| oe IDEOLOGICAL PREPARATION FOR FASCISM Brutality now dominating theme on Hollywood screen FORCE AND violence in Hollywood films is a_ serious trend today. Since V-day the number of films in which mur- ders, kidnappings and hold-ups are either attempted or com- mitted has skyrocketed. That most of the crimes de- picted are crimes of passion or ‘crimes against private property goes without saying. Very, very few films show crimes of hunger against plenty, crimes of en- trenched wealth against human rights, The new approach—the “new look” in crime films—is strictly psychological and is accompanied by a kind of sadistic brutality never before seen in the theater. ‘These films seem to have been mass produced for no other pur- pose than to shock, brutalise and instil in the audience the idea that human life is cheap. Take these recent examples of prutality for brutality’s sake: In Kiss of Death Richard Wid- mark, a maniacal killer; hurls a crippled and lady in a wheelchair down sev- eral flights of steps to a horrible death. In Criss Cross, Burt Lancaster is shown in a hospital bed, his broken arm in a plaster cast raised and held up with a cord. During the night he is kidnapped by a rival gangster who cruelly cuts down the arm, which drops to the sound of bone cracking. In The Champion there are close-ups of a torn and bleeding - eye being punched again and again. - In Yellow Sky, Gregory Peck holds a man under water until he drowns. In Golorado Terri- _ tory, a deputy sheriff uses a bull whip across the®bare back _ of Virginia Mayo. In Coroner Creek, the bloodied and unconscious body of Ran- dolph Scott is dragged to a lot and his trigger. finger crushed - to fleshy pulp by a boot - heel. oe The. Set-Up, Alan Baxter, ~ a small-time crook, deliberately _ and brutally grinds his heel on the knuckles of Robert Ryan,-a prizefighter, thereby making it ‘impossible for him to fight “again. This cult of the brute _ reaches its logical climax in the racist. and _red-baiting films. In Walk a Crooked Mile, the _. yillainous “Reds” are rounded up by the FBI and local police and slaughtered in a furious gun battle. : : The Red Menace, pigeon’s eyeview of the Com- innocent ord | 2nd. munist party, links the party with a brutal murder. * < ~ WHAT IS revealed here is an attempt to direct social discon- tent and human frustration into anti-social, anti-human attitudes and acts. : What we have here, further, is a systematic suppression of democratic human content and the degradation of the vital art of film. Some films exaggerate the fiendish nature of the “crimin- al,” in order to build esteem for the detective hero, the protector of property, who traps him. The idea is that one it is established that the ‘“law- breaker” (never ‘a “killer-cop,” - it should be noted) is sub-human and worthy of no pity, and the law-enforcer is super-human (he never sleeps, eats or has a nor- mal family life), the problem of leading the audience away from criticism of authority is on the ‘way to being solved. There is undoubtedly a connec- tion between the post-war Holly- wood police film and attempts of monopoly capitalism to turn the United States into a police state. Bela Balazs, the distinguished Hungarian film critic, who died a few weeks ago, once made some astute observations about the pre-Hitler German police films which I believe throw light on America’s product. Said Balazs: FILM REVIEW “The (German) film shows how a Safe is cracked, but not how it is filled. Who is the hero? The detective: the pro- tector of private property. Be- cause this figure is idealised, the worth and meaning of pri- vate property is idealised. “Have you seen films in which burglars aire poor people who steal for a piece of bread? The social problem is not mentioned once in this form. “Hliowever, im Germany, poor people are shown in films. These films about poor people are no less dangerous than \the others. Even in the best of them, only those who have fallen by the wayside, lumpenproletarians are gars. People so humbled and poor, that they are portrayed as victims, “What is “the psychology and significance of this type of film? When the audience sees misery where help is no longer possible, it is partly soothed. Because when you cannot help any more you need not help arty more. Therefore, these broken creatures are not dangerous people. “Have you ever seen a film showing the awakened proletar- iat? Never.” The German crime, film, said Balazs, prepared the German mind for fascism. What is the Hollywood: crime film preparing for the American people and for the world? —DAVID PLATT. @ Depict artistic talents - of Australian Natives SO IT TAKES generations to teach Aborigines anything, does it? Well, those people who went to Vancouver Art Gallery a week or so ago, to view the two technicolor films on the natives of Australia, saw differently. The first film was on the Ab- original natives of that country, and depicted them living just as ‘mankind in general lived in the, stone-age — naked, crude wind- breaks all the shelter they had from the elements, their only tools _the most primitive imaginable. — * ent and gave him lessons and ma- The second film dealt with Al-: bert Namatjura, an Aboriginal who has been the servant of an artist and watching his boss paint, felt the urge to express himself too. He got a piece of scrap paper and some discarded water-colors of his master’s and painted. By a_ lucky chance his master saw his painting, realized his innate tal- TAILORING cusTomM Highest Prices Paid for DIAMONDS, OLD GOLD Other Valuable Jewellry STAR LOAN CO. Ltd. Est. 1905 _ Jack Cooney, Mgr. PACIFIC 9588. FERRY MEAT MARKET 119 EAST HASTINGS. VANCOUVER, B.C. FREE DELIVERY ‘Supplying Fishing