Noel Crusz’s Little Bike Lost: The Story of Sri Lanka’s First Schoolboy Film

by Rajiva Wijesinha

I had hugely enjoyed the Ceylon Journal, an exciting initiative from someone only recently out of school. Avishka Mario Senewiratne, who subsequently gave me one of his earlier books, which is an even more remarkable achievement. As the title indicates, it deals with a film made a long time ago.

He heard about it only when he was writing The Story of St. Joseph’s College, and promptly recognized it as ‘a phenomenal event that took place in 1956’. And this was not exaggeration, for the idea to make a film, and carry it through professionally, was unique, and Avishka is owed a debt of gratitude for having recorded the exercise so meticulously.

The film was the brainchild of Fr. Noel Crusz, whose name sounded familiar, for he had been known as an artist and also a priest who had later given up the priesthood, and married. Before that, he had while a teacher at St. Peter’s, been asked to produce ‘Catholic Hour’ for Radio Ceylon. And understanding his talent Cardinal Cooray, the head of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka during my childhood, and for many years before that, sent him to Europe and America to study mass media.

He made many friends in Hollywood, who helped him in his film-making. Bing Crosby gave him the camera he used, and was later said to have helped with funding when he was running out, even after he had been given a loan of Rs.100 by the visionary educationist Fr. Peter Pillai.

When Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’ reached cinemas in Colombo, Noel Crusz was at St. Josephs where he had set up a Film Society. One of its members, having slipped out to watch the film, and been caught and caned by Peter Pillai who was then the Rector, thought up a script which appealed to Crusz. This was good timing, for 1955/56 had been declared the Diamond Jubilee year of SJC. Before that Crusz had written and produced plays, and also made documentary films. A feature was a new departure that he thought appropriate for the Jubilee, but while he remained in charge he gave the boys of the Film Society full responsibility, and they lived up to this admirably.

Avishka has given full details of the process, with chapters about the selection of the cast and crew, the different locations used, and what took place behind the scenes, followed by a short account of how the footage was put together. In between, which shows admirable pacing on the writer’s part, is a long chapter detailing the plot of the film. Then we have the press preview and the reactions, which were almost entirely positive. Even Mervyn de Silva, though less enthusiastic, registered the great initiative displayed, and praised the young people ‘in a society that is well known for its timidity’.

But then tragedy strikes. For Kingsley De Rosairo, the boy who had organized the fighting and the race sequences, inspired by the subject of the film, persuaded his father to buy him a new bicycle. His cousin was given one too, and the two raced round Colombo, and even cycled one day to Avissawella and back. But then one evening, the evening of the press preview, when they got home, they found that their music teacher had come and gone and left a message that they should come to his home. So Kingley set off, and was knocked down by a passing truck, when he had almost reached the house. And though he was rushed to hospital, doctors could do nothing and he died next morning, without regaining consciousness.

But the show went on. The one strong criticism made of the film was that the sound was messy, for it had had to be dubbed as the camera used did not allow for the recording of speech. And since the cast read out what they were supposed to say, it had sounded stilted. Crusz then accepted the suggestion that this be dropped, and managed to have the new version, without any conversation, ready for the Gala Premiere which took place at the Lionel Wendt.

The Prime Minister Mr Bandaranaike graced the occasion, with his wife and daughter who were both elected to that position in time, and made a very complimentary speech. And before the screening Mrs Bandaranaike gave out awards to the cast and crew. The main star of the film got an Olympic New Yorker bicycle, the same as he had won in a raffle in the film and then had it stolen from him, before recovering it and winning the Cycle Race at the Sports Meet.

He was tongue-tied when Chandrika asked him how he had done his role, and the producer had to answer for him. But after that little touch, Avishka ends the chapter with him cycling home on his new bike. And even more moving had been the earlier record of Charmaine De Rozairo going on stage ‘to collect a prize on behalf of her later younger brother, Kingsley’.

But after that there were no more films. After his account of the Gala Premiere, Avishka records the popularity of the film all over the country, with screenings in several other venues including Jaffna. But then, typically, though Fr. Crusz now had many fans, his work upset some of his superiors, and early in 1958 he was transferred, whereupon the Film Society died away. The writer of this film had written another screenplay called ‘Shanty Dwellers’, but it did not see the light of day.

Avishka does not expand on the reasons for the transfer, simply noting in the last chapter that Crusz served in Kohuwala and Jaffna and Maggona, before giving up the priesthood in 1965. He had also given up his role on ‘Catholic Hour’, though why this should have happened while he was in Kohuwala is not clear. I suspect rather that the conservative elements in the Church asserted themselves, not at all happy with Crusz’s strong sense of social justice – as exemplified indeed by the subject of the proposed second film.

