The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 19

UTERARY SECTION THE AGE, SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1961 19 Australian Farmers Showed Genius For Invention Necessity was originally the mother of invention, though luxury has probably taken its place in this age of plenty. Necessity was certainly a great stimulus to Australian farmers in the 19th century, and some remarkable inventions were the result. Mi vivfife? few 'u I kt Latin-American Flavor In Tenth Film Festival No one would dare assess in advance the quality of an exhibition of 120 films from nearly every country on Earth that makes them. On paper, the line-up for this year's Tenth Melbourne Film Festival does not appear as outstanding as last year's, when several near-masterpieces came at once. AT THE CINEMA with COLIN BENNETT cent girl brought up in a puritan Buenos Aires family in the early 'twenties.

Spain sends Lazarillo de Tonnes, from a picaresque 17th-century Marcellino-ish tale, and Log, Golfos, about a group of Madrid delinquents who rob and cheat to set up a bull under licence from bis firm were welcomed all over the world. The stump-jump plough was the Invention of Richard Smith, of South Australia, in the early 1870's. This plough not only solved' the problem of damage to plough shares and mould boards caused by striking hidden Uumps and stones, but also made It possible to use the Mallee as a wheat-growing area without the huge expense of first grubbing out all the countless tough Mallee roots. It is said that the Idea of the stump-jump plough was gained by chance in 1871 when Smith was ploughing stumpy ground. He broke one of the bolts holding the arm carrying the mouldboard to the beam.

To his surprise the broken plough worked better over the rough ground, since It tended to ride over the stumps and- then return to its work. Smith developed this idea, placing a 56-lb. weight on a hinged extension to the beam, so that pressures WHITE NIGHTS. Spectacle from the Soviet color version of Dostoevsky. UT WHO KNOWS WHAT surprises and delights are hidden here One thine is certain: once more.

4000 Melbourne film lovers will be enjoying, in the three weeks between May 22 and June 12, more fine art and entertainment than they get in the other 49 weeks of the year put together. For those who demand labels, the 1961 Festival may go down as the "Spanish-Latin American year." It includes no fewer than three Mexican features by that singular veteran, Luis Bunuel; two more from Spain itself; a renowned feature from a new force in the film world, Argentina: and a famous study of Pablo Picasso. Each year the festival imports one silent classic, and I cannot imagine any film in history more ballads is of powerful effect. That of The Daemon Lover is no exception. Satan suddenly grows to an enormous size, so huge that he can smash the topmast with his hand and the foremast with his knee.

The ship sinks like lead, and we know that the supremely selfish will be hurled headlong Into hell. The Daemon Lover: Grim Tempter The famous critic George Saintsbury once wrote: "If the best twenty or so traditional English ballads had been written by one man (which is not impossible), he would haye some claims to be placed near and striking them with his other hand. All the grain flew out, and a great idea was born. Ridley often grew or bought standing crops for milling, and grew Impatient at the slowness, unreliability and expense of hand-scything. Possibly he heard of the Ideas and rough plans of Bull, but In a remarkably short space of time he built a practical stripper.

This machine caught the heads of the wheat between long steel prongs, threshed them with swiftly revolving beaters, and shot the grain, chaff and other debris Into a long bin. Thus the old technique of harvesting was both mechanised and short-circuited. The stalks were left standing in the field, and the stripper collected a mixture of grain and light debris that only had to be winnowed. This operation was done in a hand-driven machine on the field itself. Not only was the cost of harvesting greatly reduced when Ridley began to manufacture his strippers in Adelaide, but there was less reliance on human labor.

This was especially important in the 1850's, when the gold rushes caused an acute shortage of farm workers. A stripper would only work economically if the crop was of even height and not flattened by wind or hail. So James Morrow, pf Victoria, produced the first successful "header" in 1872. This machine cut as much of the head as was needed to secure a maximum return from the crop, and could be adjusted to suit various conditions. Winnowing was an expensive and Irksome business, so a number of Australians tried their hands at making a "combine" that would deliver clean grain on the field Itself.

