The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-07-06
" DRAMA IN
Woe to the Vanquished,
"The Streets Of Sorrow"
Review BY VERN SMITH

Another play of post war Vienna,
starving, sick, corrupt, and vet
heroic. And as usual, since the power
OF censorship is still in the hands
Of the bourgeoisie, the interest CEN
ters around the trials and. tribula-
tons of the newly poor, not of those
who have been ALWAYS with ye."
am informed that the play. as
originally produced, had much more
definite working class emphasis, and
that the censorship here resulted first
in good deal of this being cut out,
and then that after consultation
among themselves, those whose bust
ness it is to make the world safe for
Rabbit cut out most of the rest of the
Labor angle" and in general made
mess of the thing, giving it a pc
culiar confused and faltering aspect.
However, it is in its final form as a
product of censorship that it has to
be reviewed, since it is in that form
that the public sees it.
This is the story of the sadness of
the shabby genteel," the steady de-
cline and painful corruption of the
old ruling class and of the bureau
Gratis especially. Councillor Run1fort
has two daughters, and is so proud
that he turns out of his house a pay
ing American roomer when his Young
est daughter is charged with stealing
two tins of canned meat. Of course
she did steal the meat, and the other
daughter, Greta (played excellently
by Greta Garbo) nearly becomes an
inmate of a disorderly house in her
efforts to keep the family going.
That is half of the interest. The
other half centers around the rise of
the greedy new bourgeoisie: those
who, like the butcher of Melchior
Street, make Greta stand in line all
night for the chance to buy meat,
and then call the police to chase her
away, only because the meat is sold
out, and the higher elements of this
new capitalism, like the profiteers
Canez and Rosenow, who loot on a
huge scale, stealing mines, swindling
in the stock market, swilling in the
night clubs and clutching down the
daughters of the old ruling class for
their pleasure.
The proletarians who appear in the
story are not, as such, essential to the
plot but serve as background for the
crimes and degeneration of their
"betters." Chief of the proletarian
characters is the murderess, Maria
Lechner, who might as we'll have come
from any other class in the rotting
Vienna society. In the end tn, re is
bread riot by those who do mo-, as
do the Rumfort family, worry over
the change from a meat diet to one
OF cabbage, but suffer under a con-
slant dimunition of their accustomed
cabbage rations. This is treated as
an elemental outburst, without leader
ship, merely the hand of fate which
Furnishes certain of the filthiest of
the rich.
There is an indirect slap at the
American Red Cross, the officers of
which complain that all they see in
Vienna is luxury. There is a definite
touch of anti-semitism, all the worst
Williams, especially the profiteers, be-
ing given Jewish faces. The play is
in the European tradition, which
holds that an actress should do some
thing more than merely pose beau
tifully, and that scenery, instead of
being the chief attraction in film
should be an appropriate background
for the action.