Cinema Quarterly (1934 - 1935)

in cinema for a long time. Other well-known actors in the film are Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Emilia Unda, Claus Clausen and Theodor Loos. The scenario is by Thea von Harbou and Rudolf Luckner with music by Wolfgang Zeller. Hans Steinhoff directed. I prefer merely to record that three other films, The Eternal Wanderer, Mireille and Son Autre Amour have also been seen in London. But not by many people. J. S. Fairfax-Jones. RUGGLES OF RED GAP (American. Paramount). Charles Laughton has said that he enjoyed playing the part of Ruggles more than any other on stage or screen; and his performance definitely has that fine, rich, sustained quality which results when an artist has delighted in expression. Ruggles is an English valet of 1908, who, descendant of a long line of servants, accepts his destiny without question — a gentleman's gentleman who is inevitably fundamentally disturbed when circumstances compel him to go, as man-servant to a rancher, to the little Mid-Western town of Red Gap, a democratic whirlpool in which he can nowhere find a safe, familiar footing. But gradually he recovers from the shattering experience, discovers his manhood and his independence and finds fresh refuge and reassurance in the democratic principles expressed by Lincoln at Gettysburg. The scene in which he recites Lincoln's speech to a bar-room audience at Red Gap — an audacious experiment — is brilliantly handled by Laughton and his director, Leo McCarey. Admirably the film contrives to combine the liveliest clowning with an imaginative study of the atmosphere of American democracy and its emancipating influence on an Englishman, complacent product of generations of servitude. If it tilts wickedly at the English aristocracy, the film makes fun also of American snobbery and its picture of Anglo-American relations is always agreeable. Every film in which Laughton appears seems to give fresh evidence of his virtuosity. It is good to know that Hollywood has discovered his potentialities as a comedian. Ruggles of Red Gap has been described as pure Chaplin and the comparison is not entirely without foundation. F.H. THE WEDDING NIGHT (American. United Artists. King Vidor). This is an excellent illustration of the rule that Art will not come when you do call for it. Just previously, I saw It Happened One Night as it was being revived. I daresay no one concerned thought of the word "art" throughout its production. Yet this little comedy, unimportant and careless as it is, has ten times the creative strength and honesty of any part of The Wedding Night — of anything by Vidor, I am tempted to say, since The Big Parade. In his latest picture, Vidor has tried to tell a tragedy of love between a metropolitan novelist, married, and a Polish immigrant on a tobacco farm in Connecticut, engaged. It is a possible thesis, but Vidor has reduced it to the least common denominator, to squeeze the last drop of "human interest" from it. The result is a completely impossible sob-story. No one is believable, nothing that happens is convincing, save in terms of Bertha M. Clay. Something might have been saved had the players been even remotely in part. But Anna Sten, Gary Cooper, and Helen Vinson are all hopelessly at odds with their roles, though perhaps that was only a natural consequence. To add that the direction itself is generally undistinguished if not mediocre completes the sad story. Nevertheless, the film is Art, and the critics have praised it to the skies. Kirk Bond. 181