It was Hugh McKay, the 18-year-old son of a Scottish migrant who had settled at Victoria, who built the first "combine" in the log-and-bark smithy on his father's selection. He disliked the back-breaking work associated with harvesting, and tinkered with parts of old machines and pieces of fencing wire with wonderful results. Treated at first as a joke by other farmers, McKay's "combine" showed that wheat and other grain crops could be stripped, threshed, winnowed, and bagged In-one continuous operation. The cost of harvesting was reduced from 12 to 4d. a bushel, and the "combines" built at Ballarat and the Sunshine works near Melbourne saved the Australian wheat industry from possible extinction In the face of competition from Canada, Russia, and the Argentine.

Later McKay made "header combines" as well as "stripper combines." and machines made THE STUMP JUMP plough, the the header harvester, and the shearing machine are basically Australian achievements. They have exercised a profound influence on agriculture throughout the world. Until the 1870 's farming methods In Australia were mostly well behind those of the motherland. Wheat waj sown by hand, sheep were, shorn with hand blades after being Individually washed, and all crops had to be separately winnowed after harvesting. As a result, huge areas of territory could not be effectively farmed, workers In primary industry had a gruelling time.

But the hard conditions served an incentive to invention, so that Australia's contribution to the development of agricultural machinery was impressive by any standards. In the early years of settlement cereal crops were cut with a sickle or icythe. The "rake and cradle" tcythe was regarded as particularly advanced, for it enabled the crop to be laid neatly in rows for tying Into sheaves by hand. The first mechanical reaper was in English invention of the early 19th century, but not many came to Australia In the convict days. Then Cyrus McCormick, an American, improved the model considerably, but the crop still had to be raked into heaps and tied into sheaves by hand.

McCormick incorporated many Improvements during the next forty years, usually buying them from other inventors. In 1872 he bought out the first reaper-and-binder, which delivered bound sheaves in one operation-. He became a multi-millionaire as his machines spread all over the world. Wonderful though the reaper ana binder was, it was by no means perfect for countries growing millions of ncres. Ideally only the actual grain should be harvested, for by any other method immense weights oi useless stalks have to be handled before the grain Itself is finally winnowed out.

The story of the invention of the stripper Is a complicated one, not fully unravelled because conflicting claims were made when patent rights were disputed. To a South Australian farmer named John Bull must go the credit for the original idea, but it was John Ridley; an Adelaide miller and farmer, who built the first model the "locomotive thresher" as he called it. In 1843 a really efficient reaper might mow an acre in a long day. One hot summer's day Bull's reapers did not move from the "grogshop," and next day he showed them that the wheat was already over-ripe by gathering some standing heads between his forked fingers fighter. The Picasso film is Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Mystcre Picasso, the long-awaited 75-minute experiment by the French master of suspense, in which he studies the artist himself and records him drawing and painting in color and Cinemascope by looking through the painting as he works.

Russia's main festival entries may prove outstanding. Both are literary adaptations the veteran Josef Helfitz's version of Chekhov's short story Lady with a Little Dog, which Is said to contain his elegaic stillness, melancholy and perfect period atmosphere; and White Nights, a Sovcolor version of Dostoevsky's "sentimental novel," again remarkable for its capturing of atmosphere a world of misty romantic entanglements. India's Satyahjit Ray, between instalments of his wonderful Bengal trilogy about the boy Apu, made Jalsaghar (The Music Room), which is closer to the traditional Indian cinema and unfolds a story of the decline of the last member of a noble family. From Finland comes The Unknown Soldier, the "frlghteningly impressive" war film which follows the fates of a Finnish machine gun detachment fighting the Russians from 1941 to 1944. The ingredients are those one might expect after last year's Finnish entry: vital characters, coarse language and horrifying realism.

The Higher Principle, from Czechoslovakia, is a drama about the moral courage of a school master after three boys have been executed during the Nazi occupation. Paw Boy of Two Worlds marks Denmark's contribution to the color problem and tells of a West Indian "boy Crusoe" and his escape to a Danish forest. And from France there is Lola Montes the colorful life of the courtesan and the last (unfinished) work of the cinema's supreme stylist, Max Ophuls, shot in color Cinemascope with Martlne Carol and Peter Ustinov. Short Features ON TOP OF THESE AND A dozen other features, festival-goers face 100 shorter pictures I I K- for his marriage. Now he seems to return to "seek my former vows." She tells him flatly to "hold his tongue," for she has married someone else in the meantime.

