Desiree

It is very easy to scoff at this movie and to laugh at the amount of talent and money Hollywood has squandered on another of its epics. But it should be pointed out that Henry V and Gone With the Wind were both Technicolor epics, yet succeeded as art as well as escapist entertainment. Desiree does neither, though it had all the potentialities: a cast of true actors, a sensitive script writer, and a factual basis in one of history's more romantic escapades. Its great flaw stems from the fact that it was filmed in a wide-screen process by a director who was apparently ignorant or stubborn.

If in the past you have mocked Hollywood's attempts to expand into new dimensions and greater areas, let me assure you that Desiree is neat. Viewing the second feature seems like squinting at 8 mm. home movies. The tragedy of Desiree is that all Cinema-Scope's potentialities are ignored.

Consider. The movie is about Napolcon, his rise to power, and the concomitant progress of one of his early loves (Desiree). Yet the most spectacular incident, the most fluid action shot, that the camera can come up with is a sequence of a carriage being driven along the banks of a river. The rest of the movie is limited to an endless series of ballrooms, bedrooms, and close-ups, all spectacular of course, but all as visually dramatic as the growth of a stalagmite.

When one considers the delicate balance of war and love in Olivier's Henry and the use he could have made of the wide-screen process in the Agincourt sequence, the waste in Desiree becomes apparent. The Napoleonic Wars are depicted by a faked-up melange of tricolors and flames.

Inside their gaily-colored cocoon, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons manage to show a little life before succumbing to the extravagant boredom that surrounds them. In the opening scenes Brando almost seems convincing as the brash young general who knew he would conquer Europe, while Miss Simmons is winsome without being sticky. But by the end of the picture--and this perhaps may be a very subtle intentional change--Brando is only a powerful bore, mouthing bad aphorisms in an Old School accent, while Miss Simmons' archness has become a bit wearing.

Around the turn of the century a popular form of entertainment was the "living tableau" in which luxuriously-costumed people stood stock-still in the midst of lavish sets, portraying famous paintings or moments in history. I am afraid that Twentieth-Century Fox has produced the greatest living tableau of all, complete on a wide screen. MICHAEL J. HALBERSTAM '53