The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Twelve sequence is shown in close-ups. Not once is the whole room and the relation of the characters to one another planted. Anyone with any sense of the dramatic would have presented the sequence in a sustained long shot. The physical actions which the man with the gun made the others perform made the scene, not the facial expressions of any of the characters in it. We never should have lost sight of one character. To have seen three of them moving about the room under the commands of the fourth, ■who sat by the fire and gave his orders, would have been dramatic. The handling of this sequence shows that Hubbard, or whoever was responsible for it, really did not know what the whole thing was about. But we can thank Rose Marie for showing us what an excellent trouper Joan Crawford is becoming. She gives a most intelligent performance, one that gives me great confidence in her future on the screen. James Murray — he looks like the kind of guy that everyone would call "Jim" — is a young man about whose future there is no doubt. We'll hear from him. It was a pleasure to see again that excellent actor House Peters whose unpopularity in studios has kept him off the screen for a long time. Gibson Gowland gives a fine characterization of a heavy, and others in the cast do well. There is some gorgeous photography, but it saddens one to think, as he views the picture, just how good it might have been. » ♦ , OCENARISTS and directors should give more thought to *^ their fade-outs at the end of sequences. Too many of them now have too great an air of finality, thus serving to allow a let-down in the audience's interest in a story. The perfect picture, as I see it, is the one that keeps the interest on an absolutely straight line that tilts upward. In other words, the interest should climb a straight incline, not mount by steps. In some pictures we have the closing title in one sequence giving some indication of what is to come after it, thus preventing any let-down in interest, but it is seen too rarely. In a picture directed by Tom Terris, the name of which I have forgotten, there is an intelligent use of titles to carry the audience from sequence to sequence. Terris gets his effect by dissolving into a title the end of one sequence and the beginning of the next. It is a commendable practice that should be adopted more generally. In some other picture I remember a spoken title: "Then I'll see you at the ambassador's ball." The title was followed by a fade-in to a ball to which it was an adequate introduction. In the vast majority of pictures, however, each sequence ends with a finality that disturbs the continuity of thought, and there should be no such disturbance from the beginning to the end of a picture. If screen art is to advance more thought must be expended on its fundamentals. My life is made up largely of viewing and analyzing pictures, but I can detect few indications that they are making any real progress. * * * OUSPENSB is good hokum and all hokum is good screen ^ material when it is presented properly. When an effort is made to create suspense by a purely theatrical trick it ceases to be suspense. In Hot Heels, a pleasant little Glenn Tryon picture, the hero rides a horse in a race which involves the fortunes of the heroine. Of course the picturewise audience knows that he is going to win. In an effort to make the outcome of the race appear doubtful the script calls for the hero falling off his horse, then re THE FILM SPECTATOR April 14, 1928 mounting and ultimately winning. There are two things the matter with this. In the first place, if the race were even enough at the outset to make the result problematical, the theory upon which the sequence is built, the hero would be so far behind when he remounted his horse that it would have been impossible for him to overtake the leaders. In the second place, the suspense would have been more real if the hero's mount had been shown hitting up a terrific pace from the beginning of the race, outdistanced at first by the other horses, but always pressing forward bravely, never wavering, and keeping everlastingly at it until one after the other he mowed down those who challenged his right to the prize. That would be true suspense. Having the rider fall off introduces an element that is foreign to the spirit of the race. * * * 'T~'HE waltz is coming back. I read that somewhere. And -*• as a great deal of The Spectator is written with the radio three feet from me, bringing to me Gus Arnheim's I Next Production "TKe Qossipy Sex Watch for Opening Date at Vine Street Theatre 'Trinters of The Film Spectator and other high-class publications The OXFORD PRESS, Inc, 6713 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, Cax-if. Telephone GRanite 6346 Madame Da Silva has been a stage dancer since the age of five and has a world reputation. 1606 Cahuenga Ave. Dancing does more than anything else to l;eep one young. Madame Da Silva instructs all her pupils personally. GRanite 3561 MADAME DA SILVA SCHOOL OF j DANCING I I