Satan is a perfect actor, and turns away in tears. He says that he would never have gone to Ireland but for her sake. Moreover, while he was abroad he could have married a princess had he not believed that his betrothed would remain loyal to him. The woman mocks him and says cynically: "Why didn't you marry the king's daughter After all, you knew that I was only a poor commoner. "I wouldn't have been' upset If you had done so.

However, what have you got to offer me if I leave my husband and two children and run away with you The temptation now begins. Satan says that he is a wealthy man nevertheless, for he has come with a fleet of eight ships to claim her. Only one Is at present in harbor, but it is splendidly equipped. Without hesitation, the wife accepts the offer. She picks up her two babies, gives each two kisses, and callously declares that she will never see them again.

This is a particularly telling verse, for it emphasises her complete ruthless-ness. When she boards the ship she finds it is indeed richly furnished, but is puzzled that there are no sailors on board. After a few miles she notices that her lover's face becomes dark, saturnine, and devilish. Then she looks down at his feet and with horror sees his cloven hooves, for tradition has it that Satan can never hide them, however successfully he can Impersonate human' beings. She knows she Is doomed.

The devil sarcastically tells her that he is going to show her "how the lilies grow on the banks of Italy." We are reminded of Shakespeare's "primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." They-pass by the pleasant and sunny hills of heaven to Satan's mocking, and finally come within sight of hell, which is a "mountain of frost and snow." The idea of hell being a freezing place may seem strange to us today, but in mediaeval times it was believed that Satan was embedded in Ice in the very centre of a blazing hell. The last stanza of most of the CERTAINLY THEY ARE works of genius, with great dramatic power and astonishing economy of language. Most oi tnem nave a brilliant infusion of the supernatural, and among these is The Daemon Loner. The greatest of traditional ballads of England seem to have been composed in the North Country in the ISth century, though we possess them in much later versions. They are all anonymous, and their origin is a mystery that has never been The "ballad question" has been fiercely debated for two centuries, but opinions still vary between' the "original artist" theory and 'the "communal composition'' hypothesis.

However they originated, the bid ballads were the "poetry of the common people," passed down by memory through the centuries. They were collected by research workers just as they were dying out under competition from modern printed literature. Ballad themes are rarely abstruse or complicated. They are usually furnished by the more elementary aspects of human life. Love, hatred, loyalty, treachery, murder and all kinds of personal temptation are frequent subjects.

Some of the stories are eerie, macabre and terrifying. The theme of The Daemon Lover is a grim and sordid one. Those who object to this kind of writing should remember that many of the world's greatest stories, even from the Old Testament and children's collections, are full of cruelty and horror. The scene. of The' Daemon Lover is sef somewhere on the sea coast of northern England or southern Scotland, probably opposite Ireland.

The period is probably the 16th century. At that time an engagement or betrothal was a much more binding affair than it is today. It was almost the equivalent of marriage. We are presented with a woman who is quite ruthlessly selfish, and who puts her own pleasure and gain before all the obligations of faith and decency. To her returns the man who resembles the lover to whom she plighted her troth seven years before.

Actually, it is Satan in disguise, come to snare her soul through her own faithless greed. It would appear that her lover had gone to Ireland to gain money THE HOUSE OF THE ANGEL. Argentinian drama of lost innocence in adolescence. School For Young Let me Just mention a few that sound inviting, and a few mora I have already seen. The accent this year Is on- youth Iflve features and many shorts have child heroes) and on mountain climbing (a filmic legacy from, the Geophysical Year).

Australia will be represented on the opening programme by Tim Burstall's childhood bush fable The Prize, now shortened. And ths worthy of the honor than Earth (1930). Earth is the Ukrainian poet-painter Alexander Dovzhenko's triumphant celebration of life, its Joys, miseries and mysteries. Although for 35 years he has been one of the most strikingly personal of all film artists, we have seen little of Luis Bunuel (Los Olvldados, Robinson Crusoe), the Spaniard who helped pioneer cine-surrealism with Salvador Dali. Now we will see Nazarin, one of his most impressive films, which shocks its audience with the "anticlerical but profoundly pro-Christian" story of a poor Mexican priest who finds himself in a cruel world of painted prostitutes, vicious criminals and godless lovers, causing him to doubt and weaken.

