and 185:
like Swift to say: "If horror and p
Page 186 and 187:
Tolstoy's final verdict on Lear is
Page 188 and 189:
feel that Tolstoy's criticisms are
Page 190 and 191:
know, perhaps, just what he misses
Page 192 and 193:
Of course, one cannot assume that T
Page 194 and 195:
poetry for its texture—valuing it
Page 196 and 197:
Writers and Leviathan Politics and
Page 198 and 199:
"the enemy is in your own country"
Page 200 and 201:
sane. Even a general election is no
Page 202 and 203:
movement—is not mentioned at all.
Page 204 and 205:
Reflections on Gandhi Partisan Revi
Page 206 and 207:
objects is an illusion to be escape
Page 208 and 209:
or less approachable and will respo
Page 210 and 211:
dramatist (1803-185 7). Boys' Weekl
Page 212 and 213:
1939 (as Delta from April 1938). On
Page 214 and 215:
36. Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), p
Page 216 and 217:
proper reading is in the notes. The
Page 218 and 219:
Tom's Cabin (1852), which brought h
Page 220 and 221:
2. Stuart Chase (1888-1985), econom
Page 222 and 223:
*** *Dali mentions L'Age d'Or and a
Page 224 and 225:
*** *The physical decadence which S
show all

3658943594

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?