1960-03-28 — Page 6

I

THE TWO FACES OF ROME

by

THE CHINA · MAIL,

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1960.

JAK

K

DONALD EDGAR

KNOW more corrupt cities than Rome. I know more wicked cities than Rome. But I do not know one more decadent. Decadence is the theme of a remarkable film that has unleashed a torrent of antagonism all over Italy-particularly from the Church,

I flew to Rome specially to see it-and to see whether the hopeless- ness towards life that it expresses is really true today. Federico Fellini has called his film La Dolce Vita. Difficult to translate--literally it is "Life is Sweet." But the implications.are ironie-Fellini means "So this is what they call life!"

Fellini shows Dir drendence Te lake in example from of Rurkommu with Fellini's Alm.... orgh.c-Hie beauty against M: bsekground of the classical ruins, the grey stone of the teraissaber palees and churches and the elegant and beautiful women in all the Western world.

The tone'

Wull, des the Roman world of Fellini's imagination exist? Have ing known Home since the wat perhaps I an being slightly dishonest in putting the questioui. I know that the world of I... Dolce Vita is only fou real

The "one" of Roman life is set by a few hundred people... ricky with irresponsible wealth.

But the tone is ked by the majority of the people. They like it. They envy it. They copy it as far as they eith

It is everyone's ambition "per fare una bella figura" --

To make a good show."

It almosphere of round amed, full-bosome luxury of case, of privilege and arrojanay, of charm and a basic disbelief in life as it is today.

There Is a restless search for pleasure that simple pussures, but the complicated pleasures

but is

of the rich, suliated illusioned.

BRITISH JET FOR NEW GERMAN FIGHTER

JET

By PETER WOON

She gets drunk in a night club which is carved sķit of XemiLI ruins. She has fantastle row Maddalene is beautiful. Shr with all her entourage and Kees is a um aristocrat. She is IT with Marcello, They drive She meelsaft into the country. She 1918 highly intelligent, Marcello, the hero. If there out of the ear and hears a dug one, of them, at party calling for his bitch. They go off together. But to Maddalen normal tove-making has long slave lost its Havour.

She is fascinated, and throwa back her head and gives out on answering call.

They drive back to Rome, She

And all the dogs of the sur- She picks up a prostitute at a street corner. They all three go rounding countryside reply. off to a flat. Maddalene boks at The bed. She lies de.w/11 and smiles.

o kitten and wanders

and

GEORGE

are in at the birth of a voice

TODAY N

SESSION

JOANNA

LARSON

'Fraulein,

Now you need brains to get

THIS column wishes to report, humbly, but with

a keen sense of its responsibilities, a radical,

on icks up

with it on her head round the vital change in the social demands of the young.

reels of Rome.

This is what gives-her pleasure

to feel herself a wnaan of the streets.

The two meet again some Time affer at a purs in

the rastle at a noble family.

The guests are all wearing, anung and akl, women and men, The sad mask of disillaion.

the early

They all decals in bours of the morning to visit a deserted villa in the grounds. It is a magicent scene of cinema as they wander through the forund renaissance gardens carrying candelabra,

Her night ends with a fan-No less. lashe scene when she walks Jatu the waters of the Fontane Di Trevi and, half naked, stands under the great flow of water as a gigantic classical Agare.

Spirit

ever

A new era is about lo dawn on the vast world of British enter tammeyil. und Jak and I, our Britain's Enxeru

011 pulse, take pride in having been permitted to be present as the revolution swings inte action, or something.

It is

brilliantly conceived

The mind boggles (especially performance. brilliantly directed.

think even Fellini Jake's mit) at the enormous ha- 1 d not realised just how much he was plications, and words do not giving away at himself.

come easily a this moineat of

pure, For Rome is not only a Rome simple,

untrammelled They have a rather beastly

we'll have seaned among the cobwebs of the fashionable modern world, truth. However,

deserted rooms. is dawn when they return. The family priest is just going into Mass Shane faced, these princely pillars of the Roman Church follow him into the chapel.

of the

Vatican, or of its great bash. renaissance churches, palaces.

There are times here when centuries by back just as if sancthing's gone wrong with a tape recorder.

And at the strength, the lust, Fetini shows a different sort

the cruelty, the power, the won- of party at a with by the seeder, of Rome is here. just outside tome.

This is an orgy that even Nero There is have liked, would drunkenness, strip-tease, per- verse pleasures,

Brilliant

It expresses the despair of old and young! who are rich and disillusioned and trying hard to suck some last pleasure out of

life.

