' 1 1 Chalk and cheese party

AN EMPTY week at the bottom of the year provided the opportunity to catch two movies anybody should find rewarding to pick up.
They are ti complete contrast. One. Breaker Morant ("A" Classic, Haymarket, Odeon Kensington) is a powerful. not to sas emhittered Australian drama of Empire, which broke all records in Australia for an Australian film.
-1 he other, Diabolo Menthe ("A", Minema) is a delicate and accomplished comedy of the springtime of jeurres filles en fleur which WOrl the distinguished French Prix Louis Delluc.
Breaker Morant (a title earned by Morant's talents as 3 horsebreaker) is a drama about an Australian legend of the Boer War. Morant was a real character who has become an Australian martyr. the accused in one of those trials which, like the Dreyfus case became famous or, as the film suggests infamous for the injustice they inflicted. especially at the behest of authority set above the law. Morant (Edward Woodward) was one OF the Australians who volunteered to fight for Britain against the Boers. He got a cornmission in the Bush Veldt Carbineers. and in 1902 with two other Australian officers Handcock (Bryan Brown) and ISlitton (Lewis Fitzgerald) was charged with the murder of Boer prisoners and of a German missionary. The film tells the story of the trial by court martial. with flashes back to illustrate some of the actions which arc the matter of the trial. The issue is one of conscience: yy healer the officers were carrying out orders from above (as high up as Kitchener) or only doing what they saw to he their duty as seemed expedient.
The drama takes its immediate lire from the fine performance of Jack Thompson as Major Thomas, the unpractised but Fearless Australian defence counsel who pits his whole passion against the might of the British War Office apparently determined to execute the Australians as scapegoats for policy mistakes and muddles at high level.
There is another very fine performance of profound and diseplined ironic indignation by Bryan Brown.
Like all the best court-room dramas this involves issues of conscience and stirs concern for justice and injustice. Bruce Beresford. the producer-director is reliably' reported to have said he did not intend the film to be But his powerful and disturbing film which does not scorn sentiment (the two accused found guilty go off together hand in hand to face the firing squad) comes down with vigour and poignancy to a modish running down of the Empire of which my generation were brought up to be so proud. It also succeeds in illustrating and emphasising Beresford's less controversial conviction that war. especially such small-scale, close-at-hand war is a barbarous way to attempt the solution of human problems.
Whether you see Diabolo Menthe as a French girls' school story or as the study of two sisters of slightly differing temperament growing up. its elusive title is apt to its gentle soursweetness.
For me it evoked both Vigo's Zero de Conduite with the clarity of its echoes not only of the authentic sounds of school but the humour enjoyed by the children at the expense of the grown-ups, teachers and parents too (a richly absurd French gym mistress puts in occasional hilarious appearances): and Lac des Cygnes the schoolgirl debut of Simone Simon.
Erederique and Anne Weber (Leonore Klarwein and Odile Michel) the sisters. one teenage, one verging on her teens, live in a Paris apartment with their divorced mother.
For holidays they amicably visit their father and in term-time attend a fairly formidable dayschool. Frederique's interests are beginning to turn to love and politics (Left-wine). Anne is the sensitive new girl patronised, though not without affection, by her elder sister.
A modern and conscientiously "enlightened" mum does her hest to maintain relations of affection and protection with her daughters and to steer them past the evident dangers of contemporary adolescence.
After some distraction Erederique is allowed a week's • A June fills on flour front "Diabolo Menem" "camping" with her boyfriend with the lucky result of a cure when a week proves quite long enough to make the girl realise she couldn't possibly take seriously a man who keeps his money in a purse.
This is a modest, attractive, well-made movie, directed by
Diane Kurys. Everybody is seen wonderfully straight. The children are attractive hut no paragons the grown-ups normal and pretty decent.
Everybody is capable of utter absurdity. but nobody is vicious or even villainous. It accurately creates its own small world and seems to me thoroughly to deserve its distinguished French
award. Thoroughly recommended to all who still like to
Lake their films with pleasure. comfort and a touch of acid humour.
While on French films, let me also recommend the Academy
Cinema's annual bonne bouche
for all serious film-lovers. Especially those too young to know them can see the priceless double bill of Cocteau's acknowledged masterpiece "Offer" with Renoir's enchanting long-short picnic "Partie de Campagne". This ideal holiday treat (for adults) is expected to run till alter Christmas. Although not exactly seasonable, it should provide the motion picture equivalent of a visit to one's favourite art gallery.
Freda Bruce Lockhart