"The Male Animal"

"Salient" takes great pleasure in reprinting extracts from a review of "The Male Animal" in "Farrago," the paper of Melbourne University. "The Male Animal," the script of which was written by the American humourist James Thurber, is one of the most progressive films ever to come out of Hollywood.

"An American professor of literature announces to his class that, next week, he is going to read them some letters: one of Lincoln's, one of General Sherman's, and one of Bartolomeo Vanzetti's. The editor of the college magazine, who is concerned at the dismissal of liberal-minded professors under the guise of a 'purge of the Reds,' congratulates the professor on his courage in an editorial; in it, he also says that these dismissals are only one expression of the American version of Fascism. The professor and the editor are both threatened with dismissal—but survive the threat after a student demonstration supporting them.

"Here is a graphic illustration of English economist J. A. Hobson's thesis:—

A college so unfortunate as to harbour teachers who, in handling vital issues of politics or economics, teach truths deeply and obviously antagonistic to the interests of the classes from whom financial aid was sought would be committing suicide. Higher education… everywhere… has remained parasitic on the private munificence of wealthy persons… It is the hand of the prospective, the potential donor that fetters intellectual freedom in our colleges.

"And lest you should think that it can't happen here,' consider the opposition of the Melbourne University authorities to the formation of the Labour Club (in 1925); the outcry against Professor John Anderson of Sydney, for daring to criticise religious education: the heresy hunt against the inclusion of the 'Socialist Sixth of the World' and the 'Communist Manifesto,' among the great numbers of other books in a N.S.W. Social Studies Syllabus.

"Despite the frankness with which this film treats its subject, it has certain Hollywood-conditioned weaknesses. Firstly, why are all the lefts (film version) so vague? Could this be deliberate, we wonder? There are some sophisticated lefts—even among students. And the young student editor was correct in his analysis of the attacks on academic freedom as Fascist in their nature.

"Secondly, why the obviously false ending? A spontaneous demonstration of students, at first hostile to this 'red' professor, but emotionally won over by the rendition of the letter—is this all that could (or would) have happened? We feel that, at least for this University, there would have been a great possibility of an organised student protest against such an invasion against academic freedom.

"Finally a word as to what the row was all about—the last speech to the court of Bartolomeo Vanzetti. (In the film it was referred to as a letter.) Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian anarchists who were framed in the USA on a murder charge. After seven years in prison—years of trial and appeal—and of world-wide protests, and even of attacks on American embassies in other countries—they were judiciously murdered by electrocution in 1927.

"American playwright Maxwell Anderson subsequently based his play 'Winterset' on their case.

Vanzetti's last moving speech:—

"If it had not been for these thing I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. 1 might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and Our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words, our lives, our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives, lives of a good shoemaker and a poorish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our [unclear: triumh.]"

—Stalingrad Story

On the high western bank of the Volga stood the city of Stalingrad, besieged by the German armies whose advance had ground to a halt against its battered outskirts. Behind it to the east lay the heart of Russia, beyond the broad river which every Russian soldier knew the fascist invader must never cross. This is the story of those men who held the city and fought back the constant German attacks with a courage and faith as unyielding as the frozen earth on which they fell.

Captain Saburov and his company occupy forward positions in the cellars of three buildings almost within grenade range of the enemy. Their life is one of almost continuous action, the terrible routine of the front line infantryman in a contested area. In spite of heavy losses, their aggressiveness and determination that the Nazis shall not pass never falters, for they know that the future of their country is in their hands. All of them dream of their past life with its hopes and desires unfulfilled or buried deep within the Russian ground; all of them look beyond the present inferno of death to the future, to the rebuilding of their country.

Here Simonov, who was himself at Stalingrad, shows us the Russian people fighting with the conviction that this was the testing time, that now they must defend their state to the death, the state which was the supreme achievement of their united toil. The strength to do this, the power which kept overwhelming odds at bay flowed in their blood, was part of' their lives, stemmed from the knowledge that they were the vanguard in man's progress to freedom, and that what they had gained must be preserved. The implications are profoundly political.

The book is notable for its extremely vivid narrative quality, which steadily builds up tension within the besieged city until the defenders' hopes, maintained through the long months of battle, are at last fulfilled, and the great Russian offensive which was the beginning of the end commenced to the north and south of Stalingrad. Saburov is roused in the early morning, and hears far away the rumbling of an artillery barrage of unprecedented magnitude and power. The news is confirmed by his General, and the incomparable joy of the offensive seizes all his men as they listen to the unceasing gunfire of the two Russian armies, advancing to meet and cut off the Germans far to the west in the steppes of the Don.

