x Psychological - CURRENT FILMS << ae ‘Home of the Brave’ termed great movie THERE APPEARS to be ~ sive circles, about Home of the a divergence of opinion in progres- rave. In my opinion, it is a great movie, the more difficult to review because its impact is so great that you find it almost impossible to be impersonal and detached. Briefiy diers, pat concerns three sol- an officer, The latter is trying to effect a cure\of paralysis of one of the soldiers, a Negro, Peter Moss. Using the psychiatric technique of making the patient relive the Crucial time, the narivative is told in flash-back, I have no fault to find with the cast, they handle their roles with much skill, and James Edwards, who plays Moss, ‘gives one of the finest perfor- mances I’ve ever seen. and an army doctor. The photography is excellent, the direction taut and keenly Pointed. The script is honest, even to bringing out the fact that .Ne- &roes, through sensitivity, some- times unjustly doubt “white” friends, But, by “not sufficiently emphasizing why Negroes are suf- fering from sensitivity, by pre- Suming that everyone knows of their difficulties with “Jim Crow”, and not pointing up this second- Class citizenship, it comes peri- lously close at times towards sug- esting that much, of the trouble _ of the Negroes is ‘caused by them- selves, It does bring out the fact that Negroés, like other people who | don’t fit into the “pattern”, for one’ reason or» another, have a ‘battle on their hands. You might wish that the Script had hammered home _ why they don’t; fit in, and Who» js to” blame. This is all minor criti- ° too. -stiongly to 8 it. = GL. **** Home of the Brave. s ak le **x* Champion, Paisan, Shake’ Pit, Johnny Belinda, — iy **x Red, Hot and Blue, Everbody Does It, Anna Karenina, ¢ Ichabod and Mr. Toad, A Connecticut yankee, June Bride, cism, and doesn’t detract from the solid merits of the picture, Al] the characters are real peo- ple; Moss, the fine, proud, sensi- tive Negro; buddy, whom coincidence throws together, again; the bitter, so human Mingo; the young Ma- jor, who doesn’t know all the ans- wers, but knows how to be a good Major; the Doctor, hard boiled but understanding; and “T.J,”, _the young button-pushing execu- tive who has Been drafted. The other men despise him because -he’s not a worker, and defest | him for his ‘essential into clearer. focus. The war scenes ‘and unglamorous, and by this very fact, are anti-war No one who sits through this movie is likely to contemplate, being placed in a similar position without making him determined to fight against any suggestion_of war. : Just one scene. It is in the jungle where Moss has produced some fried chicken, to the delight of his buddies, and “T.J.” busily ‘chewing on some chicken, patro- _ nizingly opines in a comic “dixie” accent, that some “boogies” aren't bad at all, why he had a janitor once that was pretty good, and on and on and on. If this scene doesn’t make you ashamed of being a member of the waite race, you ought to be. Home of the Brave is a must _ picture for all. T-cannot urge you A Song is Born, Monsieur Vincent, — * Forever Amber, Luxury >, Liner, _Saraband, The aiid ‘Gambles. his white boyhood. but | Wicldushess: : which the army merely brings. a. lively new song, ~ Line,” sung by Lee Hays and The are gripping ‘3 * 337 West Pender, ) GROUP SEEKS MEMBERS \ Productions will be made available. : meetings. Mo, torium, April 19. hab tia Rice, in addition to the pores Awake, Those who want to'join t in touch with the secretary, G ‘avenue, phone BA. 1283. : THE NEWLY FORME will enter the Vancouver civic e€ a skit, A Streetcar Named Undesirable, b for community, tra First performance of the skit will be ~ Book Fair and Literature Tneitute to The theater group also ‘announ starting work on another production, dramatization of already announced. ; he new group ladise Bjarnason, 1706 West 12th afinounced D Vancouver Theatre of Action | lection campaign this year with y Hal Griffin, wicch | de union and election given at the be held at Pender Audi-- i ced shy week that it was | ‘Out of the Dust, by Greg Neruda’s poem, Let the are asked to get ‘ A ha HOWARD FAST The Peekslaill story THE STORY of the Peekskill riot is told in narrative and song .on a new recording made by Peo- ple’s Artists and Charter Recorids. The record, T4e Peekskill Story, features Howard Fast, Paul Robe- son and Pete Seeger, and carries “Hold the Weavers. It is obtainable at the People’s Cooperative Bookstore, at $1.50. Other new Charter records are The Red Bogey and Johnny, I Hardly Knew You, an Irish trad- itional song, with The Fireship, an English folk song, on the other side. Both are sung by Bt San- ders. Soviet film, | skit at fair — Spring Song, a gay musical com- edy film prioduced in the Soviet Union, and A Streetcat Named Undesirable, a Vancouver Theater of Action skit, will) feature the Saturday night session of the - Book Fair and Literature Insti- tute to be held in Pender’ Audi- _torium here, November 18-20. At the Saturday afternoon ses- sion, Tom McEwen, editor of the Pacific Tribune, will speak on the trial of the eleven leaders of the American Communist party. Some one hundred delegates are expected. to take part in the dis- cussions on papers to be present- ed. On Friday evening, Elgin Rud- dell will discuss Canadian Imper- ialism and Nigel speak on Canadian foreign pol- icy, | “ _ Speakers at the ‘Sunday after _ noon ‘session will be Sid. Zlotnik, on the growth -of. monopoly in . British, Columbia, Alf Dewhurst. on the