Then there is The Young One, his latest film, with Zachary Scott, a parable Involving a Negro on the run from a Southern State; and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, a macabre, witty comedie-noire about a scoundrel who grows up convinced he is destined to murder women but is balked each time he makes the Argentina presents The House of the Angel, which marked the entry of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and his adopted country into European film circles In 1956, with a story about the loss of innocence of an adoles- "EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN," by F. G. Lennhoff. (George Allen Unwin; Australian price 349.) Reviewed by H. W.

PONDER. the root of the matter; to find the causes of disturbance in a child's mind; to try to remedy them; and help him to recover his equilibrium. Many Government schools and clinics for "maladjusted children" haye been established in England in recent years, and also some independent schools following systems of their own. Outstanding among these is Mr. and Mrs.

F. G. Lennhoff 's home school at Shotton Hall, near Shrewsbury, where about 40 boys of good intelligence and potential ability, who for one reason or another are at odds with their families and the rest of the adult world, learn to come to terms with themselves. In "Exceptional Children" Mr. Lennhoff tells the story of the experiment; and its reward in his belief that over the years it has saved many young men from mental hospitals and prisons, and helped them to become complete, happy, useful personalities.

There are virtually no rules, no compulsion and no punishments at Shotton Hall. The expected "hiding" is not forthcoming, even after such escapades as lighting a. bonfire in the middle of a dormitory floor. Instead, the deflating sequel is an appearance before a four-boy "committee" which sits twice a week, with an adult as "adviser," to consider solemnly all misdeeds, and decide how best the culprit may make amends. The basic principle of the whole scheme, says Mr.

Lennhoff, Is freedom of choice. In most cases it works. But the process of regeneration Is painfully slow. Some boys deliberately do their worst, as though to see how much these queer, non-punishing adults will stand. Lying, stealing and disgusting of all kinds are the order of the day.

And table manners, says the author sadly, ''ire appalling." All this, and much more, has to be 'lived through before the boys begin to develop a sense of responsibility and take newcomers in hand and try to get them to play their part in the community. The author stresses the importance, and the difficulty, of finding the right people to staff such a school as his. The process of adjustment for new members of the staff is almost as difficult, says the author, as for the boys themselves. It would appear that staffing problems might well prove a serious obstacle to the establishment of more schools on the Shotton Hall model, warmly advocated by Dr. Edward Glover in his Foreword.

However, Mr. Lennhoff has shown the way. His account of Shotton Hall is the unique success story of a school: whose "old boys" once uncontrollable young hooligans return to visit it as responsible well-established citizens, acknowledging their debt to it with affection and gratitude. It is a story well worth reading. SECTION FOR SCHOOLS of about 400 lb.

were exerted on the point of the share, allowing it to jump over ground-level obstacles and immediately dig Into the ground again. The Vixen plough, exhibited by Smith in June, 1876, had three stump-jump mould boards. Without this Invention, the Mallee lands might never have been yet Smith's life was one of bitter disappointment, for he could not establish patent rights, and died a poor man. The disc plough was an American invention, but it was H. V.

McKay who first marketed a stump-jump disc machine in 1907. Although others had patented ideas for sheep-shearing machines bifcre him, the Australian Frederick Wolseley was the most notable pioneer. He bought Euroka Station, near Walgett, N.S.W., getting his first patent in 1877. The great test came eight years later in a historic demonstration at Melbourne. Dave Brown's hand blades finished first by a few seconds, but Hassan All, Wolseley's Afghan machine shearer, went over Brown's sheep again and took off another 12 oz.

of wool I It is true that machine shearing was delayed until the coming of Internal-combustion engines and electric motors, but Wolseley's invention was yet another triumph of practical genius among working Australian farmers. "VOLTAIRE IN LOVE," by Nancy Mitford. (Penguin; 56.) Reviewed by IAN MAIR. Reason, and another nation, especially the But what personalities I Voltaire was brilliant, but also in the risks he wouid take In the face of an absolute and highly sensitive autocracydownright mad; yet he always got away with It. Maupertuis was brilliant, too, but what crazy projects he tpok on-opening a public subscription for the support of the female Lapp he had brought home from Lapland, but had tired of.

