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picture has had good things in it that make it filmicly more interesting than many films more entertaining and more satisfying in the round. Fog over 'Frisco was particularly distinguished by its breathless speed and constant movement. It is the fastest filmdrama I know. Of the two pictures of the fall and early winter, Madame du Barry (as we are asked to call it) is the more enjoyable. I know it will not make the lists, and yet I can hardly see why. Probably because it is "smart" or "flippant"; for the standard of American film-critics is unbelievably high, too high to be true. One could write a small book about their point of view. They, the critics, were unanimous in praise of the eminently respectable Berkeley Square, because it was what they thought educated people thought was genuine "eighteenth century." Dubarry, on the other hand, is not, yet to me it is the best eighteenth century I remember since Leni's Man who Laughed, and only inferior to the first Dubarry.
It is just lively enough to be convincing. There is no obvious effort to go back two hundred years. One is simply there, and not bothered by a specious solemnity or an equally specious hilarity injected for the sake of "atmosphere," both of which helped to spoil Jew Suss. Reginald Owen's "After me, the deluge," is that miracle of speeches, an historic remark that actually sounds true. And if Dolores del Rio is no one's idea of the favourite, she is yet a very satisfactory baggage, and a plausible Dubarry. The only objection one might have is that the continuity is too fast for a leisurely age. Yet even this suits well with the intricate imbroglio which provides the plot, and is evidently meant to be enjoyed rather than understood.
The Firebird is not such a good picture. It is, for the most part, smooth but undistinguished. Dieterle introduces, however, in the little fellow, who could not say whether he had heard a gun-shot (for "A gun-shot! Ho! A gun-shot is soon over — bang — like that, but this terrible noise all day, hammering, people shouting, policemen . . ."), a relative of the mad aviators in The Last Flight and the trembling secretary in Six Hours, and the shot of his banging on the door, seen beyond an enormous stuffed pelican which fills half the screen and nods at each attack, is one to be remembered. It is so frantic, so desperate, yet so helpless.
Is it fanciful to see in this chaos of Stroheim and now Dieterle something of more than individual importance, something fundamentally American? Is it a coincidence that the close of Greed is essentially the close of Moby Dick? or that the at times symbolic unreality of Six Hours echoes Hawthorne? These are deep questions, but they do not seem wholly unjustified. However, they cannot be answered here. For the present, it is enough to express the hope that we shall see still finer Dieterles.
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