Correspondence
A LETTER FROM PARIS.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Along the broad boulevards and by the banks of the winding Seine the trees have hung their " leafy banners out," and -the Season, we conclude, has well arrived. Paris, how- ever, so far does not strike one as being very full. London, during a fleeting visit, seemed to be much busier. Anyhow, the Season is still comparatively young, for in these days we do- not consider it outrageous to be seen in the Avenue de l'Opera after the Grand Prix at the end of June. We linger long into July and even August before we think of Deauville and La Baule.
Paris indeed is changing. It is becoming more cosmopolitan than ever it was, and its habits and customs are more than ever moulded by the yearly invasion of foreign visitors. Last year, for instance, it is computed that 761,000 Britons, 225,000 Americans, 415,000 Spaniards and 400,000 Swiss spent their holidays in France, and most of this army of nearly 1,800,000 it may be assumed came to Paris. All the forecasts point to that number being well maintained this year. Paris, too, is changing in aspect. This season the extension of the Boulevard Haussmann into the Grands Boulevards, from being a mere " cut," has developed into a beautiful new thoroughfare of milk-white buildings—hotels, luxury shops, and cafés—all occupied and animated with busy life. The fine sweep of the Avenue des Champs Elysies, too, is undergoing a great transformation. Huge blocks of buildings, famous private residences, from whose gateways but a few years back there rolled carriages with high-stepping horses, are melting .away, and in their place are rising magnifi- cent structures in white stone. Arcades with .flashing foun- tains, Oriental bathing pools, palm courts in which one may sip one's aperitif to orchestral music—these are the features of the New Elysian Fields of wealth and luxury.
Outstanding even in this cosmopolitan city is the cosmo- politan character of the season from a theatrical and operatic point of view. We have at this moment the Vienna State. Opera, from stars, chorus, and orchestra to the machinists and property men, in possession of the Opera House. At the new Salle Pleyel, now a very fine concert hall, Mynheer Willem. Mengelberg has been conducting the famous Amsterdam Orchestra in a Beethoven programme. Italy has been repre- sented by Signor Alfredo de Sanctis, who has been playing at the Odeon Theatre. Germany has figured in a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herr Wilhelm Fiirtwangler, and to crown the season of European. harmony Paris is soon to be the scene of the Festival of the Societe Universelle du Theatre in which French, German, Italian, and Czech artistes will conibine in presenting five Mozart operas at the Theatre des Champs Elysees. Actors and musicians could surely do no more toward promoting the concert of European peoples.
Is the film play influencing the legitimate stage ? After
seeing M. Jean Victor Pellerin's. latest play Cris des Coeurs at the Theatre de rAvenue, about which all Paris is talking —not always in complimentary terms—one is inclined to think it is M. Pellerin will not have his piece called a play at all. It is, if you please, " a spectacle in three plays." There is dialogue, it is true, but it does not matter much. For the most part it consists of incoherent exclamations 91 interrogation and altercations between troubled and excited people. The real play is pictorial, and the most extraordinary
of the scenes is the middle one, in which the stage shows the interior of four rooms of an apartment house, two above and two below, the view in fact that one gets of the interior of a doll's house. In each room, illuminated in turn, we see a couple engaged in troubled argument—a boy and girl student in one, 'a broken wife and an erring husband in another, a Thinker, tortured with thinking, and his pretty wife in third, and a courtesan and her lover in a fourth. All it seems to convey is that mast people are worried and per- plexed by something, which of course may be quite true, but after it is all over we are left wondering how these form- less scenes help us to understand the fact. The play certainly apes the film, but the film would have made a far better job of it.
The French cinema world seems inclined to congratulate itself on the compromise recently effected with the American film trade, under which the latter will be allowed to send seven films to France for every French film sold to America. It may be very much questioned, however, whether these measures restricting importation meet the vital problem that the European film industry has to face. It may succeed in preventing the importation of American films, but it is apparently powerless to stop the steady " export " of European film genius to America. And therein lies the real peril, for, robbed of its genius, not all the protection in the world - will save the European film. It is like protecting a flickering gas flame from the wind and failing to stop the big hole in the gasometer. One is led to such reflections by the fact that, following the French film protection " victory," comes the announcement that M. Jacques Feyder, one of the finest of French producers, is shortly to leave for America to join the Metro-Goldwyn combination.
Londoners, who not long ago were sharply reminded of their own flood problems, will be interested to know that Paris at long last is considering plans for controlling the oft unruly Seine. The plans are remarkable for their wide scope. Paris has realized that the Seine must be dealt with as a river, and not merely as a piece of water running through the centre of the city that sometimes rises and causes floods. The plans have therefore been considered from a triple stand- point : (1) The prevention of floods ; (2) The irrigation of the area through which the river flows ; and (3) The possi- bility of deriving hydraulic power from the stream for generat- ing electricity. One of the main features of the scheme is the construction of three great reservoirs, which in time of flood will trap the waters from the tributaries. Some idea of the magnitude of the work may be gathered from the fact that one of the reservoirs will be nearly five miles long, with a wall in certain sections over 150 feet high.
In the Chamber of Deputies the big date indicator already
announces June 1st in readiness for the assembly of the new Parliament on that date. Newly elected deputies are already finding their way to the capital from far constituencies, and any day now you may see little groups of newly fledged politicians making their first acquaintance with the Palais Bourbon. Friendly ushers show them their allotted seats, into which they plump with a self-conscious air of being quite used to their surroundings. In the meantime the various political groups are busy considering their respective attitudes and possible combinations. From the right we hear and read much these days of the rehabilitation of the Vat. The Goverturent is there to govern, we are told, not to be swayed by the clamour of political, social and official organizations. And one gathers that it will be in something of this stern and unbending mood that M. Poincsre will meet the new Chamber of Deputies on June lst.—I am, Sir, Jrc.,
YOUR PARIS COI.RESPONDENT.
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