Out There

Were you out there? In December of 1953 I was eleven years old and living in the banlieu south east of Paris. My family would go into the city centre so my parents could meet up with their friends - expatriates and émigrés from middle Europe either side of the so called Iron Curtain – and my brothers and I would go to the movies. That year a new form of film projection swept round the world. Cinemascope had arrived. The first film to be shown was “The Robe” a Technicolor extravaganza advertised as “The First Picture on the New Miracle Curved Screen. The opening in Paris was at the Rex Cinema at 1 Boulevard Poissonière. It had been closed for some time for renovations to install the new technology. The film attracted much attention and the newly refurbished Rex was as extravagant as the publicity. The ceiling was a replica of the night sky complete with twinkling stars, held up by walls mimicking the gardens of Babylon and Egyptian Temples. At least that’s how I remember it. The film starred a 28 year old Richard Burton and 24 year old Jean Simmons as the young lovers. Burton plays Marcellus Gallio a Roman Tribune sent to Palestine who ends up commanding the troops who crucify Christ. After the crucifixion, his slave Demetrius (played by Victor Mature) has hold of Christ’s robe, described as a good homespun cloth. In the course of the ensuing thunder storm following Jesus’s death, Demetrius cover’s Marcellus with the robe to protect him from the rain, promptly causing Marcellus to scream in agony at the touch of the cloth against his skin. He is of course sent mad, cannot sleep and suffers from nightmares when he does. Whenever he wakes from these flashbacks or hears the words ‘out there’ he cries out “Were you out there? Were you out there?” To the other characters in the film this is naturally evidence of his madness and instability; however, so far as the audience is concerned he was clearly feeling the guilt and awe inspiring power of the revelations made apparent by the touch of the sacred cloth. It is only a matter of time before Marcellus recognises the ‘the truth’. The story follows the classic Aristotelian unities of Peripeteia and Anagnorisis or reversal and recognition. Indeed, all the unities (imitation, purification, miscalculation, consistency of plot, character, thought, speech, melody and spectacle) are present.

 

Not that I was fully aware of this at the time, but what I was aware of (through the conversations of my parents with the expatriates and émigrés) was that one of the screenwriters, unaccredited in 1953, was the writer Albert Maltz. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were fined and goaled for contempt of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and subsequently blacklisted from work.

Albert Maltz wrote an Oscar winning documentary entitled The House I Live In (1945), staring Frank Sinatra. A young Frank Sinatra is in the studio with a full orchestra. He records a take of "If You Are But a Dream," then breaks for a smoke. From the studio, he steps into an alley where he sees nearly a dozen kids chasing one smaller boy. Frank stops them, asks why, and they tell him it's because of the boy's religion. So Frank asks them if they're Nazis and explains a few things about America, blood banks, World War II, and teamwork. Then he sings "The House I Live In" for them. Off the lads scamper, and the kid Frank's saved gives him a look of gratitude (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037792/plotsummary) There is a certain irony between the writer’s work and his own life which sort of jumps out at one. Writing is like that. There is so much stuff out there that touches us and makes us mad. “Were you out there?”