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BY GARY MOFFATT
Well, they've done it again--just as Mad Monks was shaping up as the freshest new comic strip in many moons, out the Sun yanks it in favour of the insipid Eek and Meek and relegates it to the evergrowing circle of good strips not (at least to my knowledge) available in any Canadian paper-Tiger, Kelly, Snuffy Smith, the Dropouts, Momma, Rick O'Shay, Secret Agent Corrigan, Johnny Hazard, Smidgens etc from the USA; Garth, Scarth, Modesty Blaise, James Bond, Jeff Hawke, The Perishers from Britain, One could also compose a long list of worthless strips featured quite frequently in the Canadian press, with the NEA lineup and Broom Hilda (which constantly confuses vulgarity with humour) as leading candidates,
Having returned to Ottawa, I'll write here from time to time about local screenings of films which, to my knowledge, haven't played in Toronto in recent years, The main source is the Canadian Film Theatre, an organization not unlike the Ontario Film Theatre at Toronto's Science Centre, Other interesting films pop up in a variety of places here; for instance, the National Art Gallery recently showed a 1937 product called Renfrew of the Mounted ~ which was bad enough to make me suspect it was made in Canada though I couldn't tell, not having heard of the studio or any of the players except Chief Thundercloud. James Newell portrayed a singing mountie who combined the worst traits of Nelson Eddy and Dick Powell.
Recently, the Film Theatre devoted an evening to Josef Von Sternberg, showing two silent films of two hours each (since the budget doesn't run, to hiring a pianist, the overall effect was a trifle eerie). The films, however, were fascinating. Von Sternberg's career is paradoxical; he was most interested in social realism, but elements of Hollywood fantasizing creep inexorably into his early works and in the end he was chiefly remembered for the ultraglamorous Dietrich series, For instance, The Last Command was conceived as a tribute to the Hollywood extra but one cannot help but suspect that their working conditions were portrayed no more realistically than was life in Russia in 1917, Emil Jannings, who specialized in pathetic old men, is seen here as a one-time Czarist general who dies reliving his moment of glory as a Hollywood extra, A thin plot brilliantly executed.
Underworld was an early gangster film (Paramount did one more major gangster effort, Mamoulian's City Streets, before abandoning the genre to Warner Brothers). Here George Bancroft is well cast as the vulgar gangster destroyed by his tenderness for a lady whom Cagney and Robinson later stereotyped, Evelyn Brent is properly demure as the lady, and comedian Larry Semon gets a few laughs as the sidekick, The major weakness is the casting of Clive Brook as the alcoholic whom Bancroft rehabilitates and Brent falls in love with, Brook's ultrawooden approach to acting is okay in Shanghai Express and Cavalcade where his characters are pretty dull anyway but here is a role with which much more could and should have been done.