Salient: Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Vol. 24, No. 9. 1961

Film Society

Film Society

Life, Love, Laughter and Music

The Film Society has become so much a part of university existence that it feels that it should increase the number of screenings it holds to try and cover as wide a field as possible. The programmers for the rest of June could hardly demonstrate this better.

Louisiana Story

Years ago, Robert Flaherty said "I try to make my films a revelation of a country, and of the people who live in it . . . There Is kernel of greatness in all peoples ... it is up to the film maker to find the one incident, or even the one moment, that makes it clear."

Bound by that stern poetic creed, Louisiana Story traces a symbolic story. Its director turns from the India of Elephant Boy, the Pacific of Moana, the Arctic of Nanook of The North to describe the events when the wallowing amphibious machines of an oil company invade the idyllic peace of a Louisiana bayou. Flaherty juxtaposes a tense chase? sequence—alligator versus coon in the swamp water—and the tumultuous pursuit of oil by the monster, man-made drilling derricks which can plunge pipes 14,000 feet into the earth. Throughout this blending of themes, the bonds of humanity between oil riggers and a Cajun bov illumine the recurrent thesis of Flaherty's works: "Mankind is one community."

The music by Virgil Thomson is superb—it utilises some of the local idiom and is along with The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Goddess, one of the composer's best scores. (Louisiana Story will be screened on June 20).

Council of the Gods ("Gotterrat")

This film has never been screened commercially in this country. It is an indictment by German laissez-faire attitudes in the years preceding the second World War, during the resurgence of militarism and the Nazi rise to power.

Opening in the industrial Rhine-land of 1933, it tells the story of a chemist who is too wrapped up in his work to notice what is happening in the Fatherland. In particular, he fails to notice that the board of directors of the factory where he is employed, is helping to back Hitler.

During the war, the chemist's research and work is put to terrible use and he only then realises that he is partly responsible for the Nazis' crimes. After the war he finds himself and his friends suffering hardships—his previous employers are making an excellent recovery.

Some people may find parts of this film distasteful.

(Council of The Gods will be screened on June 21).

Le Million

Rene Clair's comedy, with music, is a mild satire on the foibles of mankind, especially those people who live on expectations of big wins in raffles and lotteries. Coming between Sous Les Toits De Paris and A Nous La Liberte, it describes the pursuit of a lost prize-winning ticket, by the hero, Rene Lefebre, assisted by his fiancee Annabella, assisted by Louis Allibert and Vanda Greville.

In his "Picture History of The Cinema," Ernest Lindgren says "Although made so early in the sound period, this delightful comedy, in which the musical use of sound was completely integrated with the action, has never been surpassed."

At times, the comedy verges on surrealism, such as the balletic treatment of a football-type scrimmage in the middle of a theatre stage, or the bewildering sequence in the police station, with seminudity a major item.

(Le Million will be screened on June 27).

The Young Chopin

This film was directed by Alek-sander Ford, probably better known for Five Boys From Barska Street, a study in juvenile delinquency. The music, played on the piano by Halina Stefanska, includes liberal helpings of Mozart and Bach as well as Chopin's contemporaries.

The reviewer in the London 'Times" said of this picture "(It has) real feeling ana reverence for music ... its passion for the arts is more than celluloid deep."

Although the film sets the great composer against the background of history, not for a moment do we lose sight of Chopin as a man. We see him in school, among his friends, in his family circle, in contact both with the leading musical personalities of the dad and with the simple people of town and country, and, finally, in the throws of his first love affair.

(The Young Chopin will be screened on June 28).