INTERNATIONAL: Sensitive Europeans

European protest against U. S. film domination last week erupted thrice:

Fake Alps. In Switzerland, sensitive students attended a performance of a U. S. film entitled King of the Bernina, discovered that the advertised Swiss scenes were really taken in Alaska. Enraged at the artificial Alps, they paraded the streets of Zurich, forced the theatre manager to stop showing the film.

Tommyrot for Negroes. In Denmark, one Max Fornaes, vehement member of the Municipal Board of Frederiksberg, ringingly denounced all U. S. cinemactions:

“The American tommyrot which constitutes 90% of all films shown in Denmark, is essentially calculated for Negro tribes and other half wild peoples. The so-called ‘sound-films’ which have arisen lately have not made things any better, they are merely snatching the bread out of Danish musicians’ mouths.* Yet our authorities have been persuaded to suppress Russian films, which are culturally and artistically miles beyond the American!”

Whimpering Tenors. In Moscow one-time Soviet Minister of Education Anatole Lunacharsky said, after listening to a pre-release of several new U. S. singing films: “They were spoiled for me by the vulgar, overfed faces of the tenors. . . . I could readily dispense with their tasteless mimicry, their coquettish rolling of eyes, their whimpering graces. . . .”

* The American Federation of Musicians declares that the “talkies” have cost some 35,000 t”. S. musicians their jobs (TIME, May 27 ct scq.).