aN

|World marks

|Dickens’ birth

peer the world, at the
behest of the world
7 "8ce movement, people are
“lebrating the 150th anni-
Wesary of the birth of
| Charles Dickens.
And not without reason,
 in-an age fraught with
fanger for ordinary people,
€ works of Charles Dick.
MS, expressive of love of
} ‘Manity, have a stimulating
| *Dpeal to all men and women
%t g00d will.

% * *
peters was the greatest
* the roup of critical real-

Writers who arose in the
© first half of the nine-
nth century.
Ka © was the leader of what
a Marx described as “the
4 ant contemporary
Bia of novelists in Eng-

These writers marked the
gh Peak of the English
ae and after Dickens’
“ath in 1870, English litera-
Ure underwent a decline
°m which it has never em-
ged.
This decline was due to the

fact that: later writers, with

few exceptions, refused to ac-
cept the standards set by
Dickens and his great con-

‘temporaries—standards that

critically examined a society
based on exploitation, profit
and the destruction of the
human personality.

* * %

Dickens, and this is the
lesson for us today, took a
deliberate stand on human
values.

With critical eyes he saw
that the accumulation of cap-
ital, the fight to obtain
wealth and position had a
destructive effect on the
human soul.

This theme runs through
his work, and is particularly
emphasized in “Dombey and
Son” and in “Little Dorritt’.

Living at a time when cap- -

italism was bursting out with
crude force to conquer the
world, when a social theory
able to analyze capitalism
and to forsee its future had
scarcely yet been formulated,
it is hardly surprising that
Dickens did not see far he-
yond his own epoch.

Yet his social instinct and

Film controversy

[Jroudteary the most con-
Ye oVersial film of this
tiva) Vancouver Film Fes-
Yon, “2S Poland’s Mother
°f the Angels. It also

Rxgj :
a the greatest unrest
& b . .
amidst Ourgeois circles for,

ae Tumors of anguish
Patent the executive of the
wv Festival Society, it
tert © only film the censor
obliged to view.
With 18 contrasts markedly
Tea,,.. © rather tolerant local
Vij
-nana, an uncompromis-
ation still; more literal
€rical statement (“He
Teign forever and
: from Handel’s “Mes-
on the sound track ac-
ot zrales visual rape and
is degradation; the church
the wPletely repudiated by
Re.) °rmer novitiate nun,

ree Wever, such a bourgeois
When is less surprising
his . We recall that, despite
Cig “Rrelenting social criti-

°ver the years, Bunuel

t

Conscience, by
the Eatherly and Gun-
Bey, ders, Preface by

Price

N2tend — Russell. ae
WORTH
~ READING

ns to Luis Bunuel’s’

1A

Mars! Castro Speaks on
Sm-Lenism. Price $1.10

leag Statement by a world

ty), 288 ever been so wil-

distorted as Fidel Cas-

Mba. Soric speech of Dec-

the a series of talks to
Uutig, tan people by revo-
Stan; ”. leaders on the
lteg s28tion of the new Un-
‘a oat

iq ‘vont of the Socialist
a :

why j‘akes great pains to
e016 Ne the political and
the S'cal reasons behind

2, 1961. This speech’

is in fact fashionable among
the official intelligentsia as
well as among the rest of us.

It might put one out of
fashion by speaking against
an accepted great director
who, after all, did make the
film with initial Falangist
blessings (until they found
him out, fortunately too
late). Moreover, acceptance
in bourgeois circles is aided
by Bunuel’s nihilistic ten-
dencies which border on

misanthropy.
* * *
On the other hand, Poles
being Communists are an

easy mark. No need to go
out of the way to show one’s
good manners here. It’s quite
safely fashionable to be anti-
Communist these days and,
with the Reds in it, Mother
Joan may well be more sin-
ister than we realize.

At the same time, there
appears to be a _ tendency
from the left to seek elements
of compromise in Mother
Joan of the Angels, Perhaps

of war’

$4.50.

Individuals who publicly
oppose mass preparation for
mass-suicide are often treat-
ed as insane.

Perhaps no better case in
point. could be found than
that of Claude Eatherly, the

man who was .the pilot of:

the “Straight Flush”, the
lead plane that gave the go-
ahead signal to drop the first
atomic bomb over Hiroshi-
ma, Major Eatherly was big
news then — some seventeen
years ago — and he came
home a hero. He was award-
ed the Distinguished Flying

Cross.
* * *

Since then, Claude Eath-
erly has been “news” on
many occasions, and few of
them ‘heroic. For his many
bizarre behaviour patterns,
for many apparently anti-
social acts this man spent
many years in and out of a
veteran’s mental hospital in

to him

integrity was remarkable.

He was the only great Eng-
lish writer who refused to be
taken up by fashionable so-
ciety.

He saw through the dillen-
tante sham of the aristocra-
cy, and recognized the cruel-
ty and vulgarity of the fin-
ancial and industrial ruling
class.

* * *

How often in modern

times has a writer gained

CHARLES DICKENS

popularity with two or three
books because they express-
ed some criticism of society.

But under the influence of
flattery and the rewards
given to the conformer, the

criticism is dropped and the
work becomes dull and stale.

To the end of his life,
Dickens’ critical faculty re-
mained strong. He became
more or less critical of the
capitalist juggernaut which
had burst from, the’ wrap-
pings of feudalism and was
trampling madly across the
world.

While it has not been pos-
sible to denigrate him, con-
sistent attempts have been
made to misrepresent his
ideals.

He has been classified as
a reformer, an exponent of
Pickwickian jollity, as a sen-

timentalist.
* * *
“Oliver Twist” was. not

just an attack on the Poor
Laws, but an exposure of the
cruelty of the rich towards
the poor.

