October 1, 1947

# NARRATION FOR FILM OF BURNING BOOKS

by
Langston Hughes

So they burn the books — and in the books man's wisdom, man's history, man's remembrance!

They burn the books — man's arms embracing time, man's eyes measuring the stars — man's dreams burn, too, when they burn the books.

In sorrow and in anger, remember! Look and remember! Hear the crackling of the flames!

Who burns the books? ... Men! ... What men?

Men who would burn the world to have their way. Men with the deadly power to destroy — but not create. Men who kill to have their will. Men who build on bones and hate. Men who hope to win by burning words, burning towns, taking lives, killing dreams — by burning books.

From books to men — from killing words to killing you is but a step—one short step from words and written dreams to living dreams — and you!

Books do not scream! Mendo! Remember the death ovens? The Nazi death ovens at Maideniek and Oszuoeim?

From books to men to you — TAKE CARE!

Listen to the crackling of the flames that burn the books!

BEWARE! ... Do I hear it here? ... We must not hear it here!

STORY BASES FOR PAUL ROBSON SCREENPLAY

1. **MELODRAMA:** Paul as a stevedore in the Canary or Cape Verde Islands, foiling a gigantic plot to transfer oil to the Axis powers. Showing how the fascists enslave and exploit the natives through superstition, voodoo, even murder.

2. **MUSIC-DRAMA:** Paul as a poor farmhand whose preacher discovers he can sing, detailing the man's struggles for a musical education under the greatest hardships and sacrifices. Finally he enters a National Music Week contest (tie-up with NMW organizations to exploit the picture) and gets a chance. Follow his rise to the Metropolitan Opera where he makes his debut singing "Othello".

3. **DRAMA:** Paul as a poor young man struggling for an education; how he becomes a hinterland preacher, protecting his flock against bigotry and prejudice and winning the admiration and friendship of the white communities which surround him. Finally, he leads his people into performing a great deed for the truly American way of life.

4. **HISTORICAL:** Paul as a great Russian poet, Pushkin, whose parentage was colored. Showing how Pushkin's consuming love of art and his fellow man combined to make him a leader of the masses of oppressed Russians who struggled for survival under early Czarism. (Will also give Paul an opportunity to sing the Russian songs he does so remarkably well).

5. **SYMBOLICAL:** Paul as a composite Negro athlete who brought fame to his college, became a band leader and distinguished himself during World War (a la Lieut. Tim Brynn) and helped, and was beloved by, all who came in contact with him. The personal side of this story can show the natural attraction and desire for unity between the black and white races.

6. **COMEDY:** Paul, a famous concert singer, has a very close friend who is a Pullman porter. When the latter falls ill and may be bedridden for several weeks, Paul, afraid that his friend may lose his job and his wife and kids suffer, undertakes to substitute for him. How he passes himself off as the porter, fools the people who think he looks like Paul Robeson, and meets up with a series of amusing and exciting adventures, is the rest.

Film Idea---II

by
Langston Hughes

A WESTERN in which the primary characters are Negroes:

1. SLAVE PERIOD---Deep South:

First exodus thwarted---group
of escaping slaves who run away to join
the Indians.

2. RECONSTRUCTION---Deep South to Kansas:

The actual historical exodus of
Pap Singleton and group of Negroes who
trek to Kansas to get away from Klanism.

3. TURN OF THE CENTURY---Kansas to Far West:

A segment of Singleton family goes
further West to pioneer on its own. There
a son is born who becomes the hero of the
story, a homesteader and a cowboy in Wyoming.

4. TODAY---Bad Lands of Wyoming:

This son becomes head rancher for a
wealthy Eastern family with a retreat atop
a mesa in Wyoming. White son of family
marries a Scandinavian peasant girl and
brings her there for honeymoon. A band of
Western outlaws plan to kidnap this young
bride, and do. In a chase led by the Negro
rancher, bride is rescued. Rich rewards,
celebration in rancher village of which
Negro is made mayor. Happy ending.

# DOES THIS GIVE YOU ANY IDEAS FOR YOUR MOVIE TREATMENT?

## Le Western

The cowboy, the most durable and popular figure on the U.S. screen, has until recent years generally been dismissed by critics and film historians as an error of popular taste. But in French critical circles, the cowboy has long been regarded with deep solemnity. Many a longhaired Frenchman believes that the western film is Hollywood's finest achievement, a kind of national folklore in the making. In a flood of recently published books and articles, Europe'supperraw critics have been soberly examining the western and discovering in it virtues and complexities which even its most loyal fans never suspected it possessed.

There are eight "great themes" for westerns, according to Critics Jean-Louis Rieupeyrout and Andre Bazin, whose book, _Le Western, ou le Cinema Americain par Excellence_, is the most exhaustive of the new studies. The big themes (based on a study of 150 westerns): 1) the birth of a nation, 2) gold prospecting, 3) the frontier and the great plains, 4) the linking of east and west, 5) men and beasts, 6) the War of Secession, 7) Indian warfare, 8) representative westerners.

SOCIAL DOCUMENT. Writes Critic Bazin: "The Corneilleian simplicity of the western scenario has often been parodied. It is true that it is easy to detect an analogy to _Le Cid_; same conflict between love and duty, same knightly deeds, resulting in the virgin conducting to forget the insults to her family ... But this comparison is ambiguous: to mock westerns by evoking Corneille is also to point out their grandeur, a grandeur perhaps close to puerility, even as childhood is close to poetry ... Everyone, children and simple men, recognizes the naive grandeur of western movies. Epic and tragic heroes are universal ... The trek west is our Odyssey."

But the postwar western is gradually moving away from "naive grandeur" toward social documentation and psychological detail, according to Jean-Paul Sartre's monthly, _Les Temps Modernes_ "The 'neo-western' has developed in the direction of ambiguity ... Under the double influence of 'black' films and psychoanalytical films, westerns have enriched themselves with a clinical description of the half-crazy desperadoes who roam the desert."

Examples: Rawhide Ranger (1941) and Coroner Creek (1948)

ACCEPTED SYMBOL. "On a less dramatic level," says _Les Temps Modernes_, "one liked the personality of Shane, that nostalgic outlaw of a Racine-like modesty, who troubled for a moment the wife of a farmer ... The search for the everyday, true incident is hard to reconcile with the epic violence of the westerns, and here again there has been a radical change: the superman has been superseded by a 'new type' of cowboy, who hesitates, who suffers and who is afraid." Examples: _The Ox-Bow Incident_, _Gunfighters_, _The Treasure of Sierra Madre_.

Swedish Critic Harry Schein, writing in _The American Scholar_, finds the new-style westerns full of political as well as psychological overtones: "High Noon, artistically, is the most convincing and, likewise, certainly the most honest explanation of American foreign policy. The mythological gods of the western, who used to shoot unconcernedly, without any moral complications worth mentioning, are now grappling with moral problems and an ethical melancholy which could be called existentialist if they were not shared by Mr. Dulles."

Even the once blameless sex life of the cinema cowboy has been coming in for some sharp scrutiny from European critics. Critic Schein detects a sadistic dislike for women: "In _The Outlaw_, the young man, after prolonged abuse, humiliates the woman by choosing, in a tossup between her and a fine horse, the horse. In a priceless homo-sexual castration fantasy, the father figure of the film shoots off the ear lobes of the young man when he dares to defend himself. The pistol in westerns is by now accepted as a phallic symbol." (Time, v.67 #1, July 4, 1955, p. 70)

- 2 -