Photoplay Magazine, January 1921 (anuary 1921)

The Shadow Ree. V. S. Pat. on. A Review of the new pictures by Burns Mantle and Photoplay Magazine Editors P BY BURNS MANTLE iASSION," produced in Germany, is a super-production scenically; spectacular and stirring in its employment of scenes from the French revolution, with great crowds of passion-torn peasants milling about the falling Bastile and the guillotine. It has color and dramatic value, and though it is a costume play performed by actors unknown to American audiences, the story is sufficiently human to overcome the handicaps of its foreign origin. With Pola Negri, a Polish actress who is said to be the most popular cinema star on the continent, playing the Du Barry role, and with a cast of compe- tent actors supporting her, it adds novelty to the succession of native films to which we are accustomed. The title ^may prove something of a disappointment if you go to see if" because of its sexy appeal. It is not excessively physical at any time, nor nearly so daring as many American films. The story picks up Du Barry as a milliner's apprentice devoted to her citizen lover but eager for finery and admiration and quite willing to barter her charms for wealth and position. Her first conquest is that of the Spanish envoy, whom she leaves to become the mistress, and later the wife, of the dissolute Count Du Barry. Attracting the attention of Louis, who had a keen eye for pretty women, she proudly transfers her allegiance to him, and though in a sense she is still faithful to her lowly lover, effecting his release from prison and forcing his pro- motion to a captaincy in the army, she is thoroughly consistent in her loyalty to her royal patron. She excites little sympathy at any time, but holds the interest in her tragic fate to the end. Mme. Negri is physically attractive, highly emotional, technically facile and dramatically effective. MADAME PEACOCK—Metro THE suggestion is plain that Mme. Nazimova has had a lot to say about the filming of "Madame Peacock." the screen version of which she adapted from a story by Rita Weiman, and as a result it is the most theatrically strained and least humanly convincing of her recent pictures. Set a tempera- mental actress to playing her idea of what a temperamental actress is like and the resulting portrait is quite certain to be extravagant to the point of absurdity. The actress-heroine in "Passion," produced in Germany, is a spectacular costume play, based on the career of Madame Du Barry. The star is Pola Negri, a highly emotional Polish actress of some fame abroad. this instance is utterly without sympathy; she deserts her hus- band because he is an unsuccessful newspaper man with a cough, and her baby girl because she cries too much. She goes on the stage, achieves a triumph and lords it over her world until— years later, a younger member of her company rises to take the curtain calls away from her. She demands the dismissal of the upstart, only to discover that her manager is more interested in his find than in his star. Then, beaten to tears, madame goes home and learns that the young actress is her own daughter. Husband, having cured his cough, is back on the job and a happy ending is imminent. Not a bad story, sanely treated, but in the Nazimova version all values are sacrified to the demands of the star, with the result that no part of the story gathers an interest that is cumulative or convincingly real. Nazimova plays both the actress and her daughter, being a little more human as the girl than as her impossible mother. The peacock theme is extravagantly overworked in the decoration. As the deserted husband George Probert's face was the picture of woe, a sadness which may have been inspired by the gloomy story or by watching the star act. We suspect the latter cause. CONRAD IN QUEST OF HIS YOUTH — Paramount Artcraft HE was a sweet singer, and observant, who put into verse the discovery that while we can all go back to the scenes of our childhood none can return to the days of his youth. He was a fine novelist who caught the spirit of the theme for his story of "Conrad in Quest of His Youth." And he is a conscientious workman who has adapted the story for the screen. But the spirit and charm of the Leonard Merrick classic are too fine and too elusive for the camera and the screen. The minute you try to visualize Thomas Meighan as the dreaming Warrener of your fancy the picture is thrown out of focus, and when in his effort to catch again something of that which he had lost by inviting his little playmates back to the old garden they had romped through as children, and you see them actually indulging the adventure and accepting it half seriously, it someway is neither laughable as comedy nor convincing as fantastic drama. Later, when the story approaches the more conventional, but likewise the more solid division of the romance—that in which the tired 63