Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

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FAN MALES We write and write, we what-are-called critics (it is a pity there is no word that means " scientific enjoyer "), and we develop our theories, which may or may not be true, because we don't often meet the Men Who Do Things, who, consequently, Know. So> what can it mean to us when Lubitsch, Lloyd and Father Fairbanks are to be seen and spoken to? What shan't we learn, what tips shan't we pick up, what general idea not form? Listen and see. Taking them in order; first, Lubitsch. The Savoy. A swelegant room, clustered with film-critics at tea, who either nibble sandwiches as if they were steaks or else say " No gee-gaws for me," and fall to discussing this morning's show or yesterday's " Express " article. Repeated again and again, a cunning use of sound, rises and buzzes what each of them knows, " These ' do's ' are no use to me." .... All very back-scene of a Lubitsch comedy. What a pity Jeannette Macdonald isn't a lady film-critic. No one thinks of that. They would make Chevalier one instead. We are told Herr Lubitsch is sorry to be late, he is in his bath. What a pity it is not Jeannette Macdonald we are waiting to see, swinging in on a portable grand staircase she brings out of her bag, or maybe being wheeled in in her bath, singing. . . . The doors open, and it is not she. No>, it is the power behind her throne. Lubitsch the eulogised, the approved, the understood, the successful. The master. He is small, dark, suggesting olive-wood and olive-oil. Suggesting also a leprechaun, with his bright little eyes, his darting movements, small, genial, sly. He goes round each tea-table. That is very polite. No mass-introduction for him. Then he retires to a corner and the tea-table occupants swoop to him in a rush, leaving the tables, as they have long left the plates, empty. That would be a prettv shot . And what does he say, what does he think, this man whose Love Parade set the film free again from sound, whose every film has added some new point of style to> screen-vocabulary? He says that Herbert Marshall has a mellowness and malleability which are rare to find in a man; that he has no wish to make an operatic film, for opera is old-fashioned now, " even in the opera-house." He talks of the way he found Jeannette Macdonald. There were no singie stars in Hollywood to suit. Eighty tests were taken of stage stars in New York. Lubitsch saw twenty; the twentieth was Jeannette Mac; he hopped on a train for Chicago, where she was performing, so as to see her assured and at home in her medium. From this emerges the fact that tests are cold, and do not bring out just the facet of personality you may want. Actors have to be seen doing their stuff, confident and at work. He says that he wants no more technical innovations; we have enough, and he wants to 40