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Although Cannes’ eleventh film festival ended a few days before the Brussels Fair film festival opened, the latter drew away from Cannes many films which normally would have been shown there.

A 90-minute documentary was chosen for the premiere performance at Cannes on May 2 Arne Sucksdorff’s depiction of the life of the age-old Murias who inhabit the jungles of central India, called in Swedish A JUNGLE SAGA, but here hopped up as THE FLUTE AND THE ARROW. It is in color, was photographed for the widescreen, and has moments of pictorial beauty. But it lacks the sensitivity and penetration of Sucksdorff’s THE GREAT ADVENTURE, and often seems contrived. Sucksdorff told me later his next film would not be preoccupied with the natural world. He did not divulge its theme.

In the audience I particularly noted the Prince and Princess of Monaco, Mitizi Gaynor and Sophia Loren.

Poland’s entry, THE EIGHTH DAY OF THE WEEK, directed by Alexander Ford, was withdrawn the next day because one of its co-authors, 25-year-old Marek Hlasko, told a Paris newspaper that real communism doesn’t exist in Poland and that totalitarian Poland “enforces an ideology without scruple about methods.” Incidentally, THE EIGHTH DAY OF THE WEEK is a co-production with West Germany.

And the Austrian entry, Sissi, YEARS OF DESTINY, was withdrawn because it had already been shown outside the country of origin. It is a lushly sentimental continuation of the series about Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife, starring Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Bohm, with Ernst Marischka directing.

Unfortunately, I am not a good diarist, as is Francis Koval, who usually covers the Cannes Festival for FILMS IN REVIEW.* Therefore I must set down my festival impressions in the following haphazard style.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS did not elicit the critical attention from serious critics one would expect. Most of the comments I heard emphasized Sophia Loren’s inadequacy. Said one critic: “In front of the camera is not the place to learn to act.”

The first French entry, L’EAU VIVE, was a programmer directed by Francois Villiers about avarice among French peasants living in a valley that is to be flooded as soon as a nearby dam is completed. Jean Giono’s script contains the fruit of much insight into French provincial life. Pascal Audret, as the young girl whose inheritance motivates the tale, is quite good.

Russia’s WHEN THE STORKS FLY OVER has such an obvious propaganda line one tends to forget it and concentrate on a love story considerably enhanced by a sloe-eyed beauty and intelligent actress named Tatiana Samoilova.
Her lover goes off to war and she is raped by his brother in the midst of a bombing. She marries this brother but never forgets her first love. When he is killed, she decides to leave her husband and begin a new life. Ilya Lopert acquired the US rights to WHEN THE STORKS FLY OVER in what is said to be a barter deal.

After the screening the Russians threw a party at the Ambassadeurs for 400 carefully invited guests. Acts from Moscow Circus, which is playing in nearby Nice, provided the first part of the entertainment. The second part consisted of the circus band playing rock ‘n’ roll. The Russian delegation, incidentally, stays at Cannes’ best hotel the Carlton – in a suite of rooms costing 8000 francs per room per diem.

At a later press conference presided over by M. T. Ratchouk, head of the Russian delegation, Samoilova, replying to questions, said she was married to a stage actor, liked to cook but didn’t have time for it, liked some things about Western Europe, disliked some, did not understand some. Ratchouk said WHEN THE STORKS FLY OVER had cost 3 million rubles. He also said there are 2,000,000 tv sets in the USSR, of which more than a fourth are in Moscow.

Norway’s NINE LIVES should be a better film, for it tells a true story of almost incredible heroism: a Norwegian commando’s successful struggle to get from the Norwegian coast, where his buddies have drowned, to neutral Sweden. His tribulations include cutting off his own frozen toes, going snowblind, and lying in a snow pit for more than a month. Jack Fjeldstad does well as the man with the nine lives, but Arne Skouen’s direction is flat-footed.

I personally thought Argentina’s ROSAURA A LAS DIEZ a turgid piece of pulp fiction about who killed Rosaura at ten o’clock in a fifth rate hotel. But some critics were impressed with the various versions of the murder that the film provides, a la RASHOMON.

No one thought very much of India’s PARASH PAT THAR directed by Satyajit Ray, who directed PATHER PANCHALI and APARAJITO. Ray is said not to have wanted this picture shown at Cannes. He had good reason. It is ill-contrived whimsy, cheaply made for the masses, about an aging clerk who finds a stone that can turn things to gold.

I thought better of Michael Cacoyannis’ NO MORE CREDIT than most critics, though I grant its melodramatic climax is disappointing. Cacoyannis both scripted and directed, and how well he handled Elli Lambetti! Her “sculptor’s face” seems like an evocation of inner beauty, she has instinctive grace, and she uses her voice as a violinist uses strings. NO MORE CREDIT stays in the memory chiefly because of her. As for the story about a once wealthy Athens family trying to marry their daughter to a rich suitor, well, Cacoyannis makes it seem more than it is by his realistic depiction of the milieu.

After this year’s traditional trip to the Ile St. Marguerite for an al fresco lunch, the press was invited to a homage for Charles Pathé, who died last December. One-reelers and excerpts from longer Pathé films were shown and they made one wonder how much progress there has really been in cinema over the last 50 years. I especially wondered while watching such comedians as Boircau, Linder and Rigadin.

Which leads me to Jacques Tati’s MON ONCLE – his third film and first in color.

It is a series of gags from beginning to end. About half are sight gags and don’t require sub-titles (Tati says he has prepared an English version). All the gags are contrived, and all too many run too long. They mock modern furniture and architecture, industrial processes, kitchen gadgets and women’s high heels. The audience thoroughly enjoyed itself. Afterward some French intellectuals complained about Tati ‘making French people objects of ridicule.” I understand Tati spent a year on the script and gags, 24 weeks on the floor, and six months editing and sound mixing.

Italy’s YOUNG HUSBANDS is an episodic and not always consistent exposition of how some youths in a small Italian town realize their carefree days are over, as, one by one, they fall in love and marry. The opening scenes have a certain lyricism and the direction, by Mauro Bolognini, is above average. Armando Nannuzzi’s photography is exceptionally good.

All the world was invited to the reception at the Ambassadeurs staged by the Motion Picture Association of America, and so many came the food, champagne and soft drinks gave out while the grand salon was still jammed.

*Ed. Note: Mr. Koval will cover the Brussels and Venice festivals for us.

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