The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

March 31, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Thirteen interesting thing in connection with the queer geniuses who bob up every now and then. F. B. 0. gave Murphy a feature picture to direct, Alex the Great. Murphy also adapted the story, in his dual capacity, therefore, being entitled to all the praise that can be bestowed on any feature of the production. Unfortunately there is no feature of it that I can praise. Murphy handles his people as he did his tin pans, and makes them act as if they had the same mentalities as the wheels and tools. His initial difficulty was that he had no story, whether the fault of the original selection or of his adaptation I do not know. As it reaches the screen it contains the fundamental error of having a sweet, refined and cultured city girl fall in love with a most objectionable, wisecracking boob from the country. Metro commits the same mistake with Bill Haines. We have love interest in all our pictures, and one would think that screen authors would be able by this time to write their love sequences convincingly. If Metro intends to continue to present Haines as the most obnoxious ass on the screen it should cast opposite him a wisecracking, gum-chewing dumbbell. This not only would provide Bill with the only kind of girl who could fall in love with him, but it would provide an opening in his pictures for another comedy characterization. In Alex the Great Murphy presumed to make the girl love the boy because it is so written in the script, and not because that kind of girl would love that kind of boy. Another fault that the young director commits is in his use of close-ups. It is worth commenting on because we see the same thing in so many pictures. Murphy has four people at a table in a restaurant. Albert Conti, one of them, behaves in a manner that would startle the others if they saw him, and they could not avoid seeing him. As for story reasons they must not be aware of Conti's behavior. Murphy shows him in a succession of close-ups, apparently on the theory that as we can see no other character in the scenes with Conti, no other characters can see what he is doing. It is a brand of infantile direction, by no means rare. Directors should remember that when one character in a group is picked out for a close-up he must do nothing in the individual shot that he would not do if he were shown always as one of the group. A common use of this ostrich-like close-up is to show one character making a violent grimace at another, and when we return to the whole group there is no evidence to the effect that the grimace registered with anyone but the one it was aimed at, although all the others in the group must have seen it. When one' character is shown in a close-up it does not remove from the mind of the audience Oxford Oxford 9511 430 No. CanonDrive BeveriyHills ^ext to Morrisons ^Market the consciousness of the proximity of the other characters who have been registered in a medium or long shot. Another fault which Alex the Great commits, and which you find in many pictures, is an aggravation of this closeup one — the fault of having a character make an ass of himself without attracting the attention of a person two feet away from him. Murphy's adaptation and direction seem to be based on the theory that if it's in the script, it's all right. A good thing to remember is that authors and directors can not at will make people deaf, dumb and blind. The screen should present only real people, and real people can see things that are not more than two feet away. % * 4 \ SCREEN story told entirely by hands is an interest■^~* ing novelty which I saw in a projection-room recently. It was produced in Germany by Stella F. Simon, an American woman residing over there, but who was in FRANK STRAYER DIRECTED PARTNERS IN CRIME FOR PARAMOUNT Partners in Crime BY GROVER JONES and GILBERT PRATT SUPERVISION OF B. F. ZEIDMAN . L