It is not easy to transform a good play into a good movie. Perhaps someone will someday invent a "play-grinder" so that movie makers can insert a good drama, turn a crank and pull out a different, but equally good, movie. But since there is no such machine now, producers and directors must use their own judgment in deciding what will be effective for the screen. Stanley Kramer and Laslo Benedek have guessed wrong in Death of a Salesman.

They have ripped Arthur Miller's excellent script from its original setting and placed it practically intact before the cameras. But they could not recreate the stage setting and the atmosphere of the legitimate theatre which are an integral part of Death of a Salesman. A lone figure, small in proportion to the huge frame of the stage, can stand before the audience and deliver an emotional, but long, speech effectively. And often the meaning of this speech depends on the contrast between the size of the character and his back-ground. Death of a Salesman contains speeches which are enhanced by this contrast. It contains scenes which draw an effect from a bare, dim stage. The actors move in only one set, and this set seems to be one tiny world, which they never leave.

Kramer could not put these effects, which belong to the theatre, in a motion picture. It was his job to substitute something in their place, and he didn't. The story of a salesman who grasped a false set of values still penetrates into the moral decadence of a certain American group. Willy Loman's betrayal by his own personal gods and his complete deterioration are unchanged. They are shown objectively without sentiment, but they seem to be encased in an ugly, ill-fitted coat of words. Small characters are no longer standing before us on a stage; they are breathing down our necks. They talk too much.

Not only does Frederic March, who plays Willy Loman, talk too much, he talks too loudly. Instead of a disillusioned, broken man, Willy Loman sometimes seems merely a drunk one. Mildred Dunnock, as Willy's wife, is much better. She is able to push through the wordy speeches to show a tired, loving woman who is never really intelligent, but always loyal to her husband.

With the exception of March, Kramer cast his movie well. The actors do the best job possible, but Laslo Benedek's direction fails to catch the whole meaning of the play.

By screening it as pure realism, he loses Willy Loman, the symbol of a salesman, and leaves only Willy Loman, a certain salesman who got a tough break out of life. And Kramer's production, although it is too fuzzy and heavy to be a great movie, is still worth seeing. The movie Willy Loman is merely incomplete--the other Willy Loman was better.