Film Spectator (1927-1928)

Page Six June 11, 1927 shoulders in separate curls and is parted in the middle, after the fashion of the people of Nazareth. His forehead is smooth and serene, without marks or wrinkles; his countenance is pink; his nose is well formed; his beard, of the same color as his hair, is parted in the middle. In his gaze is an expression of wisdom and of openness; his eyes are blue, but shine terribly when he reproves people; but in conversation they are amiable. His observations are expressed with liveliness, although he always remains calm. Nobody has ever seen him laugh; but he often weeps. Of a good height and straight figure he has very beautiful hands and arms. His manner of speaking is serious. He speaks but little, and is modest. In short, he is as handsome as a man may be. They call him Jesiis, the Son of Mary.” In some respects Warner fits this picture, but his eyes did not “shine terribly” in any scene, not even in the temple scene when he was supposed to be in great wrath. When De Mille took Christ out of the pages of the Bible and showed him to us as a human being he should have gone all the way and shown him as really human. * * * Fine Performances Mark the Picture The excellence of the performances is the outstanding feature of The King of Kings. It was a stroke of genius for De Mille to assemble for his great picture the greatest cast ever assembled for one production. There is not a single sequence that is not acted admirably. One of the finest performances, in my estimation, is that of Ernest Torrence. He makes Peter a lovable character, even though he denies his leader to save his own skin. The part calls for a considerable range of acting and Torrence is equal to all its demands. The Caiaphas of Rudolph Schildkraut is another notable performance, and Sam de Grasse, as the Pharisee, makes a big contribution to the wealth of fine acting in the picture. M. Moore, as the boy Mark, gives a performance that measures up to those of the old and experienced troupers. He has a charming, boyish personality. I have no fault to find with the manner in which Joseph Schildkraut plays Judas, but the obvious desire of the producer to keep him in the picture, by cutting him in when there was no occasion for it, finally made me tire of seeing him. Judas ceased to be of importance to the picture as soon as he had betrayed Christ, but even the great crucifixion sequence was interrupted several times to acquaint us with the misery of Judas, which had no story value. It was bad editing. The disciples who riveted my attention more than the others were Robert Edeson and James Neill, both of whom give fine performances. But to mention individually all those who make valuable contributions to the picture would occupy too much space. De Mille stuck closely to motion picture traditions by giving us none but beautiful women. It would have been a relief, and certainly would have made some of the scenes more convincing, if more of the faces had had more character and less beauty. I presume that when the picture is cut down the first thing eliminated will be the “comedy relief” scene showing the Roman soldiers catching the fish that yields no gold coin. It is silly. They are shoAvn casting their lines in the hope that they will be rewarded as Peter was; we know they will not, and the rest should be left to our imagination. There are several scenes in which the Pharisee is shown with Christ, but at the time of the betrayal Judas tells the Pharisee that the man he kisses will be Christ. This is in answer to the Pharisee’s query as to the signal Judas will give to show which is Christ. As the Pharisee already was acquainted with the man Judas was about to betray I can not see why such titles are included in the sequence. The opening sequence reveals to what a high degree of perfection Technicolor has developed color photography. The whole picture should have been shot in color. It would have made it even more dignified and impressive. Probably the argument will be advanced that fourteen reels in natural color would tire the eye. As the motion picture screen is the only place where we always see only variations of black and white, all other objects that our eyes behold during our waking hours being various shades of color, I do not see how such argument is tenable. Supporting such reasoning is the result of an exhaustive series of experiments that Douglas Fairbanks conducted when considering natural colors for The Black Pirate. He discovered that colored film caused less retinal fatigue than black and white. If all of The King of Kings had been shown in natural colors it would have been a creation of such exquisite beauty that it would have been its own apology for its lack of entertainment. * * » Lindbergh’s Flight Has a Lesson in It A YOUNG man with an ability to impress people into taking a chance on him, buys an inexpensive airplane in San Diego and flies in it to St. Louis and thence to New York. He is just an ordinary young fellow whose father is dead and whose mother teaches schooL He never in all his life had done anything to attract the attention of anyone whose interest in him had not been the outgrowth of personal contact. No man has achieved anything until he is known beyond the circle of his acquaintances. Such a one was this young fellow. In quite a matter-of-fact way he announced that he was going to fly alone to Paris, and the world began to murmur the name of Charles Lindbergh. One morning Charles asked his engineer how everything was and was told that nothing needed attention. “Well, I might as well go,” he said. “So long.” He headed for Paris and arrived there, and when his mother learned of it she said, “I hope they’ll let him go right to sleep.” Nothing else in all history has thrilled the world in just the same way as the exploit of this quite ordinary young man has. The absolute simplicity of it is the secret of the thrill. “Well, I might as well go” — “I hope they’ll let him go right to sleep,” were as much parts of the whole drama as the droning of the engine above the trackless Atlantic. Only a perfect production could thrill the world as this one has. It gained an effect that every motion picture producer endeavors to achieve every time he makes a motion picture, but which none ever succeeded in doing. In fact, he could have proven to you in advance that the Lindbergh flight would be an awful flop from an entertainment standpoint. The story was not motivated, he would have said. It should have opened with the poor teacher about to lose her home through the foreclosure of a mortgage on it. This would have made the whole thing reasonable. And