Even a young girl, just about to become a woman, who appear as a theme of innocence in the fm, is already corrupt.

Corrupted by the jake-box

civilisation.

ET engines for a revolu

tionary Messerschmitt supersonic fighter are to be Jointly developed by Rolls-recorders and publicity. Royco and the German company M.A.N. of Augs- burg.

Corrupted by the world that she sees around her the work fast sports cars, TV, tape.

But Item is not only decadent twif. It insers devadence in those who come to live here,

Anita Ekberg gives a brilliant an American performance as

slar overwhelmed by la Dolce Vita.

This has been arranged "with the full approval of the British m und Federal German Govern- uents," it was annoutated.

The engine is the Rolls-Royce RB 153. Six of them will power the Messerschmitt delta-wing design two vertically for straight-up take-off and the other four in pairs mounted in Awivelling peds on the wing-tips.

Leaping out of roughly pre-; pared strips, the fighter is .intended to y at, three times the speed of sound, or 2,000 miles an hour

It is a direct rival to Britain's Hawker P1127, which will also take off verulently but Ry only at subsonic speeds.

STUDY

The RAF. has been Carry- ing out a "vulnerability sludy" to see if its pilots would be safe from Interception in the future without supersonic capability.

Hawker has a lead. The P1137 will dy for the first time this autumn and build up valuable experience. From this a faster- could be than-sound fighter developed if the R.A.F, wishes. From Agters of the future to airliners-

The top speed of any British supersonic airliner should be Jept down to 1,500 miles

AD

hour to escape the unknown perils of the heat barrier or "thermal thickel," the nireraft makers will report today,

This is the basis of faster- than-sound design studies to bo submitted 10 the Aviation Minister, Mr. Duncan Sandys, by the British Aircraft Corpora- tion. (Bristol-English Electric- Vickers) ard tho Hawker Siddeley Group.

At 1,000 miles on hour the airliner woula eross the Atlantic to New York in less than three boure.

-{London. Expresa Sørvice).

is a city nasy to accept on superilcial level. But deeply different, and slightly sinister, as you get to know if

After having said ko much about the decadence of Rome, and its brilliant expression in this film. I feel one ought to say

that many of the points of its decadence are only the more dramatic portrayal of the seuse

No nonsense

What I want to say is that the growing-up teenagers of Great Britain, with minds of their own and money in the same depart ment, have decided that they what brains with their boop- doops.

Further, they have made known to those acolytes of art and curators of culture, the gramophone companies, that the days of gimmicks and goonery are gone. Nonsense is cut. Rock of disillusionment with Western is on the rocks. IF you wanna stay in the groove and the gravy elvisation generally.

however say the inds and lasses of 1960, changed they may be ethnically, you gotta give a songs without still have much of the spirit of stop. ancient Tome.

These

laban,

They dare to be themselves. And boy, how those gramo- They dare to do what other phone companies have come run- nations only think of doing. ning right on the beat! The heat According to tradition Nero's is on. The bowling dervishes and mother said to him: "S! Libel the dying ducks have been dis- Licet" "If you want to, why missed.

not?"

-London Express Service). TOMORROW:

The centre of the universe

Feverishly, and far into the night, the scouts are

they admitted everything, and even had a pianist playing soft music to prove it when Jak pad I went to Bayswater and called on Mr Jack Buversloek, known in the larynx trade as atop A and R man-artisis and reper- tuite manager to you squares,

Mr B., pousing reverently beneath the portraits of Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, said he was prepared to

face the future bravely. If his young cus- tumers wanted Now Voices, then, by nolly, he would see they Ko New Voices.

Also, by a curlous coincidence, he happened to have a Brand New Volce right there at that very moment, not to mention o studio. * musical director recording engineer,

six Instrumentalists Erie, Dave, Johnny, Frank mud Alan, reading, from drums to

lenor sax,

and nained Jack.

In fact, the Voire was so new that Mr Baverstock appeared to have forgotten its name, How ever, it turned out to be Doruk Winston Clarkson, which, 011

in_the_groove!

antiques at

First-ever

It was

But these were trifling tech- nicalities. Given tone, "every- thing would be creamy, rCB creamy. Johnny Carson had a voice that meant something, "Fraulein" would assuredly send thom.

