Film Spectator (1927-1928)

February 5, 1927 Page Nine duce an artistic scene, but if he made such a shot it was discarded in favor of some close-ups that mean nothing whatever. In another scene two women call on Tony in his office and to bring the three of them within a medium shot Clarence Badger packs them together on the side of the desk where Tony sits and where visitors to his office would not go. They would face him across the desk. You will notice in any picture that Erich Pommer makes the characters are grouped naturally and the camera has to shoot the scene any way it can. Most American directors do their grouping to accommodate the camera, which is why we have so many things that look just like motion pictures, instead of the bits of real life that Pommer gives us. In all the rest of his direction Badger shows that he entered completely into the spirit of the story and he makes a good picture out of it. Clara Bow, of course, is captivating. I can imagine no one else in the part. Moreno never did better in a light role. The beach sequence, in which he and Clara have the time of their lives on the amusement devices, goes over big because the two of them seem really to be enjoying themselves. Badger realized that joy is contagious and directed the sequence in a manner that makes the audience get as much fun out of it as the characters did. But as Clara and Tony played themselves, I believe the acting honors of It belong to William Austin, who played a character part. He has done well in a great many bits without previously having given a casting director the idea that he could do well a lot of bits in one picture. In It he has a big part — in effect a lot of bits — and adds immeasurably to the entertainment value of the picture. It is to be hoped that hereafter he will be recognized as a comedian to be featured. It was quite an inspiration on the part of someone to have Madame Glyn herself appear in a sequence. It is a touch which in itself will have a lot to do with the success of the picture. There must be many millions of people in the world curious about the appearance of so famous a woman and It will satisfy their curiosity. I wonder if she has “it”. * « * “The Denver Dude” Is Rather a Dud Hoot Gibson’s latest is The Denver Dude, a Western farce that has precious little to recommend it except Hoot’s own good natured personality. No doubt it will appeal to his regular list of customers and perhaps that is all that it is supposed to do. But just why do they make so many Westerns that by no possibility can appeal to people of intelligence? And, if a Western, why not maintain the Western atmosphere? In this picture Blanche Mahaffey, a very dainty little girl, strolls around a corral in gowns that would grace the terrace at Monte Carlo, and lives in a ranch house whose interior would be ostentatious in a Newport cottage. She and her mother, or aunt, or somebody, dress for a barbecue as elaborately as if they were going to be presented at court. I grant that it is good movie stuff to show beautiful gowns, but to make the roasting of an ox the reason for superlative dolling up is a weird bit of movie license. Also we have a Boston man wearing a silk hat on the ranch. And an old man who, a title explains, was born in this country to save the fare over, wears kilts and talks a brand of Scotch that will make it unsafe to show the picture in Scotland. The title writer’s conception of Scotch dialect is something extraordinary. The inviolable rule that you must have the love element in a motion picture is satisfied in The Denver Dude with a ready-made romance that required no working up whatever. It just is, although the two parties to it hadn’t met since they were children. There is one quaint bit of comedy. A woman looking for her husband is told that he is dead, a funny idea in itself, but it becomes screaming when she is told that he broke his leg and had to be shot. Another good idea in a movie is to have the hero protect the reputation of the heroine. Although there is not the slightest reason why Hoot should not tell the father that the daughter opened the safe and may know what happened to the missing money, he stubbornly refuses to do so, entailing upon himself the necessity of fieeing before the sheriff gets there. Blanche opened the safe to get her necklace for the barbecue, for no refined Western girl would outrage ranch conventions by appearing at a big barbecue without a necklace, but a shot in the barbecue sequence shows her not only minus the necklace, but also without the diamonds and pearls she previously had worn when she went to inspect a bull. Some bandits shoot a bus driver in this picture. Personally, I hold the belief that shooting bus drivers should come under the heading of light diversion, but the statutes look at it differently and when one is shot a sheriff, or a policeman, or someone, sooner or later hears about it and becomes agitated. Nothing like that happens in this picture. But when Bob McKim steals some money and they think Hoot did it, a sheriff is dug up pronto. If The Denver Dude had not contained these few faults, and if a different story had been written for it, it might have been a pretty good picture. However, it is no worse than the ordinary run of Westerns and if you do not apply the rule of reason to it you may get some fun out of it. But if you do apply the rule of reason you will get a devil of a lot more, but not the same kind. (Hoot told me that if he liked my review of The Denver Dude he’d subscribe for The Spectator.) » * * Hoot Gibson and Douglas Fairbanks OF COURSE, my feelings for The Denver Dude may have been influenced somewhat by the presence of someone in the seat behind me who chewed gum with vulgar ostentation and disgusting and audible persistency. But I do not believe that even without the mushy obligato I could have witnessed with approval a scene showing Hoot and his father meeting after a separation of five years. Although an early scene registers the father’s pride in his son, the two come together near the end of the picture and do not exchange a handclasp or a word. They do not even look at one another. When Reeves Eason directed the scene he simply forgot that a reunion was due, but how did it get beyond the projection-room? One of the weird things about Westerns is the habit producers have of making them so silly that they can not appeal to anyone who thinks. Such pictures have spoiled one of the most profitable fields that producers could exploit. Western pictures could be shown to-day in the biggest first-run houses and would be recognized as among the screen headliners if they had not degenerated into the wholly impossible things that masquerade under their name. They have the whole out