The Film Daily (1918)

Monday, November 25, 1918 jM% DAILY ■■Hi Unreal Forced Farce Situations Rather Unfunny in Very Good Atmosphere Carmel Myers in "ALL NIGHT'' Universal DIRECTOR '. Paul Powell AUTHOR Edgar Franklin SCENARIO BY Fred Myton CAMERAMAN Not credited AS A WHOLE Unfunny farce with forced action that failed to bring laughs. STORY Slight twist given old farce idea of un= married folk posing as married because of presence in house; of wealthy stranger. DIRECTION Kept things moving, but played too hard for laughs. PHOTOGRAPHY Generally very good LIGHTINGS Some excellent, generally satisfac= tory. CAMERA WORK Generally good STAR Not particularly appealing in this SUPPORT Just fair "movie" characterizations EXTERIORS Acceptable INTERIORS Rather good DETAIL Good CHARACTER OF STORY Delicate situations, but so unreal no one will object. LENGTH OF PRODUCTION About 4,700 ft. MANY times and oft have we had on the stage and on the screen the farce situation of a young couple forced Into the position of pretending that they are married in order to fool some old nut who happened to be very wealthy, and in the house as a visitor. This time, instead of having the old man a relative who wanted to see the baby or the wife, as has been the customary plot basis, we had the more unreal theme of the stranger being a millionaire who was nutty on the notion of doing business only with those who managed their homes properly. The young married hero in this, in order to help a friend, had invited to his house for dinner a young lady that the friend had been seeking an opportunity to pro pose to. When the coming of the stranger was announced, the hero, to make good on the shortage of servants, forced the young lovers to pretend that they were the married couple, while hero and his wife took the position of servants, this being done because they knew the house. Naturally, as in all of these wild farce situations, there were many embarrassing developments, chief among which was the well-known stunt of the old guy insisting upon the unmarried folks going to bed. This was rather overdone, with the stranger talking very unusual liberties in entering the bedroom and starting to undress the husband against his protests. The father of the girl who was pretending to be the young wife, came to the house to take her home and then the stranger millionaire was told that the father was insane, while the father was told that the millionaire was insane, which is certainly not a new angle, although it provided some footage, since the millionaire proceeded to lock father up in a store-room. All through this offering we had action in every scene, but the forced attempts to make it funny failed to result as desired because it is seldom possible to get laughs when the director and players are working so terribly hard for them. The general atmosphere of the offering as to sets, lighting, etc.. was very good, and had the situations been held down to something more human, and had the characterizations been played a little more closely towards what might have been, the chances are that this would have been a pleasing offering. The day has passed when wild action and footage registers as a good film. The situations in this were old hokum farce and they were not played with the proper finesse of characterization to make them funny. Carmel Myers has done many things much better than this. She did not appeal particularly in this character, and the youthful players with her failed to make a particularly pleasing impression. The wild Montana millionaire was an unheard of type and did unheard of things, and the other characters were only acceptable. This fails to get out of the class of ordinary routine "movie" because it lacks distinction in story merit, and the players fail to register as unusual personalities. Those who appeared were M. Rodolpho De Valentina, Charles Dorian. Mary Warren. William Dayer. Wadsworth Harris and Jack Hull. Soft Pedal on Merits But Trick Lines May Pull You Some Business The Box Office Analysis for the Exhibitor Because of the fact that the atmosphere in this is rather good, and the thing keeps moving, it is quite possible that the average andience will accept this without serious complaint, principally because it is no worse than hundreds of other productions that have been handed to them in the past. Certainly I would not advise you to reach out for this. and if you have a contract which makes it necessary for you to play it, I would use a soft pedal in proclaiming the merits of the production. Concentrate rather upon the title and the name of the star if you think it means anything, and use catchlines such as: "Would you play servant to fool a wild Western millionaire from whom you expected to secure a million dollars for business?" I question the advfsat)ility of referring to the time-worn situation of the young couple who had to pretend they were married when they weren't, because that has been done to death in the films. You might arouse some interest by pulling a line like this: "Have you ever stayed away from home all night? How did you explain it?" You might take another angle and play it up along these lines: "Have you ever given the man who wants to tell you how he would like to marry you the proper opportunity? Think it over. Maybe you haven't figured right." The old angle. "What would you do for a million dollars?" would apply to this because our hero is supposed to be pulling all the wild stuff that the plot calls for because he wants to separate the wealthy Western wild gink from that sum to finance a business deal.