CHAPTER XXXV--THE NATURE FILM |AT that time no moving picture had been given the setting that Jacob Zanin devised for the Nature film. Zanin had altered the interior of the building to make it as little as possible like the conventional theater. Only the walls, galleries and boxes and stage remained as they had been. The new decorations were in the pale greens and pinks of spring and were simple. Between foyer and auditorium were palms, with orchids and other tropical flowers. The orchestra was not in sight. The ushers were calm girls from the Village--students of painting, designing, writing, sculpture--dressed modestly enough in a completer drapery of the sort worn by Sue in the pictures, such a material as Philippine women weave from grasses and pineapple strands, softly buff and cream and brown in color, embroidered with exquisite skill in exotic designs. The stage before the screen (Zanin used no drop curtain) represented a native village on some imaginary South Sea Island. The natives themselves were there, quietly moving about the routine of their lives or sitting by a low fire before the group of huts at one side of the stage. Very likely you saw it. If so, you will understand the difficulty I am confronted with in describing the place. It made a small sensation, the theater itself, apart from the Nature film. But a penned description could not convey the freshness, the quiet charm, the dignity of that interior. The dignity was what first touched Sue. The Worm watched her sidelong as her eyes roved from the flat surfaces of pure bold color on the walls to the quietly idyllic scene on the stage that managed to look as if it were not a stage. She exhibited little emotion at first. Her brow was slightly furrowed, the eyes thoughtful, the mouth set--that was all. She had gone through the difficult months of enacting the film at first with enthusiasm, later doggedly. She had early lost her vision of the thing as a whole; her recollections now were of doing over and over this bit and that, of a certain youthful actor who had taken it for granted that a girl who would dress as she had to dress the character could be casually made love to, of interminable train rides to the outdoor “locations,” of clashes of will between Zanin and the Interstellar people--of work, quarrels, dust, money and the lack of it and a cumulative disillusionment. It came to her now that she had lost that early vision. More, she had forgotten the sincerity and the purpose of Jacob Zanin, that beneath his cold Jewish detachment he believed this thing--that the individual must be freed from conformity and (as he saw it) its attendant hypocrisy by breaking the yoke of the home. It must be the individual--first, last, always---the glad, free individual--the will to live, to feel, to express.