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cast plays like human beings instead of actors, maintaining an unnaturally low key, thereby giving emphasis to situations which otherwise would fall into the ordinary rut of melodrama. This particularly applies to Margo, night-club dancer fresh to the screen, who brings here a curiously attractive personality far removed from the orthodox star's prescription. Whitney Bourne, Manhattan socialite, is not so successful, obviously playing to Hollywood precedent. To Garmes, I think, must go credit for most of the direction and also, I am afraid, the self-conscious artiness which now and again crops up to destroy the realism of the treatment. Left alone, these ace-cameramen always seem destined to run amok with arty-impressionism, in this case a double-exposure trick of the lawyer's second self to goad him into false security. It is odd that a man of Garmes's ability should not have realized that sound alone gave all he wanted for this second self gag without throwing back to the crude old ideas of the Germans. Apart from this criticism and the doubtful wisdom of allowing Rains to overact, the film is certainly to be noted as an advance in independent methods and augurs well for coming films from the same team.
Paul Rotha.
LITTLE FRIEND
Production and Distribution: GaumontBritish. Direction: Berthold Viertel Script: Margaret Kennedy. Photography: Gunthur Krampf. Sets: Alfred Jtinge. Editing: Ian Dalrymple, With Matheson Lang, Lydia Sherwood, Nova Pilbeam, Fritz Kortner. Length; 7,650 feet.
There is a solid honesty behind this film which, despite its many shortcomings, I commend to your notice. True, it is doubtful if it would have been produced without the previous examples of Poil de Carotte and La Maternelle, but this we must accept as part and parcel of the picture business. Of one thing we may be certain, that Viertel believed in his story and was sincere in his direction. His undoing lies in the mistake that Nova Pilbeam is neither mentally nor physically suited to the part she is called upon to fulfil and that his handling of the story is foreign to the essentially English atmosphere that pervades the whole. You can see how successfully he worked with Krampf, Kortner and Jiinge because they understood his requirements. But the only member of the remainder who shows comprehension of his aims is Lydia Sherwood, whose sound acting ability stands her in good stead in an underestimated performance of the unhappy mother. For the rest, they are dull and wooden, giving poor Viertel little help and speaking their badlywritten lines without feeling or interest. If the treatment generally had been more cinematic, this might not have been so obvious, but
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