Christ in Grease Paint

The problem of making an impression on the message-saturated egos of World's Fair visitors has turned Flushing Meadow into an outpost of Madison Avenue. Like many other exhibitors, the Protestant Council of the City of New York wanted something that would really attract attention to its $3,000,000 pavilion with its theme: "Jesus Christ, the Light of the World." Its choice, a 22-minute film called Parable, may get the council more attention than it bargained for.

Parable is basically an art film that got religion. All in pantomime, it opens with a gaudy circus parade moving through a wooded countryside. "Into this great Circus of Life," intones a narrator, "came a man who dared to be different." Bringing up the rear is a figure, all white-on-white from flowing robes to chalky Marcel Marceau makeup. He is riding on a donkey.

Harness for Three. Symbolism soon begins to snowball: the mime helps a weary roustabout water his elephants, sits in for a Negro in an "African Dip" show while a wicked white man throws baseballs at him, rescues a pretty girl from an evil magician. He and his followers (the elephant man, the Negro, the girl) break up the act of Magnus and his Living Marionettes by entering the tent to brush the shoes of all the children in the audience. The Living Marionettes are hauled down from their harnesses; Magnus is furious.

Then the white-garbed clown gets into a harness himself, and, as he is hoisted aloft, the magician stabs him, the racist throws baseballs at him, and he is beaten by an irate sideshow barker. The cries of his death agony shatter the sound track. In a silence that follows, three empty harnesses dangle from their ropes, and the remorseful Magnus goes to put white makeup on his face. In the final scene an all-white figure is riding the donkey as the circus moves on. Is it the clown--or the puppeteer--or Everyman--or Christ?

The Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the sponsoring Protestant Council, says: "It is not Christ who is being depicted at all. Everyone must make up his own mind about it after he has seen it." Disagreeing with Potter's denial is the Rev. Charles H. Graf, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "It is the betrayal in the garden, the awful death on the scaffold, Good Friday all the way, but no Easter morn. It is adult but not entertainment; it is a circus but not for children."

Question of Taste. Discontent has dogged the project ever since the film--scripted by Rolf Forsberg, who is, of all things, a practicing Buddhist--was started. Two members of the pavilion's steering committee resigned in protest over the "sacrilegious and improper" portrayal. Last week Fair President Robert Moses, whose eye seems to be on every sparrow of impropriety, asked that the film be withdrawn, saying that he and his staff have grave doubts about the "good taste and validity of the film presenting Jesus as a clown."

Shrugs Potter: "If there is a strong negative response to it at the fair, we will cancel it and show something else."

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