A TWO-WAY viewpoint usually exists on all cultural creations. One viewpoint obviously originates from the nation and society which produces the cultural product in question; and another viewpoint originates from nations and societies foreign to where the cultural production originates. But the second viewpoint only becomes a reality when there is a critical review of such cultural products, if they are publicly exposed in such foreign nations and societies. No doubt the most popular cultural product to receive such critical attention is the movie industry. However, when we think of film criticism we are mostly confined to published American and European  criticism of their own films, and to a lesser extent their criticism of films from other nationalities, which their preserved cinema industry and professionally developed TV programs allow them to see.
But a one-way viewpoint exists when it comes to American and Europeans reading criticism of THEIR films from the context of other societies, where such American and European films, especially of the Classic decades, are seen. The lack of visibility for such published criticism within America and Europe (except of course for those picked up on Foreign Press websites) no doubt affects better State, Diplomatic, professional, and even ordinary individual relations between Americans and Europeans and such foreign societies, where  more equal and flexible viewpoints can be of benefit to all parties, if not the world at large.
The necessity and relevance of such foreign cultural criticism for Americans and Europeans cannot be dismissed on the basis that their films are NOT made intentionally for foreigners, since both the attitude and style of film directors, writers, actors and actresses within their films often offer and exhibit values that are too intrinsically human to be confined to one nation, one society, or race.
A perfect example is the cinematic career of Shirley Maclaine, one of the most attractive, intelligent, versatile and spirited actresses to ever come out of Hollywood. Maclaine’s film roles are mainly in America (except for a few films like ‘IRMA LA DOUCE’ and ‘WOMAN TIMES 7’), yet, even as an American, her acting penetrates below the social veneer of the dramatic role, fusing with the inner faculty of the actress, so that the specific role does not absorb or adjust her personality, but it is her personality which absorbs and adjusts the role.
Maclaine’s esprit and personality should not however be interpreted as some sign of a born genius; that would take away from the actual nurturing her creative personality was gradually built on since her first public appearance as a child dancer at age four, followed by those years when she became a New York teenager, modeling and joining the chorus line on Broadway stages.
What became Maclaine’s creative signature as she grew as an actress, actually came from  her experience and involvement with art on the whole. How does this become a relevant parallel experience for cinema audiences thousands of miles away from North America, in what some would call a ‘Third World backwater’? For example in British Guiana prior to its Independence in 1966, and at least a dozen years after, when cinemas still existed there, and citizens experienced films en masse publicly together.
Focusing on such a time-period is not a useless act of nostalgia, since it coincides with the appearance of actors like Shirley Maclaine and hundreds of other Classic screen actors on the three dozen or more large cinema screens across the British Guiana/Guyana coastlands up to the 1970s. By focusing on her films and others in those years between 1956 and 1979, when at least 90% of all new and rerun Hollywood films, and 50% of European films (British, French, and Italian) filled at least Georgetown cinema screens at the rate of 146 per week, and short critical reviews of new films filled an entire page of the then large format Daily Chronicle every fortnight, we simultaneously get a picture of both the mental and physical development of the society, and the relationship of this to the values and creative and moral structures shared by the influence of classic American and European films seen locally.
Maclaine’s true debut as an actress occurred in a significant manner in 1955 with the hilarious Technicolor Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin masterpiece comedy ‘ARTISTS AND MODELS’.
As a small boy, I saw the film in 1956 at a beautiful pastel colored turquoise Art Deco cinema at the corner of a main street in the breezy seaside village of Kitty adjacent to the capital. Maclaine’s role as a young model for an art agency involved with comic book artist Dean Martin, and his hilarious partner obsessed with comic book culture, Jerry Lewis, right away injects a generalized youthful personality represented only by curiosity and self-consciousness. There is no messianic American message in all this, and Maclaine would carry such a quintessential style of acting forward into many of her future roles.
If we look at the social context in which ‘ARTISTS AND MODELS’ was shown in this village in 1956, and probably up to a dozen years later in other local cinemas as well, we get a contrasting view of the entire village then, and now. (1) The cinema-goer who went to the Kitty village cinema between 1950 and 60, entered a marquee and lobby filled with stunning posters of graphic art, and a wooden and stone architecture of beautiful intricacy. The cinema has been history since fifteen years ago, and the church today which retained only its altered outward structure, possesses none of the creative lessons for aspiring village architects as the original cinema once did.
