Symphonie Pastorale

In transferring Andre Gide's short tale, "La Symphonie Pastorale" to the screen, the responsible French parties have done it with such skill that if perfection is to be the goal of similar efforts, "Symphonie Pastorale" can well serve as the criterian.

The written version was told in the form of a diary kept by a Swiss pastor. In it the reader was allowed to see what went on around the Pastor as well as what went on in his mind. The reader saw him take the blind girl into his family, saw him slowly grow to love her, and saw the suffering this love caused among his family. The reader could see this as well as the almost inevitable climax, but the Pastor could see neither. This gave the tale a special horror: there you (the reader) were, there he stood, and over there is family and the girl. Parties one and three were helpless while watching the good man being destroyed by a love that was only the consequence of his goodness.

This reader-relationship with the pastor has, of course, been lost in the film version. The camera and not the Pastor now tells the story. Some of the subtlety is lost when in order to reveal the wife's knowledge of her husband's love for the girl, she must peek in through a window and see them together.

The simple story is also allegorical: this can be easily seen in the leisure of reading but is likely to be overlooked in witnessing the cinema version.

However, what has been unavoidably 'lost' in the filming is greatly outbalanced by the production of Jean Delannoy, the director and adaptor. M. Dellannoy is also producer of the Cocteau films, and like them, he has furnished this one with an excellent score by George Aurie.

The acting of the entire cast is above all reproach. Michele Morgan, as the blind girl, and Pierre Blanchar, as the Pastor, are ideally cast and give sensitive, intelligent performances. No less impressive is Line Noro, who plays the wife.

It will be difficult to forget the expression on Mlle. Noro's face when the blind girl returns home from the hospital with her vision restored. It is the most emotional scene this reviewer can recall having seen in a motion-picture. It reaches its peak when the wife introduces herself to the girl, her unwilling rival, with the quite words: "I'm Amelie."

Michele Morgan plays her role with a kind of feline softness and grace. Her purity and helplessness make her a natural object for protection. The Pastor of M. Blanchar is a man who acts as his faith (the Good Sheperd) and his natural inclination lead him. He presents the Pastor as postponing the girl's cure not solely because it will mean losing her love, but because she has given him spiritual (and vocational) satisfaction as well. M. Blanchar's Pastor moves with automatic thoroughness towards the catastrophe, not thinking, as other men might, whether what he is doing is right or wrong. What he is doing is natural.

The sub-titles with "Symphonic Pastorale" are the most gratifying in a long while. One of Gide's English translators, Justin O'Brien, is credited with writing them. The omnipresent Herman Weinberg is also credited with an "American adaptation." This should please Meneken, but it puzzles me, and it might Mr. O'Brien, who is a professor at Columbia.

Andre Gide has lived to hear his works pronounced first immoral and then immortal, which may or may not prove true. In the less strenuous competition for cinema immortality, "Symphonie Pastorale" may or may not prove to be worthy, but from here it looks to be a sure thing.