Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

126 CELLULOID and too little on the use of his cameras. The whole of Paul's leave at home is ineffectual and needs drastically reorganizing. In the first place, the choice of Beryl Mercer as Paul's mother is far from satisfactory. Her stupid whining completely shatters the tremendous dramatic significance of the scene. Paul's bitter speech, also, when he returns to the class-room and finds the schoolmaster still exhorting fresh youngsters to die for their fatherland, loses much of its sting, principally because Milestone has not here paid much attention to his camera set-ups. Another disappointing scene is the famous incident in the shell-hole between Paul and the dying poilu whom he has stabbed, which fails on account of its lack of intimate handling. The " acting " of Lewis Ayres is not powerful enough to bring out the full poignancy of the situation, and Milestone gives him no aid by dramatic angles or cutting. Fortunately these incidents are absorbed in the grim inevitability of it all and the film continues to a magnificent conclusion. I would comment especially on the last scenes when Paul arrives back from his leave. At this moment, as he looks round at his company and sees little boys in the place of the soldiers he had left a few days back, we realize to the full the vast difference that exists between " here " and " there." And when he goes out to join Kat, the crafty veteran who is nearer to him than his own mother and father, it comes as a stab of stark reality what war has done to these men. Moreover, Lewis Milestone succeeds in establishing the tragic atmosphere of a defeated army in these