Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

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CLOSE UP may stop or at any rate considerably check this migration, which was so very good for art, keeping things moving all the time, new talent, new modes, new waj^s. Do 3^011 remember GREED ? Here Yon Stroheim carried the German mind to America, w4th the result no American could bear to look at it. Often banal, always drearj-, it was so much more than a play, it was life, an amazing quality of realism. And what cjTiicism. Those dreadful beds with brass knobs, tramis seen though upstair windows rattling this way and that over crossings, a common street, always some grimy, daily human thing going on outside, carts, a funeral procession, mean little interiors with cheap curtains across cheap doors, lives pecking and picking like hungr\^ sparrows, awfully aware of turmoil and cross purposes. Repressed unhappy people, awful families doing what a\\:ful families do, bank holidaj^ picnics in the suburbs, ceremonial visits, too rmny ill trained children j'Owling and quarrelling and being slapped. Hurdy gurdy music. One recognised everv^thing, every^thing was as everj^thing is. And it was epic, and failed dismally. Then von Stroheim with the same grand cjmicism tossed down the Merry Widow in all its clammy ej^ewash. And of course it was the grand success it deserved to be. I mean because it was the snub of the artist reser\dng his pearls from swine. Another of the films that impressed me most was Xju. Here Jannings was not only possible but downright good. It is true in Variete and Faust and Xero he made one ill, but here he was the artist, padding humbty, married. An uncouth. 12