Sella

Waltham IL was lovely.

alsu minutes, 35 seconds, could do Cross, was playing bookey for loud. However, as Mr Baverstock with eight bars off her second the day, and had as yet made pointed out, we were receiving verse, needed strengthening on shade chunky no plans to buy a house for his Father more of Johnny on three top. and was a Mum.

giant loudspeakers than would round the middle. Me loa. the eager, insistent and demand- ing customers on their six-and- fourpence-worth of "pop single." We dur that disc. At the end of an hour, we had come to know Yes, said Derek (meaning the German lady rather well. Johnny), this was his first-ever Qulie Intimately, in fact. We recording session. No, he did not got three helpings, a couple of feel nervous.

piny-backs [com Well, not very gurgling much.

drowning cat called Ralph, and an assurance from Mr Baver- With these salient details on stock that another four or ve

would have the books for posterity, we all attempts went down to Mr Baverstock's Fraulein in pretty good shape vault to hear Johnny sing and rarin' to go. Fraulein and knock 'em in the old Shaftesbury Avenue,

The Voice removed its coat. The new gra was at hand, the world stood still, and, Jak tell over a guline - giving us that preelous but homely incident by which all great moments are so often remembered. Like William the Conqueror burning the cakes

account of you can't get all that at Runnymede. about to be much on a gramophone label, is presented to the British public as Johnny Kreat Carson.

And a very nice young man, too-18-year-old sun of an ex- Army major, soberly Indian dressed in sports Jacket and flannels, brown shoca polished, finger-nails clean, hair cut.

They put Johnny behind a big glass screen, and not a bad idea. either. The band stopped talking The about Manchester United. engineer loosened his yellow tie.

a sol of We stepped over golf clubs and into the control

room. This was it,

"Bugs of Ruiter, Dave!" yelled Born at Allahabad, did well at somebody. Dave gave un bags of listening English and geography, played multar, Jack contributed dollops af bathroom doors for algers right back at soccer, won * of drum. lights Bashe, knobs who c311 sing. art without youth boxing championship for twirled, needles wobbled, and adenolds, and warblers who Enfield started singing when he Johnny, with sweetness, soul, wash their necks,

stood in for his brother, who had and sincerity, sang for us the saga of his pretty fraulein on a cold at an audition 18 months ago.

the banks of the Thine.

Mini you, it is all very hush- hush. However, once cornered,

**They're glying

*Angry Silence.'

London Express Borvien

a

our

At the moment, she was in- gering a little too lang at two

She assuredly sent Jak and me hell-bent for the Bays- water Road.

George Whiling

-London Express Serpige).

ELECTRONIC

DETECTIVE

San Quentin.

A QUIET, grey-haired man serving a sentence for safe-breaking at San Quentin Prison was Detectives "caught" by an electronic machine. were able to track him through his trick of hiding in a place of business until after closing hours.

After a series of such raids, California police ran 10,000 cards through electronic processing chine at the state's crime laboratory.

an

ma-

The machine picked out a dozen safe breakers who apecialised in this type of raid. The police rounded up the suspects, questioned them, and found their man.

'Crime pays?

This case history of elec tronic detective work is only one example of the many ways US police depart-

TALKING

POINTS

has

The spoken word been a mighty factor in the past. But It is not enough. We' must have the written word daily.

-ERNEST DEVIN.

The worst thing you can mants are using new tech-possibly do to a woman is niques to catch criminals. to deprive her of

are grievance.

Law-enforcement officers worried over the stoady rize in the crime rate each year, F.B.I. Chief J. Edgar Hoover has esti- maled that crime cost Ameri- cans nearly 20,000 million last year

-BEVERLEY NICHOLS.

a

The knowledge of the an-

A criminologist, Dr Paul L. clent innguages is mainly a

Kirk, of the University of Cali-fluxury.

fornia, derkles the old nolion

that "crime doesn' pay."

"Crime In the U.S. ia

perhaps one

of the

biggest

businesses in the world today,"

Dr Kirk declared

To meat this problem, study

courses

-JOHN BRIGHT.

QUOTE

by Emperor Halle Selassie of

in new crime-ghing Ethiopia, talling in Addis Ababa

by

about the future of Africa→→→

techniques are being taken police scientists at special train-WE bellove that those new ''Blates that havd) Stready

Ing contra throughout "the country. Some states are making | gained their Independence this specialised training mande+ (shaubt. Colitiw the main kilat

liherly, liku, chartly, hoglui [tory for all palicema

Home.

-¡London Express Nervice).

mcLendon Batymo Zervice),