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A Toast to Burns
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January 25, 1964,
will mark the 205th
anniversary of the
birth of Robbie Burns
—Scotland’s deathless
bard. In Vancouver,
celebrations of this
historic occasion will
centre around a Burns
Night Supper Concert,
which wi Tbe held Sat-
urday, January 25, at
the Lochdale Commun
ity Hall, Sperling and
Hastings, in Burnaby.

Below is a tribute to Burns written by prominent Port Alberni
labor leader George McKnight. He presented it to St. Andrew's United
Church in the Island centre at a similar occasion last year.

*

In January’s chilly weather,
Each year old friends and new foregather,
To celebrate once more together
Their poet’s birth;
And learn to understand the better
His wondrous worth.

Though we are far from Scotland’s shore,
Two hundred years have gone and more,
Distance and time melt ’way before
His genius’ power;
One feels he might step through the door
This very hour.

We marvel at the timely way

His poems and songs fit in today—

Man is to man a friend, they say
If we but know it;

If world around ‘‘good friend,’’ we’d say
And clearly show it.

Intolerant of all pretense,

The common man in his defence

Burns wrote his best, and common sense
Tells us it’s true;

The key to understand from whence
His fame is due.

His mare, his ewe, his plough, his mouse,
His we’ans rantin’ through the house,
His dogs, his kye, and e’en his louse,
A few to name;
The flowers, the wounded hare, the grouse—
All share his fame.

He honors all of Womankind,
With special mention, brings to mind
Their beauty, dignity, and binds
All men to see;
For their protection all men find
Responsibility.

Of all the women in his life

His greatest love was Jean—his wife.

A love that through all trial and strife
No power could bend;

Till sickness felled him like a knifé—
A tragic end.

He sings to praise his native land,
Old Scotia’s grandeur springs unplanned
From virtues of the common man,
His native soil;
From simple ways all good began
And honest toil.

Canadians all, we’ve much to learn

From understanding’ Robert Burns,

If from such nights as this we turn
His words to deeds;

Canada needs such thoughts to burn
Within our heads.

He saw a Golden Age revive,

In harmony we all could live

If in our day we all would give
Some work and thought;

War need not come, we can believe
As all men ought.

So now, when on our feet we stand

And raise our glass in our right hand,

We're joined by men in every land
The world can boast:

Immortal memory of mortal man—
To Burns this toast:

To Burns, his memory live forever;

To Burns, who brings us all together;

To Burns, who cheers us on whatever
The trouble be:

We toast his name, his fame, his ever
Immortal Memory!

I
“OU

Sagan’s ‘Bluebeard’ differs
from Chaplin’s 'Verdoux’

BLUEBEARD(LANDRU). An
Embassy Films release of a Carlo
Ponti production. Screenplay and
dialogue by Francoise Sagan. Di
rected by Claude Chabrol.

omparison is inevitable be-

tween this new version of
the ‘Bluebeard’ Landru story and
the one Charles Chaplin made
in 1947 and called ‘*Monsieur
Verdoux.”’

Both are treated in a comedic
vein and Chaplin even called his
film ‘‘a comedy of murders’’
—if you can accept such a for-
mulation, He intended it as a
shocker and it was a shocker,

Francoise Sagan, the former
enfant terrible of French letters,
who gave us highly ‘‘so-
phisticated’’ stories before she
was 21 years old(‘‘Bonjour Tris-
tesse,’’ ‘A Certain Smile,”’ etc.)
has provided a comic touch also,
but she has attempted a far
more serious exploration into the
character of the French ‘‘Blue-
beard’’ himself,

* RRs

Landru was asometimes pros-
perous furniture dealer in Paris
during World WarI who aug-
mented his family fortunes by the
relatively simple process of
courting — and murdering — a
series of 11 lonely, wealthy and
sometimes pathetic women.

Although he. pleaded his in-
nocence to the moment he died
under the blade of the guillotine,
the evidence against Landru, al-
though circumstantial, was

nevertheless overwhelming, and,

while he was obviously apsycho-
path he was also—like many psy-
chopaths—a man of considerable
charm and ingenuity.

* * *

How do you make murder fun-
ny? Only by placing it within a
frame of reference that is critical
of the nature of the society in
which the murder is committed.

No one could possibly make
a ‘*funny’’ picture about the
hideous assassination of Presi-
dent John F. Kennedy, but a
man like Landru can be a comic
figure if the milieu in which he
operates is examined carefully
and projected from a point of
view that makes hay of its par-
ticular mores.

Sagan’s Landru is a dapper
little man—small in stature, bald,
but with a relatively enormous
‘beard. He is obviously-a Beau
Brummel, proud of his attrac-
tion for women and determined to
exploit it for his own purposes.

The superb actor who portrays

him—Charles Denner—has even
given him a slight touch of ef-
feminacy, a quality that must
always be present in the Don
Juan, even if he does not carry
his hatred of women to the point
of killing them.

