Film Spectator (1927-1928)

Page Eight our most revered. If this picture were our only record of him, he would have no place in history. It cheapens him. It takes liberities with him which those who cherish his memory will resent. Hermann Hagedorn is credited with the story. Roosevelt recorded in print his respect and admiration for Hagedorn, and Hagedorn, in his several works dealing with phases of the life of his friend, whose official biographer he became, reveals the affection he had for the dynamic president, whom he treats with dignity and with a true appreciation of his place in American history. I refuse to believe that a man who regards the late president as Hagedorn does could have written the story of The Rough Riders. Undoubtedly most of what he wrote rested in that Valhalla of murdered literary inspirations, the cutting-room. Since viewing the picture I can understand why all the Roosevelt organizations and the Rough Riders will have none of it. Paramount has repeated what it did with Old Ironsides ; it has taken a glorious page out of American history and messed it up, achieving nothing, and spoiling it for others who might have proved equal to it. There are some impressive shots in the picture, the one showing a whole regiment of horses beginning to buck at once being one of the most exhilirating scenes I ever saw on the screen; but of the greatness of Roosevelt or the tragedy of war or the drama of the liberation of Cuba there is nothing. Roosevelt’s presence in the picture is of value only for what we know of him and not for what he does in it. No moment in a war is as dramatic as the moment when it begins. In this picture it begins in a title and no one who appears on the screen is shown as having anything to do with beginning it, although we have sequences showing what led up to it. The birth of the Rough Riders is handled without any appreciation of the drama that might have been injected into it. We are shown a few telegrams and then the assembled battalion springs into view on the screen. I longed for one shot of a lonely cow puncher in North Dakota picking up a paper containing Roosevelt’s call to arms — for anything that would have impressed me with the drama of the response to the call as a tribute to the man who made it. Paramount overlooked all such opportunities and gives us a lot of farcical movie characters who make a lark out of a serious moment in our history. The raising of the Hough Riders was a tremendous tribute to Roosevelt as well as a highly dramatic episode in the Spanish-American war, but neither the personal element nor the dramatic value was brought out. Nor was the war itself dramatized. It is not a story of the war, for it shows but one incident of it; it is not a story of Roosevelt because it gives a false impression of him; it is not a story of the Rough Riders because there are too many other elements in it. In fact, I don’t know how to classify it accept as just another movie. Let us appraise it from that angle. * * * Probably Was Edited to Death The Rough Riders, as a motion picture, clearly was edited to death. As shown it is a succession of unrelated episodes. It does not possess that continuity of thought that every picture must have to be a credit to screen art. It is elemental in its weaknesses, possessing faults that one would expect the rawest amateurs at June 25, 1927 picture-making to avoid. It contains many decidedly clever gags, at which I laughed most heartily, and they appeared with a frequency that makes the picture more* of a farce than anything else. Roosevelt seems to be in it chiefly in the capacity of a press agent for it. The gags are unrelated to the story, as is quite allowable in a farce, but which is out of place in a historical drama, which, in theory at least, this picture must be. A funny sequence is that which shows a whole company pursuing Mary Astor. It would have been ten times as funny if it had been handled properly. It received just the standard movie treatment, which means that it never could have occurred in real life. It is cheap farce, and it might have been clever comedy. Charley Farrell’s characterization was inconsistent from the first. Undoubtedly the idea of the story was to reflect in him the virtues we look for in our heroes. As we see him he is an ill-bred smart Alec, lacking in all the gentlemanly qualities that the manner of his arrival in camp would indicate he must have possessed. Had he pursued Mary Astor with some degree of subtlety it could have been still funnier and at the same time consistent with his status as a hero. If he had displayed some subtlety in leading his company on the trail of Mary, doing it in a way that would have left her until the last moment ignorant of the fact that she was being pursued by the company, and which would have kept the company from knowing that it was pursuing her, Farrell himself being the sole custodian of the secret, the sequence would have been infinitely richer in comedy value. At least twice too much footage is devoted to Farrell carrying the lamented Charlie Mack to the hospital tent. It loses most of its drama. The picture is blighted with the close-up curse, and the close-ups themselves are not handled intelligently. If we must have individual closeups of two people standing together, each should not occupy the mathematical center of the screen. There should be some suggestion of the continued presence of the character eliminated by the close-up, such as an arm and shoulder showing. The lighting of most of the closeups is flat and white, not corresponding with the lighting of the medium shots. There is a scene in which clouds are printed in. It is done unconvincingly, the clouds not matching the lighting of the scene or its mood. Mary Astor’s hat is dropped from the carriage in which she is riding with Farrell. She accompanies him when he goes back for it only because Victor Fleming, the director, told her to. It is impossible to conceive of her doing it for any other reason. There is a scene showing a photographer making photos of the soldiers. The style of camera he uses was not manufactured until some years after the The OXFORD PRESS, Inc. Distinctive Printing GRanite 6346 6713 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, Calif. ■4