Film Spectator (1927-1928)

June 11, 1927 Page Three THE FILM SPECTATOR EVERY OTHER SATURDAY Published by FILM SPECTATOR, INCORPORATED Welford Beaton, President and Editor 7213 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California HEmpstead 2801 ADVERTISING RATES Three dollars per inch, per insertion, 13-em column. The Editor’s comments are in 20-em columns, one and one-half times the width of our advertising columns, hence the 20-em rate is four and one-half dollars per inch. No advertisement accepted for less than three months, or seven insertions. Subscription price, $3.50 per year; foreign, $4.50. Single copy, 15 cents. The only publication conducted solely for those who THINK about motion pictures. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, JUNE 11, 1927 Cecil de Mille and “The King of Kings” The supreme theme has been used. Jesus has come to the screen and De Mille has given us a picture which will tend to standardize the world’s conception of the New Testament. It was a great thing that Cecil de Mille conceived and executed — something that will live for a long, long time and which will gross more money than any other picture ever made. De Mille has one of the best business minds in pictures and making The King of Kings was the most brilliant stroke of his successful business career. He has made a picture that the public will buy for the next score of years, and has given the world something that supplements magnificently its most widely read book. He has given the screen a new dignity, thus being of infinite service to it. The business of the screen being to sell art, De Mille has become its supreme salesman by producing art that all the world will buy. He has loomed large in the history of motion pictures, but this picture will bring to him imperishable fame. Not only has he dealt impressively with an impressive theme, but he has given us a new conception of the possibilities of the motion picture camera to paint pictures of surpassing beauty. The King of Kings certainly is a thing of beauty, of great and glorious beauty that is a monument to the artistic sense of its creator. From every standpoint it is the most important picture ever made. It will add enormously to the already established jpatronage of pictures by attracting to theatres millions of people who have been holding aloof. That is one of the services De Mille has performed for the screen. All honor to him for his supreme achievement. I never have written for The Spectator anything more sincere than this tribute to De Mille’s genius. It is astonishing that he has merited it by giving the screen its most tiresome picture. I have viewed it twice. The first time it bored me, but I blamed myself, not it. I went to it a second time with my mind made up that I would see merit in it that had escaped me the first time. I never approached a picture more sympathetically, with a greater determination to enjoy it. I so informed Cecil de Mille before the screening began at the opening of the Chinese Theatre, and I hope he felt that I was sincere. But again I was bored. We had a party of nine people at the opening and eight of them thought The King of Kings very tiresome indeed. I have such respect for Mr. de Mille’s business astuteness that I am prepared to believe that he assumed that we would be bored, but did not lose sight of the fact that the world would pay to see his picture even though it applauded it with its yawns. The man who entertained us with the engrossing drama of The Volga Boatman knows that the story’s the thing, yet went about giving us a picture without a story simply because he had a saleable theme. Only a foolish person would have done otherwise. De Mille visualized his picture and filmed it magnificently as he saw it. • He was absolutely honest about it and gave the public all that could be crowded within his conception of a picture about Christ. If that conception was inspired by business consideration or artistic emotions I have no way of knowing. But I know the outcome — that the simplest man in all history made this screen appearance in a picture devoid of simplicity. Great scenes pile upon one another until the eye tires and the brain refuses to absorb them. Fourteen reels without a connected and dramatic story running all through them are too many. De Mille made an heroic attempt to crowd into one picture enough about Jesus to make a half dozen pictures. Instead of six entertaining films we get one that tires us. IN APPRECIATION Oh, we labor and we worry and we have to pay our bills; We are cogs within a system, we are grist within the mills. And we’re ground beneath the pressure of divers petty woes — But, thank God for our producers and our motion picture shows! For when we’re razzled, fagged and dazzled and our nerves are frazzled bare. Then — oh, the gracious solace of a wide and cushioned chair. Where we can loll in comfort — no other place to go — Oh — believe us — we are grateful for the motion picture show! When friends drop in to see us, for whose bent of conversation We feel a lack of interest or a strong disinclination; When we’ve social obligations that we feel we must perform; Or when the day is chilly, or when the day’s too warm; Or when we’re merely weary and want to rest and doze — Oh then, how grateful are we for the motion picture shows! Oh, the show’s an institution that we ill could do without; Its diversified conceptions resolve our minds from doubt Of manners, styles and customs from Cairo to Nome, Or the same, in their relation to our own dear native home; It panders to emotions with a thousand varied wiles; It wakes the shade of Sadness, or the joyous elf of Smiles. Oh, it saddens and it gladdens in ’most every way we know. But it’s chiefest claim to favor is — just as a place to go. —GEORGE F. MAGOFFIN.