The humor in this particular
version of ‘‘Bluebeard’”* stems
also from the very nature of
French society of the time, the
easy acceptance of the philan-
dering husband, the institution
of the mistress and the absurd-
ities of the legal code itself,

Miss Sagan has great sport with
all these aspects of the World
War I scene and though she
makes a serious effort to pene-
trate the character of Landru,
such a man will remainaperma-
nent mystery to those of us who
pride ourselves on being normal,

For it is patent that his self-
righteous (if calm) insistence
on his innocence and purity of
soul is the stigma of a man
who actually feels nothing.

~ * *

Chaplin his out at a larger
target. His Verdoux was fully
as charming as Miss Sagan's,
his story—based on the actual
celebrated case—was fully as
accuraté, but he created a delib-
erate shocker and it was so
shocking that it was killed by
the critics and rapidly withdrawn
from the theatres at considerable
financial loss, Why?

Because Chaplin correctly
equated individual murder (Lan-
dru’s crime) with mass-murder
(World War I) and said out loud

that capitalist society was re-
sponsible, both for murder for
individual profit and world war
for the profit of the war-makers,

In the dock, Chaplin’s ‘*Ver-
doux’’ put his finger on the cen-
tral issue and—departing from
the true story of Landru—said
in effect, ‘*What is the difference
between me and the men who have
slaughtered millions for their
personal aggrandizement?”

This was a point that neither
the newspaper critics nor our
middle-class society could ac-
cept and they made Charlie pay
for it. And it was five years
before he made another film
(‘Limelight’’), in which he ex-
pressed his personal disillusion-
ment with the nature of the audi-
ence that created heroes (and
**stars’’) and just as blithely
destroys them,

* HSE Ok

In addition to Denner’s fine
performance, director Claude
Chabrol and his cameramen, set-
dressers and designers have re-
created Paris in 1917 precisely
as it must have existed, These
scenes, in color, are nicely set
off by actual newsreels of French
**poilus’’ in action at the front,
and the great ‘‘victory’’ parade
through the Arc de Triomphe that
‘tended’? World War I,

Denner’s monomaniac pursuit
of female victims is ably as-
sisted by a number of fine per-
formances including those of
Michele Morgan (as lovely inher
late forties as she was as a
young woman), Danielle Darrieux
and Hildegarde Neff (a German
widow who is saved by the Arm-
istice).

The courtroom scenes with
presiding judge Robert Bruinier
and defense attorney Claude Man-
sard have the bite of true irony,
especially when his lawyer begs
Landru—at the moment of his
execution—to say whether or not
he killed these women,

nat = says “the - “ Blue-
beard,’ “*I cannot tell you. It’s
my little secret.”

It may not please her at all,
but the screenplay of ‘‘Blue-
beard’’ is probably the most
consequential piece of work Mlle.
Sagan has done so far. It is
serious, it shows considerable
understanding of people, a fine
wit and promise of better work,

—David Ordway
(People’s World)

Big Soviet space effort

oviet sputniks and high-alti-
tude rockets will be used dur-
ing the 1964-65 International Year
of the Quiet Sun on an even bigger
scale than during the Interna-
tional Geophysical Year 1957-58,

Plans for the Soviet contribu-
tion, which will be conducted from
600 observatories and stations,
were announced in Moscow re-
cently by Prof. Nikolai Pushkov,
Soviet vice-president of the in-
ternational committee for the
SV Bans :

During 1957-58, when the sun’s
activity was at its greatest, more
than 60 nations took part in aco-
operative effort.

The most spectacular event
was the successful launching of
Sputnik I, followed later in 1957
by two more Soviet satellites.

The Quiet Sun year, which
started on January 1, takes place
when the 1ll-year cycle of the
sun’s activity is expected to be
at its minimum.

Already 58 nations are pledged
to take part,

The Soviet Union, whichis con-
ducting an ambitious program of
space research with the Cosmos
series of .satellites, is expected
to launch even more sputniks to
observe cosmic rays, solar radi-
ation, radio waves from outer
space and to conduct a magnetic
survey of the earth,

Observatories will track
meteors and comets, probe the
glow in the night sky and the
auroras in the polar sky and
advance knowledge of meteor-
ology.

Included in the investigations
will be the earth’s atmosphere
and outer space,

coming

Quiet Sun investigations may
help cosmonauts to fly safely
through the deadly radiation belts
eventually. The outer layer es-
pecially responds strongly to
solar activity.

Light may be thrown on long-
term weather changes by a study
of ozone in the atmosphere by 15
Stations.

Soviet scientists fromthe Arc-
tic right down to the Antarctic at
the Mirny and Vostok stations
near the South magnetic pole,
were ready on New Year’s Day.
And a new Latvian radio-tele-
scope over a mile long was also
prepared,

U.S. and Czech scientists will
be working at Vostok, too.

Soviet researchers will also
map the earth’s magnetic field
from aboard the world’s only non-
magnetic schooner, Zarya (Star),
in the North Atlantic.

January 24, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9