And what perfidies-take the Abbe Desfontaines, whom Voltaire saved from being burnt alive for a grave offence, and who never forgave Voltaire for it, or for anything else. And not only the French. One of Emilie's most serious rivals for Vol taire's Affections was King Frede rick II, called the Great, of Prussia. As urown rnnce, rreaencK wrote his Anti-Machlavel. to refute the cynical doctrines of that corrupter of princes.

As king, he became the embodiment of most that has been charged against Macchiaveill, even by those who have never read him. His court was a sort of comic sink. At any rate, it appears So after a few deft touches at -the hands of Miss Mitford who, as a biographer, is the antithesis of Frederick's hero-worshipper, Thomas Carlyle: her writing is lively but neat, she Is better at a miniature that at a full-length life-size canvas, she never browbeats or bores. But she tota fails, in my opinon, to give any impression of the person and personality of her heroine, Emilie du Chatelet. POSTCARD FROM NAVPLIA Stebels Oi ALL THE VERBAL affectations we have adopted so slavishly in recent years, none is quite so ugly or so sad as "juvenile delinquency." But whether we apply this label or one of the many variants of psychiatric jargon to the young rebels of our times, their problem remains the same: and a very serious one.

Unfortunately, the behavior of these wayward young people is mostly so obnoxious to the general public as to alienate sympathy and prompt angry demands for their punishment. But it is being realised more and more that punishment is not the answer. What is needed is to go to M0LNAD Bearded John Ridley demonstrating his "locomotive thresher" or stripper near Adelaide in 1844. The grain stripped from the standing rop still had to be winnowed by a hand-operated machine, as shown on the right. (Reproduced from the large colored illustration in Macmil-lan's "Australian History Class Voltaire And Emilie A Capital Couple ''We're a capital couple, the moon and I polish the earth, she brightens the sky," sang the monkey in the old soap advertisement.

Voltaire might have said much the same of himself and his mistress, the Marquise du Chatelet. PAW BOY OF TWO WORLDS. West Indian hero and friend in a Danish forest. festival will pay a tribute to ths veteran Australian producer-cameraman, Frank Hurley, by showing two of his silents, the Shackleton documentary Endurance and The Jungle Woman, a New Guinea melodrama complete with head hunters, stiff-lipped hero and a tame Tarzaness. There are several absorbing hls-tory-of-the-cinema compilations, including Mack Sennett, William S.

Hart and early Swedish epics, as well as People on Sunday, the 1929 German silent about a picnic, made by three young men destined to achieve fame in America, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. Universe (Canada) takes us through space and time. N.Y., N.Y., a brilliant semi-abstract, photographs New York through multiple prisms and mirrors and transforms the city into a superb thing of colors and lights, endless shapes and distortions. Mark Twain's America Is a still-photography documentary made for N.B.C. television, magnificently conjuring up the 19th-century world of Mississippi rlverboats and Nevada diggings.

For those who like cowboys-and-Indians, there is The Hold-up (Belgium) an observation of youngsters playing that game. For those who like Czech puppets, there is Johanes Doktor Faust And for those who collect titles: Back Co Mes the Turnip, from China, How to Marry a Princess from Rumania and I Am a Litter Basket, from the United Kingdom. Arrangements for screenings at Carlton, Camberwell and Brighton are the same as last year, with the addition of 12 special intermediate sessions. The State Film Centre will mark the festival's tenth birthday with six evening programmes of Australian films at Nicholas Hall, open to the public: and concurrently, the National Gallery will stage a "Punch at the Cinema" exhibition, of caricature-cartoons from th English magazine. The number to ring for latest In.

formation on the festival it I AM staying at Pinchgut. It's a century Venetian fortress in the bay of rity alone, Voltaire could penetrate with spectacular success but -only, when it came to the point, on sufferance. To Emilie, Voltaire gave intellectual stimulus, guidance, support even when, for whole daysr they worked In separate rooms, separate wings of the house, to meet only at 10 o'clock for supper. He also loved her quite tempestuously, even during an affair with his niece (to this day Frenchmen, of the very best society, says Miss Mitford, marry their nieces with a Papal dispensation). At Emllle's death he collapsed, beating his head on the stone pavement till Saint-Lambert rescued him.