—"Days and Nights" by Siminov.

—Fantasia

The letter O is associated with the sound of the trumpet, the thought or silent spaces, and the colour blue. In "Voyelles" the French poet attempted to solve a great problem of art—the union of sight, sound, idea and emotion. I have learnt most about this problem from the book "Film Sense" by Sergei Eisensteln (available at the public library), and armed with Eisenstein's opinions on the "synchronisation of the senses" I went again to see "Fantasia" to study what this film has to contribute to the solution of the problem.

At Oxford University, in 1885, a test of sound-colour association was undertaken by 500 students, and tills test unanimously decided an equivalence between brown and the note of the trombone, and between green and the note of the hunting horn. In Disney's colour interpretation of the "Toccata and Fugue," I noted the following satisfying associations: the brass section—orange-reds; the harps—blue; violins—silver and gold flashes; clarinets—yellow and blue discs; tubas and cellos—rich reds; and percussion instruments—white. In the movement, crescendos were rendered in blazing red and diminuendos, in darkening violet, which, incidentally, tallies with Binet's investigations on the emotional effect of colours. He found that red was strongly exciting, and violet enervating and inhibitive. Eisensteln also quotes Gaugin, who wrote about his famous painting "The Spirit of the Dead Watching:" "I must have a slightly terrifying background. Violet is obviously necessary."

"Toccata and Fugue" might produce ideas about absolute sound-colour equivalents, but Disney's interpretation of the "Nut-cracker Suite" using the seasons and their special tints, the autumn browns, winter whites and blues, and soon suggest that the processes of nature mould our idea-sound-colour associations. And in the interpretation of Beethoven's "Pastoral." Apollo the sun is gold and Morpheus violet-purple.

And yet there is a cultural tradition of symbolic colour meaning. Eisenstein quotes: "In heraldry, gold is the emblem of love, of constancy, and of wisdom, and, by opposition, yellow still denotes in our time inconstancy, jealousy, adultery." Primary colours seem to be associated with sets of ideas even where these Ideas are antithetic. In Disney's cartoon for the "Sorcerer's Apprentice," the broomstick, in yellow, is at first a symbol of power and freedom, and then the yellow becoming terrible. Red is the traditional [unclear: relpnutionary] colour of strength and courage: has Disney's story to "A Night on the Bare "Mountain," evil is voluptuous women, ugly animals, and skeletons, depicted in primary reds and yellows. Then, in the interpretation of "Ave Maria," the orange lights are the symbols of piety. Similar negative and positive ideas are historically associated with the colour green.

It is clear that there is no absolute law of correspondence between sound, sight and Idea, but, pertinently chosen, colour and sound have an intense heightening effect in the artistic expression of an idea. "Fantasia" indicates that the film can solve the problem of the union of the senses in a direct manner.

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—Batu Khan by V. Yan

This Russian novel, translated by Lionel Erskine Britton, is the second part of the author's trilogy devoted to the conquest of North-eastern Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries by Batu Kahn, grandson of the great Genghlz Kahn.

In the novel the author describes vividly and with great power the tragedy of the Russian people, helpless before the disunity of their princes, and dying manfully in battle against a numerous and highly organised enemy, but able even in disaster to preserve that living force which in the end must bring them victory. Very seldom does Mr. Yan resort to the right of a novelist to some measure of historical fiction to attain artistic ends, but nevertheless with the aid of historical records and chronicles of the limes he manages to mould his characters in relief against their historical background.

An interesting feature of the work is the account of the comparatively high degree of organisation of the Tartar Army, divided into tens, hundreds and thousands, and assured a regular military structure whose strict discipline distinguished it sharply from the Feudal Levies of Western Europe and Russia. Their military technique is also of historical interest, as they made use of the technology of lite subject peoples of Asia, especially China.

The point of greatest interest is the interpretation of the historical role of the Tartar hordes. Ralph Fox, in his work "Genghis Kahn." adheres to the view that the Tartar invaders were a civilising force, bringing great cultural advancement to the subject peoples, Yan, on the Other hand, draws his material from the contemporary chronicles such as Bishop Serapron of Vladimir, who tells of unbelievable devastation, massacre and torture, of productive lands lain waste, great areas depopulated, and monuments of culture destroyed. In the words of Bakhmskin "So darkness fell for an age upon our history" which Karl Marx has called "a bloody slime beneath the Mongol yoke."

However, interpretation apart, the novel as such has great merit and can he recommended as a fascinating story of one momentous heat in the pulse of history.

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All books reviewed in this issue of "Salient" were lent by the courtesy of Modern Books. Wellington.