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When Le Sang d'un Poet—Novelist Jean Cocteau's effort to use cinema as a medium for autobiographical poetry—opened in Paris last year its consequences were even more extraordinary than its contents. The audience at the premiere, expecting a conventional program picture, engaged in a riot. Royalists, always on the qui vive for a disturbance, attacked it for reasons of their own. His was not the only well-known Parisian name connected with Le Sang d'un Poet. Its heroine was Lee Miller, famed both as a photographer and as a model, whom Cocteau had selected for the rôle. Cocteau's backer was the Vicomte de Noailles, who allowed his house to be used for sets and invited his socialite friends to take minor rôles. Le Sang d'un Poet, because it followed another de Noailles production which showed bishops turning into skeletons, caused the Vicomte to be 1) forced to resign from the Jockey Club; 2) excommunicated. U. S. audiences are likely to be less disturbed by Novelist Cocteau's nightmare metaphors but they may find them—accompanied by Cocteau's voice, in interpolations for emphasis or elucidation, and by George Auric's sombre score—a shade less unintelligible than they sound. Typical shots: A cow with a hide made of maps; blood flowing from the mouth of a small boy; a black man with small gauze wings; wire masks; stars, muzzles of guns, the Virgin Mary, a sofa-back through which emerges a man's head.
Duck Soup (Paramount). Any country governed by Groucho Marx would likely become a shambles. Freedonia,* the scene of this picture, has Groucho for dictator, Brother Zeppo for his secretary. Freedonia's collapse is only delayed by Brothers Chico and Harpo as spies for a rival principality. Groucho is engaged simultaneously in making love to and insulting the richest lady in Freedonia. He is also doing his best to foment war by abusing Ambassador Trentino (Louis Calhern) of Sylvania who makes the mistake of hiring Chico and Harpo. They enter his office armed to the teeth with alarm clocks, scissors for cutting off coat tails, cigar butts and assorted bells. Assigned to pry into the affairs of Groucho, they begin by rolling a peanut stand under his window, making such a disturbance that to keep them quiet he makes Harpo his chauffeur, appoints Chico secretary of war. In the course of conducting their "spy business," Harpo finds three opportunities to run after young women. Chico successfully restrains him. When Chico is tried by Freedonia's supreme court, Groucho feels sorry for him. "This abject specimen . . ." he says. Says Chico: "I abject." When Freedonia finally gets into war, its armies are superior to those of most mythical kingdoms because they contain monkeys and elephants, but they sustain a shameful, shattering defeat.