THE CINEMA
" The Story of Stalingrad." At the Plaza.--" Air Force." At Warner's.—" The Bells Go Down." At the London Pavilion.
A GREAT temptation besets the propagandist whose task it is to justify the sacrifices of war. By selecting only the heroics he can present a picture which is more like the fulfilment of a schoolboy's day-dream than a record of the grim phthisis of civilisation. Because the temptation is strong we are being flooded with war-films which are scarcely calculated to impress upon the younger genera- tion the need to keep the post-war peace. Construction is a less spectacular operation than demolition. This week there is to be seen a film which argues the justice of our Allied cause with a power as yet unequalled amongst the war films and which simul- taneously shows with horrible clarity that war is a monstrous thing. When peace comes most of our current productions will be locked hastily away and the screens freed for the inevitable series of anti- war films, but there will be no need to lock away The Story of Stalingrad. It tells the truth about war and is therefore in- evitably an anti-war film. But it tells at the same time such an awe- inspiring story of human fortitude that we are left convinced that causes can exist in men's minds for which no physical sacrifice can he too great.
The film traces the history of the city on the Volga from its earliest days. We are reminded of its heroic role in the revolution and we see grow up the magnificent white buildings of a great industrial city. Then comes the war. On the screen maps trace the course of Nazi strategy and finally Stalingrad becomes the keystone of Russian resistance. To it the Soviet armies cling through months of indescribable horror, their grip much more precarious than the outside world was ever allowed to know. Maps show the thin isolated strips of Russian-held territory on the Volga's west bank, while the cameras show the city being gradually but completely destroyed. Before it concludes with the surrender of the trapped Germans The Story of Stalingrad runs the whole ghastly gamut of modern mechanised warfare, with spectacular barrages of shell and rocket, broad .advances by enormous deployed armies and fights to the death in rubble-choked cellars ; but more moving than the fighting is its effect upon the bodies of the soldiers and the lives of the people whose city they have chosen for a battlefield. The com- bination of high-explosive and bitter cold reduces German prisoners to an almost sub-human level. As the returning people of Stalin- grad carry back their pathetic bundles of household goods to what- ever shelter they can find amongst the shattered walls of their homes, they pick their way amongst corpses frozen into grotesquely lively attitudes. There are moments when the underlying emotion breaks through to the surface, as when the two encircling armies meet or when trapped Germans are kicked out of their hiding- places by angry Red soldiers who have not forgotten the comrades
whose bestially mutilated bodies are shown in the film ; but for the most part the heroism and the horror is communicated by people who seem to have been hypnotised by the scale of the destruction. It is a pity that in a film of such factual accuracy the military value of the prolonged resistance of von Paulus's men in limiting the sub- sequent Russian advance has been so much minimised.
The conception of war offered by Air Force is more comfortable. This is one of the most expensive and spectacular of recent produc- tions and it contains excellent aerial photography as well as a defeat for a Japanese convoy (unfortunately in model form) speedier and more complete than any set-back suffered by a nation at war in modern times. Previously the film has followed a Flying Fortress right across the Pacific. Members of the crew sacrifice their lives for the aircraft and it manages always to stay just ahead of the chattering little yellow men who, as Hollywood propaganda develops, display more and more of the habits of monkey hill. The attempt to make the aircraft the hero of the film fails in spite of the introduction of plenty of interesting detail of the routine of bomber operation. The aircraft might have been given a personality of its own like a well-made ship, but instead we find ourselves expected to shed tears for what remains a mass-production job in aluminium.
The Bells Go Down scarcely matches the brilliant authenticity of Fires Were Started in its account of the blitz on London. On the other hand, it gives a broader picture (rather surprisingly since this is primarily a story film), and non-Londoners may well get from it a better idea of the scale and variety of the holocaust and of the problems of tackling it with a mixture of amateur and professional firemen. (There are also street-markets and pubs which one missed in the earlier film.) The fact that The Bells Go Down has more comedy than tragedy brings out the special significance in adversity of this characteristic cockney safety-valve, and it is a pity that the mawkish contribution of two most uncockneylike young lovers could not have been jettisoned in favour of something less refined. The model work fs excellent and Finlay Currie and James Mason arc very good as hard-bitten professional firemen, but the main reason why one can forgive this film most of its studio-originating gaffes is the presence of Tommy Trinder, a comedian who is now so at ease on the screen that he turns what might have been a conven- tional hero's death-scene into a climactic episode which our screen
tragedians will watch with bewildered envy. EDGAR ANSTEY.
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