For Crusz was associated with the radical Peter Pillai and also it would seem with the future liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya, who was also then on the SJC staff and who was later excommunicated. By then Crusz had left the country, and lived out his life in Australia, where he finally wrote a book about the Cocos Island Mutiny, the only instance in the Second World War when soldiers were executed for mutiny. They were Ceylonese and his longstanding concern with the story makes it clear that his thirst for social justice had not diminished.

But the last chapter also has heartwarming accounts of what happened to the boys over the years, including the surprise party the producers of the film threw for Noel Crusz for his 95^th birthday. They managed to trace the hero, Gerry D’Silva, whose unexpected presence drove Crusz to tears of joy. Earlier we were told about how he was reunited with the second lead, Bryan Walles, who had migrated to America, after his mother saw an article Crusz wrote in 1995 about the making of the film.

Sadly hardly any of the cast and crew remained in Sri Lanka. Many were Burgher and departed in the sad exodus of this talented group in the sixties and seventies. But even the Sinhalese producer Lalin Fernando went, though one important member of the production team, Ranjith Pereira, stayed behind and had a distinguished career in the country.

If the last chapter has a valedictory air, the penultimate one recreates the sense of adventure that Crusz had encouraged, for it is about how Bryan Walles and three of his friends, carried away by Tarzan books, decided to leave Colombo and live in the jungles of Madhu. So they set off by train, but at Maradana one of the boys decided to stay behind.

Unfortunately for the rest, he revealed the plan to his parents so the boys found the police waiting for them on the platform at Polgahawela, and they were taken home. But the chapter ends with a picture of Bryan on an elephant, finally pulling off a Tarzan, around 30 years later.

That picture is one of the splendid illustrations with which the book abounds. It contrasts, as do the many pictures in the last chapter, with the pictures of the boys in school, including several stills taken while the film was being made. The pictures exude innocence, though the book, and the film, are full of the fights which seem to have been a staple of existence in the school in those days.

The pictures also capture the questioning look the heroes, the boy who lost his bike and his younger brother, seem to have displayed in life as in the film. The four bullies, on the other hand, look tough, at all times, though the one who double-crossed the others and told Tommy where the bike was also has a wary look in his portrait picture.

The girls, whom Noel Crusz chose from Holy Family Convent, where he had previously produced plays, are striking, though Tommy’s older sisters are suitably admonitory in the stills. Sadly the older sister – which they were in real life too – died in the first decade of this century but the younger one, who looks radiant in the picture of her with her husband in Australia, was still living when the book was written.

Then there are the picture of the places where filming took place, including an array of pictures of St. Joseph’s as it was 70 years ago. And there are crowd shots, not only of the cycle race, but even of one of Sri Lanka’s greatest sportmen, Nagalingam Ethirveerasingham, about to leap high at the sports meet. Supplementing these are a few imaginative sketches which bring alive the personalities of not only Noel Crusz but also Peter Pillai and the Vice-Rector, to say nothing of Bing Crosby.

The book ends with three appendices, the last the filmography of Crusz, while the first tells the tale of the inspiration for the film, Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’. The second appendix is a fascinating letter from Crusz written almost half a century after the film was made, about the process of creating a soundtrack through dubbing that was more professional than the first effort, and which included the crowd voices used then.

I thought the book a triumph for many reasons. First in that it recreated a singular achievement of a school 70 years ago, while conveying the enthusiasm and the dedication of schoolboys of that period. Second it records the tremendous achievement of Noel Crusz, while also registering the sadness of his career being spiked as it were by unsympathetic authority.

Third it brings together heaps of period pictures, supplemented by pictures of youngsters grown old, which is a healthy reminder of the passing of time, while the buildings of St. Joseph’s, though altered over the years, mark the continuity of a distinguished heritage. To add another perspective, the writer has collected advertisements of those days for both cameras and bicycles, that record too the impact the film made – as do the newspaper cuttings about the triumph as well as the tragedy of Kenneth De Rozairo’s death.

In a bleak world it has been heartening to see the initiatives and the dedication of Avishka Mario Senewiratne, first with regard to the inspired Ceylon Journal and now this revival of a forgotten story and singular achievement. And his ability to recreate the past reminds me of something my former Dean once wrote, that ‘The past envelopes you like a warm blanket.’