(2) The first scene in ‘Artists and Models’ is on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in an attic above a store front where Dean is painting a Pop art style mural, years before the style became famous, while Jerry intensely reads his comic books. The young or adult patron who left the village cinema in 1956 after seeing this film, could walk to a perfect wooden market, a drug store, cake shops, and even a private library specializing in comics and novels along the village main street and see dozens of the same American comic books in the film just left, for sale on lines strung inside these stores. The famous highest rate of literacy in the region attributed to Br. Guiana/ Guyana from the 1950s to 70s, is the direct result not simply of schools, but of the wide spread availability and reading from an early age of American comic books with highly moral stories; color editions like Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu and Tubby, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Mickey Mouse, Lassie the dog, Trigger the horse, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Tonto, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Lawman, Sugarfoot, and dozens of other comics. Also British comics like the beautifully color illustrated editions of Classic European and American novels. On the 2010 village  main street, where today tenements, garbage piles, abandoned derelict architecture covered in vegetation exist, and sometimes serious crimes occur, were, in the 1950s and 60s, a clean vibrant gas station, beautiful well kept stores selling rolls of fabric, house wares, toys, shoes, a community centre above the market place where village youths played table tennis after school, side streets where fathers were seen strolling home after work in well-tailored slacks, ties, jackets slung over their shoulders, smoking a pipe, and from the street one could see in their homes rows of penguin novels on living room book shelves, and often  local imaginative oil paintings hung on walls. That was a common sight in those decades when the early Hollywood films of Shirley Maclaine and her peers were attended daily at village and city cinemas.
In 1958 Maclaine appeared in ‘THE SHEEPMAN’, a distinctly original Western satire, in which the theme of individual rights and freedoms oppose mob justice, manipulated ignorance, and ethnic bigotry. The film was very popular at the Kitty village cinema. Not just because of its topic of sheep (metaphorically as well) of which many villagers had a handful, but also the presence of a Chinese restaurant in a Western, and dark skinned Mexican herdsmen. Maclaine’s individualistic role is also an important indication of her later 1968-70s visible support of senators Bobby Kennedy and Mcgovern in their defense of the civil and democratic rights of minority Americans. But Maclaine’s firm grip on both reflecting and projecting the vulnerability or strength of the female psyche takes off in Vincente Minnelli’s ‘SOME CAME RUNNING’ of 1959; from here on her signature style develops into a tender, witty personality, bold and risque, yet cool, confident, observant and frank, with neurotic reflexes released via rapid speech, suave body language, infectious smiles, giggles, and wild laughter, which begin to formulate a cinematic personality that is deeper, or higher than a specific nationalistic American identity. ‘THE APARTMENT’ of 1960, Billy Wilder’s masterpiece, in my opinion, allowed Maclaine to project one of her most perfect displays of chic fashion, hairstyle, conversation, in this touching exploration of modern city/office life world wide; where bosses routinely keep attractive office girls as mistresses, etc. Maclaine’s abilty to carry the role with cosmopolitan stylishness made ‘THE APARTMENT’ one of the best vehicles for establishing her mastery of unforgettable future roles which explored an expanding non-conformist beatnik open-mindedness. What could be cooler than Maclaine’s rendition of the professional Parisian prostitute in another Wilder classic: ‘IRMA LA DOUCE’ of 1963? Here she takes us right through to the flipside of street life, when she accepts the opportunity of true love as it comes along in the form of Jack Lemmon’s hilarious old-fashioned values. The film is  beautiful because of Maclaine’s  belief in the naked common humanity of her role. Her venture in the rollicking 1967 film by Italian director Vittorio De Sica, ‘WOMAN TIMES 7’, comprising seven short stories with co-actors Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, and Victorio Gassman was another example of her cosmopolitan scope. So was ‘TWO FOR THE SEESAW’, a sweet cosy pleasure co-starring Robert Mitchum, who complimented the beatnik sub-text of this delightful film. By 1967 we can see how Maclaine’s film roles grasped the theme of non-parochial American consciousness, or conscience.  The pacifist non-conformist American tradition is behind the beatnik movement, which before the Hippies, opened its ‘head’ to other races, other cultures, other foods, religions, etc. It is a modern American style of cosmopolitanism which Maclaine personifies. Not surprisingly Maclaine would end up keeping eight different homes around the world, publishing a first class, zestfully written memoir ‘DON’T FALL OFF THE MOUNTAIN’ in 1970, and starring as a globe-trotting photo-journalist in her own (now vintage) TV series ‘SHIRLEY’S WORLD’ in 1971-72. Later excellent films like ‘THE TURNING POINT’ of 1977, hinted at the Best Actress Award she would receive for ‘TERMS OF ENDEARMENT’ of 1983, before returning to a stunning run on Broadway with her dance routine, humor, and usual chic style. The example of Shirley Maclaine is a vintage library of cosmopolitan virtues, both for modern women anywhere who are interested in exploring their individual and social potential, and men  accepting of them.