He survived her by nearly 30 years. Miss Mitford writes perhaps on the authority of Voltaire and other contemporaries, perhaps on her own that, of all recorded women, none has possessed greater Intellectual accomplishments than those of Emilie du Chatelet, We are to imagine her as the mathematical equal of Newton, whom she translated, with a commentary, into French; as the philosophical equal. even the superior oi ijeioniis; as physicist in advance of her time. Voltaire's accomplishments are loft tn ha taken for granted. Miss Mltford's concern Is with personali ties, with the scandal oi an age when scandalmongering was a serlouB profession, and with comedy, especially the comedy that arises easily out of the contemplation of another age, especially the Age of IMIAN IN APPEARANCE, he did what he could to polish the world in his t.lmo onnnrrflnor t.n Vita "ghts: somewhat cool and aloof, she devoted herself to mathe matics and philosophy.

But for Nancy MltfOrd it is enough that Voltaire and his Emilie were a capital couple. Not that he called her Emilie. According to the custom of the time, even for married people, she was always Madame, he always Monsieur. And as In the marriages of those Jhose lives centred on Louis XVs Paris and his court at Versailles, 'hey had their, quarrels and reconciliations, even their love affairs on the side, without any suggestion but hat they were partners in a union to be severed only by death. According to the conventions of 'be time, he had "seen her born," and she "died in his arms." In fact, though Voltaire was 12 years old when Emilie was born, and his father was what we should call solicitor or man of affairs to hers, they old not meet till 1733, when Emilie as 27; and when she died of puerperal fever after the birth of the Marquis de Saint-Lambert's daughter in 1749, Voltaire was at supper.

But their partnership of 16 years a secure one. She gave him love nd companionship, a pied a terre J1 her husband's home on which voltalre lavished enormous sums for decoration and extensions, and a ready and permanent entree into "wles which, on his literary celeb a theatre, and Tirynis is 2000 B.C. Nemea has a pleasant local wine and Mycenae a golden cup somewhere else. While walking from Mycenae to Argos met rows and rows of eucalyptus trees. They stood on the roadside hoping to thumb a lift back to Australia.

Expatriate, they assumed a fashionable stooping posture and had all their leaves curled. Said hello to them. GEORGE MOLNAR. P.S. About ruins, sacred stones and suchlike: Greece is a very beautiful country, in spite of its antiquities which make perfectly good spring meadows look like a stonemason's junk yard.

Archaeologists never had any aesthetic sense. When confronted with art treasures the British looted them, the Germans surveyed them and the Americans restored them. Of these three procedures the first was the only sensible thing to do. As it is, only ruins that look good should be kept, the rest of the debris should be ploughed under or removed to some place out of sight, where archaeologists can play with them. If clues get mixed up the archaeologists would love it even more.

P.P.S. I'd better write my next postcard from another country, 1 think. G.M. Nauplia. The North Shore line is further away than in Sydney, is uninhabited (a pleasing concept), and has snow-capped peaks.

Sydney Cove is where it should looks slightly like a Riviera sea front, but all the balconies are out of alignment; the buildings just moved when the photo was taken. Pinchgut looked so silly, hogging the view all the time, the only way to avoid staring at it was to move right into it. It's a hotel. I'm living in one of the former dungeons. It measures six feet by nine.

It's a luxury hotel. Over the whole district hangs a heavy atmosphere of mythology and of guilt. Mine. Nauplia is here, and Argos, and and Tirynis, and Nemea. and Mycenae.

"Please, Sir, I know it, just can't remember this mom.ent" In this countryside Hercules roamed. Before he made the place safe for living it was'' infested with lions, boars, serpents, hydras oniJ virgins. Nauplia is very picturesque, in a slightly tiresome way. Like somebody saying clever things all the-time. Argos has the Argonauts and Epidaurus.