Boats Our Specialty Nite Calls GL. 1740L terials. Finally Namatjura had a showing, his work caught on, and today his pictures enjoy a wide sale. : There is nothing “native” about them, he has taken the “white man’s” technique and made it his own. With the money realized from the sale, he has bought ma- terials for other members of his people who wish to paint, and today many “savages” out in the Australian bush are slowly but painstakingly learning the tech- nique which will make at least some of them trained artists. It makes one realize that if the stoné-age man in a few short years can be taught the “white- man’s” painting technique and be his equal in art, how quickly they could catch up, if given the op- portunity, in all fields of endea- vor. . For those who didn’t see these films I would suggest that they try to persuade one of the local -movie-houses to show them, or perhaps arrange for private screenings.—G. L. FOR SIGNS CALL CEdar 1510 . -REMIS-KING SIGNS LTD. Outdoor Advertising GROUP MEETING CALLED program now being arranged. New theater set up A MEETING OF the newly-formed Vancouver Theater of Action will be held this coming Sunday, October 16, at. 8 p.m., in the Russian People’s Home, it was announced by the organizing committee this week. Purpose of the meeting, i which is open to all interested in the progressive amateur stage, 18s. to complete. organizational arrangements and discuss the winter — The new theater group, dedicated to bringing the people’s needs and problems to the stage, was set up at a meeting held eatlier this month, with a dramatization of Pablo Neruda’s, Let the Rail-Splitter Awake scheduled to be its first production. GUIDE TO GOOD READING ~! Fast demonstrates his mastery of short story ! - \ THROUGHOUT most of Departure and Other Stories (Little, shown; drunkards, thieves, beg- Brown), Howard Fast, one of America’s leading novelists, demon — strates his mastery of art of compression that is the distinctive mar He also proves that it is not necessary to resort of the short story. to sensationalism, tricky writing or vulgarity to tell a story that has meaning for the people. vIn this” collection of short stories, Fast, an active partici- pant in the struggles of the work- ing class and the common people for democracy and a decent. way of life, tells, in the main, the stories of these people. ' He writes with a deep love for the workers and the ordinary people. His heroes achieve the stature of which/they are deserv- ing, but which they are denied in | most of the literature of our time. The sweetness and bitterness of their lives glow like a luminous light in these stories. The every-- day simple courage with which they accept the necessary strug- gles of life pervade ' practically every page. And the style of Fast’s writing fits exactly the subject matter of most of the: stories. There is a simple beauty of writing that is like the melodic rhythms of folk songs. se In the title story of the book, Departure, Fast gives us the su- perb picture 6f a young U.S. sol- dier of the Abraham Lincoln Bat- _talion in the war against fascism in. Spain. The story literally sings with the sweetness of struggle, the bitterness of betrayal, the hopes and aspirations of these great heroes, who, in the red- baiting of the postwar period, have been labelled by the US. government as “premature anti- fascists” and therefore are con- sidered criminals by the FBI. An Epitaph for Sidney depicts in full colors the life of a young New York Jew, Who fought in , Spain, who fought and died in World War II. Encompassed within less than 21 pages are the dreams, desires and heroism of” an ordinary boy who wanted to defeat fascism. , ; kk x 7 IN THIS story and others in this book, Fast does an excel- lent job in linking his Jewish heritage to the mainstream of U.S. life. Unlike so many writers who deal with national groups in isolation from ‘the rest of U.S. society, Fast, without artificiality, shows the relationship of Jews to the other segments of Ameri- ‘can common life. : No review of the book would be complete without comment on Fast’s treatment of children in his stories. Few writers can achieve the tenderness with PACIFIC TRIBUNE — Yu and he | DEPRESSION} | : @ BY WILLIAM: KASHTAN: New pamphlet ~ the Depression, a 10-cent pam — 4. Pender. Being unemployed and under standing what happened to you is often as complicated 45 drawing unemployment insu ance benefits. If you want 2” answer to why you were off youll find’ it in You and _phiet by William Kashtan, You can buy a copy at the People’s — Cooperative Bookstore, 337 Wes! a which he handles the portrait of children. With a skill that ® all too rare he depicts their P®& wilderment at the cruelty of world they did not make. 4? what is even rarer in our cP italist society, which seeks - treat children as ignorant, hel” less pawns of the capitalist clas* Fast shows the intelligence 2” ability of children to respond ‘ crises in their lives’ and thos? of their families, 15 Where the author fails in th? stories ‘in this book, in the opi” ion of thig reader, is when seeks to give us pictures of middle-class intellectuals al racketeers. His beautiful writit® style is happily weddea to the content of the stories when he ig) dealing with workers, anti-f cists and children. But it ‘clashes unharmoniously with the subjer matter when he seeks to pres an unsympathetic portrait of middle-class intellectual, 4s 5 The Gentle Virtue, or when tries to make fun of a Broad hanger-on in The Suckling PIs: But this is only a minor ont cism, dealing as it does only a small segment of Fast’s: ee Altogéther, Departure and othe Storids is a satisfying book ™ read, —DAVID CARPENT: OCTOBER 14, 1949 — PAGE !°