Extase

Italy's chief cinema censor is Benito Mussolini, and his standards are Mother Hubbardish. But this month Il Duce let down all bars for the International Film Exposition at Venice. To bait this Fascist trap for tourists every major film firm in the world was permitted to send one picture, presumably its best, to be exhibited uncensored. Last week the Venice film show had been stolen by Extase ("Ecstasy"), a Czechoslovak film which nearly every country in the world has suppressed.

Mrs. Fritz Mandel, wife of the president of Austria's famed Hirtenberg Ammunition Works, was, before her marriage last year, Cinemactress Hedy Kiesler who got her start as Eva, the heroine of Extase. Tycoon Mandel not only does everything he can to have the film suppressed in as many countries as possible, but also maintains an offer to buy all outstanding posters of his wife in Extase.

Nearly as silent as, and similar in technique to, a modern Charlie Chaplin film, Extase gets its effects with four main characters, Eva, the Husband, the Lover and the Father. The father breeds horses.

Eva returns to him after her husband fails her on their bridal night. One day Eva rides off, undresses, attaches her clothes to her horse's saddle, goes in for a swim. While she is in the water her horse gallops off with her clothes. The lover appears to help her catch her runaway beast. Naked as Eve, Eva thanks the young man for her horse and clothes, is about to depart when she trips and suffers a slight accident which causes both to spend the night in a cabin. In the cabin scenes Czechoslovak Director de Machaty confines himself almost exclusively to close-ups of Eva's face which Paris critics called "extremely audacious." Later the husband commits suicide.

To Vatican City last week persons who had seen Extase in Venice carried complaints which reached even the ear of Pope Pius XI at his summer retreat in the Alban Hills. Next day the Papal news-organ, L'Osservatore Romano, flayed the goings-on in Venice, deplored the failure of Little Women to prove as popular as Extase, thundered particular displeasure at the loud booing in Venice of a dull French film devoted to exhibiting the beauties of cathedrals.

To rival RKO's Little Women at the Exposition, MGM sent Viva Villa!, Fox The World Moves On, Paramount Death Takes a Holiday, Warner Brothers Wonder Bar, United Artists Affairs of Cellini, Universal The Invisible Man and Walt Disney an unnamed short. Though Extase had unquestionably stolen the show last week, the Exposition's first prize remained to be awarded, was expected to go to some less popular film.

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