The Film Daily (1922)

^■■■■■^HiBMiM Sunday, December 17, 1922 THE ■^Hk DAILV 15 Very Thin Material in Wally Reid's Latest Wallace Reid in "THIRTY DAYS" Paramount DIRECTOR James Cruze AUTHORS A. E, Thomas and Clayton Hamilton SCENARIO BY Walter Woods CAMERAMAN Karl Brown AS A WHOLE Fairly satisfying farce-comedy. Hardly up to Reid's standard STORY Pretty thin DIRECTION Did about all that could be expected with material at hand PHOTOGRAPHY Very good LIGHTINGS Very good STAR Works hard as the silly flirtatious sentimentalist SUPPORT Wanda Hawley does her little bit well. Others unimportant EXTERIORS Satisfactory INTERIORS Good DETAIL Nothing to bother about. Titles excellent CHARACTER OF STORY Not offensive LENGTH OF PRODUCTION 4,930 feet About five years ago "Thirty Dci}s"' was received fairly well in New York on the stage, but the effort to throw the comedy on the screen isn't so successful. In a way it is good enough but the story is so thin and the treatment so tepid, and the action lacking to such an extent, that excepting for the titles which really are funny and which are exceedingly well illustrated, there isn't a good deal to the farce, not nearly enough to make it good material for Wally l^eid, who incidentally is entitled to a lot better stuff than this. James Cruze wanders a long way from "The Old Homestead" to make "Ihirty Days," but the probabilities are that the chief laUit is not with Cruze but with the material. They send Wally, who is a flirtatious sentimentalist, to jail to keep him out ol the way of harm and to prevent the leader of the Italian Cammora from kniling him, because he has caught Wally kissing hi; wife. Then you find Wally and the Italian leader in jail, and then you find them out and somewhere thereafter the story ends. It is far from satisfying, although Reid works very hard at times, and Kalla Pasha, from Mack Sennett's lot, is a rather laughable warden of the jail. There isn't enough to the material to hold out. That is the real difficulty. Lasky has given the usual Paramount production values and the cast is fairly satisfactory, but there isn't anything in this to worry you one way or the other. It is somewhat surprising that Paramount, which has a good investment in Keid, will allow this type of material to be used. There have been many instances where material could not be padded and should not be padded and there are producers who overdo it. This is an example of where judicious padding would have materially helped. To have made this a worthwhile farce the producers might easily have used the trick which Harold Lloyd so successfully puts over, that of building and building upon one sequence until the simple early laugh becomes a definite roar at the climax. Title Afiords Cleverer Exploitation Material Than Picture Warrants Box Office Analysis for the Exhibitor "Thirty Days" has more possibilities for exploitation than the picture deserves. If you will just think it over a few moments you will realize how this title can be twisted and used in various ways. The only trouble is that if you go too strong and pack them in on the strength of the title they are lialjle to go out kicking, because while amusing Reid's latest is so thin in material that it doesn't get very far. Use } our l:)est judgment and boost this along to a certain point with safety, and if your promises aren't too rash they may like it well enough but don't stress this too much. Catch lines come naturally with this sort of a title. If you go in for lobby displays get some fake bars and build a cell around your box office. A "trusty" can take the tickets. All sorts of schemes of this kind come to mind. It ought to be easy to put this one over.