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THE PABST ARRIVAL
By Frank Daugherty.
As I write this, I have talked with Pabst but twice : the first time in his hotel room on the day of his arrival when, with Henry Balnke, I had missed him at the train ; the second time at the studio the following day.
If so brief an introduction to his film ideas may be used for an opinion, I am led to think that Pabst and Hollywood will war, but that when the war is done, Pabst will have been found to have won some ground for his film ideas in America.
" I was very impressed with Footlight Parade in New York," he said, " but surely no one will want me to make a picture like that !
He is right. No one will. His first picture is to be a Ruth Chatterton vehicle, Journal of a Crime, by Jacques Duval, and at first blush seems an impossible task for him. But one must not be too quick to judge. Pabst saw, even in the George-M-Cohan — Gold Diggers — ending the beginnings of a social consciousness. It is easy enough to sigh and reply that we have seen those beginnings times without number, but it certainly would be a thankless thing to suggest to Pabst that he should weigh himself down with our weariness. Let Pabst see what he will, and make it, too, we say.
He finds Paul Muni's pictures " full " of the social meanings he is seeking. He thinks Vidor's Hallelujah was almost complete expression. Chaplin he dismisses as " artist."
This was so surprising because, where Pabst has been admired here at all, it has been as transition to this " art," and not as superstructure upon it. But this may be because all European film work first reaches us as " art." It is difficult to cut it up into its proper names. Eisenstein's great vogue was first as " art," and died, or was laughed at, when it became something else in the hands of his young revolutionary admirers in the bickerings over Con Viva Mexico. Dovzhenko, hardly understood at all, still is a great favorite, but as " artist." Pudovkin's communist leanings were of course apparent to even his simplest audience here in Storm Over Asia — but were forgiven for his " art." More latterly, perhaps, for his film writing. His famous magnesium flame illustration is quoted by directors and writers who do not know his name. His recent article in Close Up on the difference between the stage and screen actor, absolutely sound, has brought him a tardy ripple of attention.
If all this seems very elementary to the European film worker, it should be remembered that the film in America today is truly in its " dark age" surrender to the stage. Even where film consciousness exists, it builds fearfully, and often as abortion. Sternberg, Vidor, Howard, Borzage, Dieterle — all conscious of the film as an art — play frightful havoc with its evolution. Even such a wily fox, such a real film general as Lubitsch, must play at hare and hounds within the economic circle.