The art of sound pictures (1930)

92 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES fendant’s best friend. The audience then sees the picture of the murder and its attendant circumstances as they actually occurred. Look now at an unusual t}T)e of suspense story, The Valiant. It achieved notable success by the unique method of building the entire plot, not primarily around the events in the story, but chiefly around the stoic character of the hero. Much of the picture’s success, of course, was due to the sustained and intelligent acting of Paul Muni, its leading character. But equally much was the result of an excellent plot. As the story opens, a pistol shot is heard, and a young man is seen leaving the scene of the shooting. He walks numbly to the police station, where he tells the officer that he has just killed a man. On being asked his name, he quickly invents one. He is jailed, tried for murder, and sentenced to be executed. Meanwhile, the scene changes, and the audience sees an old lady whose son had disappeared years back and has never been heard of since. Scenes of the youth at his old home reveal to the audience that the missing boy and the condemned murderer are the same. The mother sees a picture of the man in a newspaper, and is convinced that he is her son. She then sends her daughter, the boy’s sister, to the prison to find out if the murderer is, in fact, her boy. There follows a tremendously dramatic scene between brother and sister, in which the brother successfully and tragically hides his identity and invents a plausible story about the missing youth, whom he said he knew in the army and who was killed in action. The sister leaves, convinced that at last she knows the story of her brother’s fate, and that .the man about to be executed