“Pickwick” contained a

. biting satire of legal and par-

liamentary stupidity, and
produced the immortal Sam
Weller, the quick-witted
Cockney who outshone his
amiable master.

“The Old Curiosity Shop’’,
presented by later critics as
an orgy of Victorian senti-
mentality, is a protest against
the destruction of the good,
the tender and the innocent
by the ruthless machine cf

capitalism. It is significant
that on her travels Little Nell
is succoured by the poor, and
despised by the rich.

“Hard Times” was a boek
so bitingly analytical of the
character-types of capitalist
society, that critics dismissed
it as dull and uninteresting,
a bad book not worth talking
about.

* 5 *
He recognized the horror
of the acquisitive society,

but was not a pessimist,
He never believed in the
inevitability of destruction

and always kept in touch
with the bubbling infectious
vitality and enthusiasm of
the ordinary people.

Dickens’ life was a trag-
edy because he died at a time
when the philistine society
seemed to have triumphed;
yet it was also a triumph be-
cause he put on paper for
posterity the hideous image
of capitalist society, the glor-
ious vitality of ordinary
people, and the multitudin-
ous aspects of life’s. onward’
struggle.

—GORDON ANDERSON

director Kawalerowicz’s ob-
jective treatment of church-
man and non-churchman
alike lies at the root of this
idea. Yet it is precisely this
fully rounded approach that
makes the film a searching
philosophical statement in-
stead of a political tract.

Make no mistake. Mother
Joan is as penetratingly anti-
Catholic and _ anti - authori-
tarian as Viridiana—but wth
compassion and a richer
humanity. It is a film that
strikes at the ideological
implications of authoritarian
dogma imposed on people
whose natural tendencies do
not conform to its sterile pre-
conceptions.

Mother Joan of the Angels
is a topical film directly
attacking the tenets of the
church hierarchy: a major
political obstacle to progress
in present-day Poland.

* * *

It might be argued that

betrayal of a nun who leaves

-the cloister by her aristo-

cratic seducer argues for the
comfort of paternalistic pro-
tection. But this is a double-
edged thrust. It actually

points up both the smother-
ing of natural appetites by
church rules and the immor-
ality of the nobility who
share in the making of that
world. (Significantly, this
nun is the one who all along
has made the most direct ap-
proaches to life, less through
demoniac ‘‘possession’’.) Her
actions also clarify the real
character of the general —
and collusive — “possession”’
‘participated in by all the
nuns from the Mother Sup-
erior down.

Again,.it might be argued
that the film’s basic content
was churchly “good” in con-
flict with worldly “evil” ac-
cording to the literal plot.
This is not an easy position
to maintain.

Even if the tone of Kawa-
lerowicz’s treatment (some-
times mocking and quite
hilarious, at others more ser-
ious) does not make his point
of view obvious, the confes-
sor-priest’s final desperate,
“un-Christian”’, in human act
(he brutally murders two
innocents to take the evil on
himself) as his solution to the
yearnings of the flesh makes

the film’s attitude indisput-
able.

This is underscored by the
earlier meeting with the
Rabbi (the priest’s twin,
played by the same actor)
whose superstitions are
equally sterile and out of
touch with a world religions
cannot explain.

* * *

Mother Joan of the Angels

is an ambitious investigation

of some of the darker hys-
teria inspired by unyielding
superstition and authoritar-
ian dogma suppressing and
contradicting natural beha-
viour, It is developed with
brilliant cinematography
which, if not quite as literal
as some might have wished,
is decidedly not obscure or
deceitful.

Mother Joan of the Angels
is a fine, serious artistic
statement; a document of
our times which explains the
past to explain the present.

N. E. STORY

Texas. :
And it may have been this

publicity that saved his life
and brought him salvation
through understanding.

A pacifist philosopher in
Vienna, Gunther Anders,
read of Eatherly and wrote

Out of this correspondence
was born a new Claude Eath-
erly with a new outlook on
life and a new goal.

“The truth is that society
simply cannot accept the fact
of my guilt without at the
same time recognizing its
own far deeper guilt,” Eath-
erly wrote in one letter to’
Anders. And the Viennese
philosopher’ understood and
wrote back, quietly trying
te explain to this confused,
tortured man what was hap-
pening to him. 4

Together the two tried to
search, through correspon-'
dence for truth. And this is
in essence, what the book
Burning Conscience con-
tains — this search for truth
and jwnderstanding on the
road to peace.

What is said here is that
we are all guilty as long as
humanity considers war as a
means of resofving any hu-
man problem. ;

& * he

This book is not easy read-
ing, and it is not an easy
subject. Eatherly writes
‘haltingly, and Anders, as
befits a philosopher writing
in the German language,

; sympathy

August 10, 1962—PACIFIC TRIBUNK—Page 5

tends often to be ponderous.

Yet it is a worthwhile ex-
perience for one who is
willing to take the time ta
read slowly and deeply into
these 139 pages that reveal
the rebirth of a man, '

Burning Conscience con-
tains many moving moments,
but none more satisfying
and revealing to Eatherly

k Ex Ca

etter he quotes with joy. It
was from a group of “Hiro-
shima maidens” — those
young women who were per-
manently disfigured.

They wrote to him with
and  understand-
ing, begging him to join
them in a crusade against
war:

“We have learned to feel
towards you a_ fellow-feel-
ing, thinking that. you are
also a victim of war like us.”
SIDNEY ROGER

ih ARNG Es ARRON ELE TE

EN tne ee Teen