Baby Doll brilliant
but not penetrating

HE controversial new movie,

Baby Doll, is a_ savage,
mocking portrait of what is
decaying in the U.S. South.
The story of stunted, thwarted
people, it’s set against the
background of a crumbling pil-
lared mansion of plantation
grandeur which, like the peo-
ple in it, has gone to seed.

Throughout, the picture is
haunted by the laughter of
Negro people — just off cam-
era but very close, like a
chuckle in your ear — who
are watching while white men
entangle themselves in their
destruction.

It’s the story, brilliantly
filmed and played,- of Baby
Doll McCorkle Meehan, a

bride of 19 with a delayed ado-
lescence, her husband, Archie
Lee, who fights blindly and
stupidly against losing his cot-
ton gin, and his competitor,
Silva Vacarro, the newcomer,
whose success has squeezed
the townspeople into bankrupt-
cy.

With slashing strokes the
film delineates the economic
forces that move these peo-
ple. The camera moves like
an informed, ironic observer
_ across and into the contradic-
tions of this landscape, pick-
ing out significant details: the
pizza pie the townsmen are
eating while they stare resent-
fully up at the “alien”—the
Italian, Vacarro , .. a modern
ear being ferried across the
river on a broad wooden raft
that could date back to the
eighteen-fifties, propelled by
aman wielding a pole...
the road sign abruptly fac-
ing you as the enraged Vac-
arro moves toward--Archie

Lee , the _mati~ who burned
down his gin—‘Mississippi
Law — STOP.”

x og os

With this stark background
the camera moves in merci-
lessly on Baby Doll herself.
She has been married off to
“an older man” so her father
could feel she was secure and,
as the ads have underlined,
she has fended ‘him off for
a full year, She’s petulant,
selfish—a child at the moment
of becoming a woman.

The sexual scenes, between
Baby Doll and Vacarro, have
been singled out for damning.
The sex is unmistakably there,
but what the critics forgot is
‘that it’s not injected as diver-
sion, but is necessary, built
into the story line. There are
no tempting veiled dancing
girls, it’s shown without moon-
light or magnolias. Surely, it’s

the first screened seduction
with a frankly economic mo-
tive.

There are flashes illuminat-
ing this marriage: Baby Doll’s
husband lashes at her bitterly
because people know they
haven’t been together, it’s a
“public humiliation.” Her an-

, Swer, almost smothered in the

lolling characterization of the
sulky blond child, could have
been poignant: “Private humil-
iations are also painful.”

This insight into the life of
a white woman, useless, train-
ed for nothing, is underlined
by the only other woman in
the story, the frail, elderly
Aunt Rose Comfort, whose
only place is the grudging
charity of a corner in other
people’s homes. Mildred Dum-
nock plays the role with mar-
velous sensitivity.

At the end the two women
face each other and the newly
mature Bahy Doll says slow-
ly, “We got nothing to do but
wait ‘till tomorrow .. . to see
if we’re forgotten, or remem-
bered.”

x it xt

If this theme was really in
focus the movie might have
been one of the great ones.
The central flaw is Williams’
obsessive concentration on the
bizarre, the wrecked, hopeless
people on the tattered fringes

* Since it was started, the Fraser Valley mobile library has established a fine record of
service in bringing the latest in fiction a1d non-fiction to communities which formerly
had no library service. In response to the demand, the library is still expanding.

of society, Even so, these peo-
ple might illuminate the whole
of living, if they were ap-
proached with something like
love, even warmth.

But Williams doesn’t feel, or
at least communicate, any of
this. Even his humor has a
shallow edge that cuts quickly
but not deep.

He has Baby Doll speak
with prissy pinkie-up gentility®
of “my worn out nervous con-
dition.”

ae

+

She prattles ‘to Vacarro
about something “that hap-
pened before you came here
—remember?” And the an-
swer is heavily underscored:
“Yes, I remember.” Then, ex-
plaining at length why she
left school at the fourth grade
she says ponderously, “I had

a great deal of trouble with
long division.”

Even as you laugh, you feel
the writer had triumphed too
easily at the expense of his

~but there’s a cruelty, almost

VERY school — student
knows the story of how
bad King John of England
lost the royal treasures in
the Wash. And now, 740
years after the dirty night in

October 1216, when he
took the high road and his
baggage train took the low
road into the Wash quick-
sands, science has taken up
the centuries-long search
for the lost golden hoard.

A team of three experts
with complicated electrical
equipment has been sound-
ing the fertile farm lands
that now lie where the
shifting sands are said to
have swallowed King
John’s loot.

For 30 years now, the
Wash Research Committee
has sought the track of the
causeway which once took
travellers across the morass
of the Wellstream Estuary
—long known as the Wash.

Somewhere 40 feet below

Maybe they'll turn up in Wash

reclaimed land, they be-
lieve, lies a hard bed of clay
through which the missing
treasure could not sink,
even after several hundred

years.
There must lie the
“crowns and rings with

precious stones, the jewell-
ed sceptres and swords, the
gold and silver cups,” whose
loss the cursing king be-
moaned — the worst disas-
ter, in his eyes, in the whole
devastating war with the
Barons.

Layers of soil of differing
hardness have a differing
resistance to electricity. -

So the three experts,
trundling their trolley over
the fields and ditches that
lie south of a line between
Cross Keys and Long Sut-
ton, have made _ 1,000
“soundings,” seeking out
the possible line of the an-
cient causeway.

Now, they say, “the pre-
liminary survey has yielded

‘compiled from historical re-

evidence which appears to
confirm the theory ... as
to the location of a cause-
way across the estuary of
the old Wellstream.”

But more detailed survey
is needed before the theory
can be finally established.

Whether when the cause-
way is found the treasure
will come to light is any-
one’s guess. A list of ar-
ticles believed lost has been

cords.
Popular tradition ‘says
“the whole convoy was

either swept away by the
incoming tide or swallow-
ed up by the treacherous
quicksand. Not a man sur-
vived to tell the tale.”

But who knows? Maybe
treasure whose value will
make the search worth
while will be unearthed.
Maybe the story of the first
‘Gnside job” will be added
to the history of crime.

characters. Williams has tre-
mendous perception and skill,

spitefulness, mixed with thé
disdain as he points and say§
“Look! See how trivial they
are, how stupid.”

Much of this is submerged
beneath the brilliant camer

work that records decadencé
with a historian’s eye.

|
|

Only once, Williams falter
badly; when he has Vacarr?
say baldly, “I come from an
ancient race, where justice ©
executed by one man alon®
an eye for an eye...” Its
embarrassingly bad writing
to say nothing of the stereo”
type involved, to hear the us
ually subtle writer give , thi

clumsy explanation of “hot
Sicilian blood.”

As an example of film crafh_
Baby Doll is magnificent. Tht
pooled talents of Williams and i
director Elia Kazan, who team —
ed before with brilliant 1&
sults, are backed by the incl
ive documentary photograp.
of Boris Kaufman, and a sup”
erb cast.

Karl Malden’s agonized po!
trayal of the fumbling Archié
Lee, Eli Wallach, as the kee”
impassioned Vacarro and Cat”
roll Baker as the vacant, lus
cious Baby Doll, could not b
better. Awards should be giv’
for teamwork performance
like thes@é, that mesh so pel
fectly.

With the headlined st!
about this picture, the pity if
that it does not penetrate dee?”
er. Given a script with heal
with a concern for the pe
ple it probes with scorch :
irony, the same crew and 4
tors could have produced ‘|
truly great film. ‘ ce

MILLY SALWE!

JANUARY 25, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE ’

é