Exhibitors Herald World (Jan-Mar 1929)

January 12, 1929 EXHIBITORS HERALD-WORLD 59 w SERVICE TALKS Incorporated in this department of Exhibitors Herald, which is a department containing news, information and gossip on current productions, is the Moving Picture World department, "Through the Box Office Window" "FOUR SO.\S" [ AM sure that an interesting story lurks belind the repeatedly demonstrated fact that the •ox company can make better mother pictures han any or all of the others. It might be disovered by an investigator into this phenomenon hat there are more mothers in the executive jmily of this concern, or on the other hand, by reverse process of logic, that there are more lotherless executives. Without becoming at all ersonal, I hazard the guess that John Ford, at Jast. either has an extremely human and lovble mother or that, by the other method of eduction, he has been deprived of her under ircumstances which would be extremely intersting if they were any of our business. Cerlinly his "Four Sons" is the best mother picJre since "Over the Hill," which was the best lother picture of all time. "Four Sons" is a German-American war story, lost of it has to do with the German side of le encounter. The American side is dealt with dturally. necessarily, and without undue warig of flags or marching of troops. The mother a German mother, three of whose sons enter le German army, the fourth coming to Amera before the outbreak of the war and enlistlg, eventually, on this side of the argument. <~hat happens to the boys it is the business of ie picture, not of my typewriter, to tell you. earnestly advise that you see the picture, from ie first if possible, and learn the story firstand. It will be good for you. The players in '"Four Sons" are too numerous id too evenly matched for me to name and "edit them separately. If you care to know ho does good work in the picture, look up the ist and select any or all of the names. You ill not be wrong. There are no also-rans, no emendously outstanding triumphs, but there e a great many equally able performances by great many people. And there is a great deal good direction, good setting, even the cap>ns are good — and this latter I think can be id of very few pictures in this day of wiseacking slapstick by the gentlemen who write btitles. I am among those who do not like to see other pictures, for the excellent reason that ey do things to me. I do not particularly like weep, though I feel after doing so as any her normal individual feels, and so I seek to oid the experience. Perhaps this is only the ore reason why I regard "Four Sons" so ghly, this and the fact that it presents the tie matter of war much as that little matter By T. O. Service presented itself to me on the occasion of its last appearance in these parts. That is to say, not very attractively, but very, very accurately. "COXQUESr' \. HEARD from a quite reliable source, a good long while before Monte Blue began work in the production of "Conquest," that Mr. Blue was not particularly glad of the assignment. Not, it was pointed out, that he lacked vocal equipment for the job or that he wished to continue in the expansive silences to which he had been accustomed. Rather because he thought little good could come of making the picture, the story being what it was to be and all that. I have not heard what Mr. Blue has to say of the picture, now that it is completed and in exhibition, but I believe I could guess. I hasten to assure him, however, that he need have little fear of being blamed for what has happened. He has shown that he can speak up when occasion demands and he loses, in the articulate, none of the charm that was and still is his in pantomime. Messrs. Tully Marshall, H. B. Warner and others in the cast likewise. Blame for what has happened goes further back, back, in fact, to the inevitable rush and stampede of production which is an outgrowth of market conditions with which we all are familiar. The trouble with "Conquest" is, I think, that nobody took the trouble to write lines for it. Maybe I am wrong, maybe somebody really did write the lines that are used, but if that is the case the error merely becomes personal. The picture, aside from the quite inadequate wording of it, is quite interesting. It is timely, too, for Commander Byrd is somewhere South in search of the pole over which Messrs. Blue and Warner fly with relative ease in "Conquest." Told with the legerdemain of the silent cinema working in its behalf, bolstering wobbly logic and making the impossible seem probable, it might conceivably be highly entertaining and interesting fiction. I should list the picture among the experiments which had to be made. We will be fortunate indeed if there are not many worse ones before the technique of the audien is perfected. In view of the greatness of the aim, the magnitude of the benefits to be derived ultimately, let us pass gently this, and such other transient imperfections as may be encountered. MACK SES\ETT, HIMSELF c V_^OLNT among the triumphs of the audien its success in bringing the one, only and entirely too exclusive Mack Sennett back from the shadows to the plain, white glare of the screen. This funniest of all funny men, who doesn't appear in the picture but is all around and about it by reason of having WTitten and directed it, has a comedy in distribution which all good motion picture people should see if they see nothing else this year. It is called ""The Lion's Roar." I could write more words than you'd read about the genius named Sennett. I would begin by recalling the best of all his jokes, when he employed Raymond Hitchcock to star in "My \ alet" and then, finding the stage comedian to be funny as a funeral in film, enacted the valet himself and made the funniest of all Mack Sennett comedies and put the first Triangle program over with a clatter and bang. I would finish by complaining that Mack ain't done right by our little art-industry in turning over the megaphone to a lot of good boys who simply aren't Mack Sennett. But I'll save all those words and ease up to the news that in this, his first audien comedy, you have the Sennett humor in story and direction, and in a gentle kidding of the audien itself, which interferes in no way with a handsome demonstration of just what the apparatus of audibility can do. Mr. Sennett puts the reproducing mechanism through its paces by making it reproduce practically all the noises you can think of in a given space of time, including the human voice. But he has done this by rigging up a comic yarn, in which the noises occur, that is just about twice as funny as anything any of his directors has turned out since he laid aside his personal megaphone. The comedy would be a riot without the audibility stuff. With it, it is a riot plus a panic plus pandemonium. (Try that on your reproducers, men.) I am told that this comedy signalizes Mr. Sennett's affiliation with Educational. This may account for the putting forth of the personal effort, or again it may not. I prefer to think that the grand old man of the slapstick has been re-interested in picture by advent of the audien and has set out to show the younger generation of Hollywoodsmen just how little they know about making comedies and a few of the tricks they'll have to learn if they want to keep in the procession. I wag my old grey head happily and chuckle. Attaboy, Mack, give 'em 'ell. <