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The war came. It has even been called a great war. The
theatre was forgotten and the artists cared for the wounded . . .
I was among those who hoped that this period of jansenism
would purify the stage and would kill forever this romanticism
which horrifies me and which personifies stupidity to me.
American films, sharp as steel, cold like the poles, beautiful
as the tomb passed before our dazzled eyes. The gaze of Wil
liam Hart pierced our hearts and we loved the calm landscapes
where the hoof of his horse raised clouds of dust.
The inconceivable, the incomparable, the royal Charlie
Chaplin appeared, gros plan net, his two feet turned out and it
was inevitable that he was the comic bomb which would over
turn the theatre and the music-hall.
Alas, my poor France, country born malicious! You make a
barricade against exoticism, and the great ships which return to
port, loaded with opium and unknown fruits, are phantom boats
which never land. All this is over and it is our players who
influence America. It is time to be on guard and to cry out
as did Louis Aragon five years ago, “Down with the clear
French genius!”
Yes, the theatre is dead, in spite of the efforts of certain ones:
de Max, Ventura, Berthe Bovy, Eve Francis, etc And
the music-hall is dying, the supreme hope! It dies, still loaded
with fruit, and already one of its most savoury fruits, the poor
Fortuge, sleeps under the willows of Bagnolet. It dies because
it is not watered but is put under glass. We have enough of
revues where they talk of Poincare, of Sacha Guitry, of Maurice
Rostand, etc.; of revues where ugly nude or semi-nude courte
sans pass in procession under the baton of the conductor; revues
where there is nothing, nothing, nothing.
Imagination dead. It is really too easy to do always the same
thing and to satisfy the stupid bourgeoisie. The Casino of Paris
is becoming a branch of the Comedie-Francaise; the Folies-
Bergeres, a branch of the Odeon. Who would dare to say to a
counterfeit dancer like Harry Pilcer that he does not dance; to
a counterfeit singer like Mayol that he does not sing; to a coun
terfeit player like Polaire what she does not act?