new tasks facing labor in 1950, and Hal Griffin, on new trends in Canadian _ cultural de- ‘ velopment. f i: S garhe Book Fair will feature a wide rangé of progressive books, _afférding an excellent choice for _visitors planning to buy books at special CAs for Christmas gifts. T so evident in Morgan _, will | GUIDE TO GOOD READING Significant collection of Marxist studies ONE OF THE” most, vital contributions to economic thought ever made by American Marxists. The Economic~Crisis and the Cold War, edited by James S. Allen and Doxey Wilkerson (International Publishers). That is how I would descnbe The group of Marxist scholars whose papers are represented in this volume have cut through the fog of confusion spread by capitalist economists and propa- gandists to provide knowledge for the working class in the impend- ing struggles against monopolists’ efforts to place on them the burt+ den of the economic crisis through wage cuts, speed up, un- employment, war and fascism. In his own contribution to this book William Z. Foster sets the high level of Marxist scholarship every one of the papers collected therein. He points’ out how the disast- rous economic crisis which began in 1929 shook the capitalist class out of its complacent notions that its economic system operated automatically on an ever-r ee scale of development. Whereas, before 1929, Fosten explains, the capitalists believed that economic crises were part and parcel of the development of capitalism, now, frightened by the possible consequences to their im- perialist ambitions of a new econ- omic crisis, they are using the Truman government as the in- strument for minimizing such a _erisis, to strengthen their’ own position and to worsen the condi- tions of the workers aie tHe com- ‘mon pegnle: . The theoretical expression of this approach, Foster shows, is the work of the British economist, the late John Maynard Keynes. Keynes noted the inability of the capitalist economy itself .to_ pre- vent crises. And he offered as the solution “pump-priming” of in- dustry by the ‘government. The present practical application of this theory in the U.S., Fostew writes, is Truman’s -“managed economy.” ~ Foster demolishes the two var- iants of Keynesism in the U.S. One he explains, is that the reformists, represented by Roosevelt, Wallace and the New Dealers, who propose public works projects. and other “welfare” plans as means of al- leviating the crisis. The other is that of the reactionary Keynes- jans, who “chiefly cultivate a big government-financed armaments program in order to boost flagging industry, to avoid excessive mass unemployment, to promote’ state monopoly capitalism, and to carry out their: general program of im- perialism, fascism and war.” “The Truman . administuation,” Foster points out, “faithful to the interests of the capitalist mono- polists © ‘who’ control it, bases its ‘managed. economy’ policy upon the reactionary variant of Keynes- health plans and the like, it turns its main attention to stimulating — industry by feeding it huge arma- ments orders, by protecting prof- ,its at the expense of wages, by building up a vast war economy, by strengthening the general posi- tion of monopoly, by cultivating a militant program of grabbing world markets and by heading * definitely in the direction of war.” Foster shows how this program not only does not halt the move- ment toward economic crisis, but ‘instead shanpens the contradic- tions speeding the crisis onward. We 5S ke Se BASING THEMSELVES upon Foster’s theoretical exposition of the developing economic crisis, the papers that follow examine the various aspects of the crisis. The first of these is ::The World Position of the United States and the Economic Crisis.” This paper shows how, “while the U.S. has’ become the mainstay of world capitalism, it must operate with-— in a world capitalism which is greatly weakened and substantial- ly reduced in scope. The funda- mental contradiction in the .pres- ent ascendancy of American mon- opoly capitalism is that it must seek to extend its global opera- tions, when the general crisis of capitalism has become more acute ,and more universal, as a result of world War II.” This paper explains the general ~ crisis-of capitalism—its accentu- ation after World War II through the gitowth of the Soviet Union and the birth of the Eastern Euro- pean People’s Democracies, the .Chinese People’s Republic and the © struggles of the colonial and : semi-colonial peoples. ism, That is to say, while dabbling’ © with various reformist. measures of social insurance, ‘with national Following this-is a paper on “Fhe Developing Crisis in the United States,” which gives a comprehensive picture of the for- ces in U.S. economy which are leading it to disaster. One of the most brilliant of all the papers is the one on “The Cold War and Foreign Markets.” It shows that the cold war is a product of Truman’s; “managed economy” policy to stave off the economic crisis and proves that “the foreign economic policies of the United States have not pre- vented the maturing of the econ- omic crisis, but are in fact ac- celerating its development at the present time.” - This, paper is followed by 2 thorough examination of the “Conditions of the People,” shows that the working class and the common people have’ already “begun to feel the effects of the de- veleping economic crisis. i which > =aa ESS | Boo a Fair and Literature Institute Pender. Auditorium <2 November 18, 19, 20 : Books for Gifts | Skit ‘Poster ee ——J i= —— Slee Ses ae af |=: