The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

156 The Educational Screen plains, lost in the dim outlines of distant mountain ranges; the thrill of cattle by the ten-thousand head, grazing in peace far below the summit from which their owner watched, shading his narrowed eyes, to better pierce the distances. Madariaga, the Centaur, who came from the crowded bickerings of the old world, into the spaces of the virgin New World, and grew from "savage poverty" to a king of lands and cattle, had something of the rough sim- plicity of Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil." But where the latter had rough simplicity only, combined with the cold, per- sonal stupidites of the Nordic, this old world libertine had all the fire of his race, the fierceness of its passions and his own gigantic individuality. The "old world port steeped in sin" with its famous resort for derelict and wealthy cattlemen alike; the resort itself, crowded, shifting in smoke and the turbulence of sensuous desire; the Parisian cafe, with its Freudian touch; that immeasurable moment of the singing of France's battle hymn; in resume these are elements that made The Four Horse- men the greatest of American productions. To analyze in closer detail, however, from the viewpoint of the cast. Pomeroy Cannon, as Madariaga, gave us splendidly the bold libertine, utterly impossible in northern races. An Englishman or an American, like him, would have been filthy, disgusting. Not so the Centaur, with the Latin's age-old heritage. He was never mean, never disgusting; even in his senility he remained the fierce, ruthless, clean cut libertine. "Women are the plague of our existence, but we cannot do with- out them—eh, Frenchy ?" And so he taught the French son-in-law's daughter the tango until her mother interfered. In like man- ner he has taught his grandson, Julio Des- noyers, the abandoned life of the red- blooded libertine. "Would you have him grow up like those glass-eyed carrot-topped sharks of your sister's?" he demanded of Madame Desnoyers. The Centaur hated the three sons of his German son-in-li Alan Hale, as the German son-in-1; played one of the most carefully direc roles we have yet seen. « The Centaur's sudden death before had changed a first will left his vast f tune to be divided between his two dauj ters. Karl von Hartott immediately nounces his determination to return Germany where his now grown sons n at last have the advantages of super-c ture. The shot of their departure is p feet in its Teutonic stupidity and cone Much against his will, because he had 1 France, a condemned revolutionist of 1£ Desnoyers consents to the combined pie; ing of his wife, son and daughter, and turns to his "fatherland." Thus we find Julio Desnoyers the tar tea hero of Paris,—his favorite pupil wife of Laurier, a close friend of father's. There is no point in recount the story here. Suffice it to say that love scenes of Julio and Marguerite magnificently sensuous, delicate in straint. The American actor could ne portray desire as does this Rodolph Val tino of the sensitive, quivering nostrils, eyes that snap hotly with anger, mischi iously with continental flirtation; that c as suddenly, express the aching agony those moments when he saw himself coward and, in renunciation determined fight for France. "It is your country i my father's. I will fight for it." ^ Marguerite returns to the husband had left for her dream of young love. I is blind, Julio." .... "Life is not what thought it. Had it not been for the i we might have realized our dream. ] now, my destiny at his side is marked forever." The incomparably beauti Alice Terry plays Madame Laurier witl strength that matches perfectly the ger of Valentino. In that supreme mom when Julio cries that Laurier's wife longs to him, and his lips creep, tende hungrily from Marguerite's lips down