Painleve Fils

M. Paul Painleve has twice been forced to resign as Premier of France since October (TIME, Nov. 9, 30). At present he is War Minister in the Cabinet of M. Briand, and spends his days amid the desperate vexations of trying to conduct the two most unpopular wars ever waged by France (those in Syria and in Morocco). Amid all these distractions he has kept up his hobby, "higher mathematics," and found time to spend hours in the laboratory of his son Jean, a quiet investigator in the field of comparative histology. Last week, by a trick of Fate, it was the good-looking young histologist, not the grizzled care-worn statesman, whose name was blazoned unexpectedly across column heads in the French press.

Histologist Jean Painleve had been experimenting with the lower forms of plant and animal life. As they grew and unfolded in his test tubes, their unscientific intrinsic beauty seemed to him, to merit reproduction by the cinema. He called up a friend, the French cinema director, Rene Sti. M. Sti at once despatched a cameraman. The cameraman cranked, Jean Painleve fussed in and out of the pictures with his test tubes, then the extraordinary occurred.

When the trial footage was run off, Director Sti declared that the test tube shots of low and supposedly interesting forms of life, had flopped: "Tiresome! As my friend Douglas Fairbanks says, 'a dud!' Positively sickening!"

On the other hand he was enthusiastic over the shots in which M. Jean Painleve was seen shepherding his cultures before the lens: "Mon cher Jean! You have a 'movie face'! A fig for your science! Mais le cinema! Ah le cinemast to reporters: "I certainly accepted the offer of my friend M. Sti.... Why not? My father has found time to lead two or three men's lives in the last few years.... Why should I not act for the cinemas, and yet continue my histological research?..."