To the Editor of the News

Several times in the past the Harvard CRIMSON has called the Brattle Theatre to task, sometimes with good reason. We are certainly not perfect. However, the editorial in Thursday's issue of The Summer News is so preposterous that I wonder if it was not written with tongue in cheek.

First, there are four factual or typographical errors in the three paragraphs. The Bergmen Festival includes fourteen of his films. Our distributing company is called Janus films. The Fine Arts Theatre is certainly risking no great loss in playing Guinness films (check the management). The Telepix was not obliged to shut down for lack of customers. It is simply being renovated and will reopen in August. Under different management.

Now, we have nothing against Alec Guinness. Each of the films you mentioned has played here at least once, but how can you seriously propose that a festival of his films would be preferable to a retrospective of Bergman's art? You are comparing a group of good commercial films with the life work of a director who has won himself a place in the history of the cinema.

Your opinion of Bergman's films is certainly a rash statement. After the first Bergman Festival opened in New York, the conservative New York Times called the retrospective "rare movie-going fare..." from a director "whose striking ideas and imagination have greatly enriched the movie medium over the last two decades." At the opposite end of the spectrum, the weekly Village Voice urged its readers to attend the Festival.

I am sure Mr. Bergman would be pleased by your inference that his films are crassly commercial while those of Guinness are for "we happy few." Bergman has always entertained the hope that his work would reach a larger public, but I think it only fair to state that the most successful of his films are less profitable than even minor ones featuring Alec Guinness.

Your statement that "the Brattle is selling out" seems rather strange to us. During the months of June and July we scoured all the film exchange in New York to come up with a season of some of the great films of the past twenty-five years, some of which are shown nowhere in this area except at the Brattle. At the same time, we do not think that you should equate the commercial success of our showings with their intrinsic value. Good films do not necessarily drive away audiences. It is the height of snobbery to think that because the Brattle draws crowds it is therefore selling out.

It so happens that the audience in this area is one of the best of any region in the United States. Many of the forty-five films that Janus distributes have done exceptionally well in Cambridge even though their careers throughout the United States have been little short of disastrous (e.g. ASHES AND DIAMONDS, IVAN THE TERRIBLE).

I would be very curious as to what your readers think of the Brattle programming this summer. The management would certainly be interested to know. Cyrus I. Harvey, Jr.   Brattle Theatre