Letters to the Editor

Illustrious Sugar Bag

SIR: Shortly after reading Peter Ryan’s celebration of the sugar bag (December 2009), I discovered that this humble receptacle had played a part in an important episode of Australian military history.

The rugged and reliable Owen sub-machine gun was designed by Evelyn Owen in 1939, but was originally rejected by the army. In 1941, Owen approached the daughter of the publican of the Hotel Illawarra, Hilda Condon, whom he knew, and asked her to show the prototype to the manager of the Lysaght works in Port Kembla, Vincent Wardell, when he was next in for a drink.

Condon agreed, and Wardell liked what he saw, with the result that the Owen gun eventually went into production and became not only one of the small arms most preferred by Australian soldiers, but the only one designed in this country.

And according to the website where I found this story, the prototype was taken into the pub by Owen, handed over to Condon, and then passed on to Wardell, securely ensconced in a sugar bag.

Bill James,

Bayswater, Vic.

Silent Magic

SIR: A particular pleasure of the October and November editions of Quadrant was Neil McDonald’s celebration of the “magic” of silent masterpieces, both recently re-released (Bardelys the Magnificent), and always treasured (Rex Ingram’s deservedly acclaimed Scaramouche). When lecturing on the history of film, I always find it a special challenge to ensure that youthful viewers, who maddeningly tend to confuse contemporary refinements of special effects with cinematic artistry, appreciate the silent classics in an appropriate manner, free of the horrible vice of what C.S. Lewis once dubbed “chronological snobbery”. Neil McDonald is spot on when he states that silent film is most insightfully analysed “as a kind of mime or ballet”.

The problem of winning over youth is particularly acute when it comes to performance in silent films. One has to battle to make the young see that Neil McDonald’s tribute to the actors in Scaramouche sums up the impact of all great silent performances: “To us they may seem stylised, but they are always truthful and ultimately very moving.”

This seminal point, I feel, needs some expansion, for the link between acting in ballet and opera and acting in silent movies needs further exploration. As early as 1962, when “poaching” on ballet critics’ terrain, Kenneth Tynan perceptively compared Margot Fonteyn in Giselle, “signalling madness while spinning so prettily”, to Mary Pickford at her best. In his 2007 review of Mary Zimmerman’s Met production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Daniel Mendelsohn castigates the director for failing to understand that “high stylization, the starkly meaningful gesture … paradoxically releases, rather than constrains, emotional realism”. There, I think, lies the rub. It is a failure to distinguish “emotional realism” from the superficial realism of more naturalistic performance that blinds many twenty- first-century moviegoers to the greatness of, say, Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms or The Wind (surely two of the most moving performances on screen) and of the glorious, often under-rated Ramon Novarro in the 1925 Ben Hur.

I would like to differ with Neil McDonald over the later career of the tragic John Gilbert. Gilbert was certainly a great silent star, blessed with the lightness of touch and marvellous truthfulness that Neil McDonald pinpoints, and he is touchingly unforgettable in The Big Parade. However, Gilbert’s attempts to adapt to the demands of the talkies are embarrassing and sad to witness. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with his voice, but his relentless striving after greater “realism” becomes little more than pop-eyed hamming. He is risible in Mamoulian’s Queen Christina.

The journey from silent-film acting to sound-film acting is akin to a change from ballet to straight theatre. Some stars—Gish (as great in The Night of the Hunter as in any of her silent masterpieces) and Garbo leap to mind—made the transition with seemingly effortless aplomb. Others, among whom one must number Gilbert and Novarro (never as engaging in his sound films as in his silent epics) stumbled along the way. But the glory of their performances in a medium truly suited to their more stylised gifts should never be forgotten. Neil McDonald’s erudite and entertaining pieces help to intensify the admiration of silent-film aficionados, and to enlighten those putative cineastes who have not yet succumbed to the enchantment of the silent cinema.

Digby Ricci,

Roedean School,

Johannesburg,

South Africa.

Robust Evolution

SIR: In his review of the book Adam’s Tongue by Derek Bickerton (November 2009) Michael Giffin states that both evolution and intelligent design are theories, not theorems. I would suggest that the concept of evolution is as robust as the concept that life on earth exists on a spinning ball which orbits around a star. Both concepts are robust, allowing testable predictions to be made. The same cannot be said for intelligent design.

Donald G. Runcie,

Killcare, NSW.

Our Moral Society

SIR: It is hard to ascertain exactly what B.J. Coman is advocating in “Why Philosophy Buries Its Undertakers” (October 2009).

Mr Coman claims that “We have … lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality” … “we are without a map in a totally strange landscape”. This is apparently due to the rejection of metaphysics by science, its gelding in Christianity and its absence in modern philosophy. His assertion, like so many emanating from the church, and, curiously, from the postmodern relativist Left, that our material, secular, world is somehow falling apart with no values, reminds one of Nietzsche’s prophetic remark, “The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”

This presumption, on the behalf of all of us, is unplugged from any empirical evidence. It thus seems doomed to end up with the Undertaker of Mr Coman’s title. What seems unarguable is that the materially prosperous and secular West has achieved social and political arrangements that have never before existed in human history. Through effective democracy, the rule of law, and a separation of powers we have achieved, historically speaking, a remarkably just and moral society. We have freedom from slavery, poverty and starvation, universal education, an underlying acceptance of a merit-driven, open society which challenges notions of caste and class. Most importantly, human life is valued more comprehensively as a universal ideal by more people than at any other time on Earth. Our culture preaches tolerance and we practise in a daily and most routine way the edict “do unto others” and “love thy neighbour”. This is surely a remarkable “moral” achievement.

Nevertheless, what does Mr Coman suggest to fill his imagined metaphysical void, how do we achieve it, and with whose map? This is totally unclear. Karl Popper warns us, in his remarkable book The Open Society and Its Enemies, that mystical or religious faculties are very dangerous. The claim for metaphysical values, with their “gentle allusion to those who do not possess God’s grace” is, in Popper’s opinion, as “pretentious, blasphemous and anti-Christian, as it believes itself to be humble, pious and Christian”. Popper is concerned with the intoxication with “oracular philosophy” and its revolt against reason. Borrowing from G.B. Shaw, he sees that metaphysics and philosophy are a “way to madden ourselves with words”. Popper would claim that what people like Mr Coman seem to compensating for, without being aware of it, “is the loss of tribalism”. He predicts that this will “return us all to the closed society … a return to the cage, and to the beasts”.

For an antidote, I suggest Mr Coman try some of Dr Johnson’s medicine as he himself describes it from Boswell’s Life of Johnson. He should drop a heavy stone on his foot to wake him from his circular and ultimately meaningless speculations about metaphysics.

Andrew McIntyre,

Carlton, Vic.

2029 is Soon Enough

SIR: I believe the Australian Labor Party’s republic process model should be opposed and a second referendum on the subject put back at least twenty years.

Australians deserve constitutional certainty. The two non-binding polls supported by Kevin Rudd have the potential to destabilise one of the most successful constitutions in the world. A government can make support for a plebiscite virtually anything they want by the formulation of words put to the electorate, who are in effect asked to write politicians a blank cheque.

There should be a moratorium on the issue until 2029, with the agreement of the parliamentary parties backed by legislation similar to the Flags Amendment Act 1998. Republicans can use the interim to go about the enormous task of developing a model for an elected presidency and let the text of their proposed amendment lie on the table, ready to be tabled in parliament and put to the people when a groundswell of public opinion sufficient to justify this course of action exists.

Nigel Morris,

Gunnedah, NSW.