The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

May 12, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Seven allotted to Kent, even though I have no quarrel with his performance. Several bits in the picture are played excellently. Ford's direction of the performances placed them midway between repression and the opposite, the same average that all humanity strikes. I said in a recent Spectator that the most successful producer would be the one who gave us the best program pictures, not the best specials. If Hangman's House is a fair example of what we may expect from Fox in the way of program pictures, it looks as if he would qualify as the most successful. * * * Should Not Be Too Much Straining to Obtain Laughs THERE is much in Fools for Luck to interest us. It presents a team of comedians, Chester Conklin and W. C. Fields. It is a refreshing team. One is not a Jew and the other an Irishman. Bill is a crook and Chester a hotel man, and race doesn't enter into it. There is no similarity in the work of these two artists, but each is a gifted comedian who knows how to get laughs. Charles F. Reisner directed Fools for Luck, his first for Paramount, and the love interest is carried by Sally Blane and Jack Ludens. Arthur Housman, always a capable performer, contributes a clever characterization. Reisner directed intelligently and has given us a picture that is not an endless parade of close-ups. I have one objection to enter. Some laughs are produced by having Conklin appear at an evening gathering in a dress suit several times too large for him, the excess being gathered by basting which gives way during a dance. It is good comedy, for it produces laughs. But I maintain that you can not get the full value from a sequence unless it be built up logically. In this picture Conklin goes to a clothing store and buys the ill-fitting suit, obviously a ridiculous thing to do. Any effort to establish the fact that it is the only suit in stock, or to point out any other reason why he should purchase one that did not fit him, is straining too much to provide comedy. It becomes less excusable when there is no comedy in the establishing shots. If Conklin's visit to the clothing store had been funny in itself we might overlook its lack of logic. But it wasn't funny. He walks in, buys a suit that no one in his right mind would buy, and walks out again. The purchase becomes necessary when Coriklin's butler brings from a closet a moth-eaten old suit. The whole sequence could have been made logical by showing the butler bringing an uneaten suit from the same closet and speaking some such title as: "If we take up the slack in the suit your brother left here, you might be able to wear it." The makers of our comedies seem to proceed on the theory that no price is too great to pay for a laugh. Or it may be that they have their eyes glued on the laugh only and give no heed to how much stumbling they do to reach it. The aim of a comedy is not to provoke only some laughter. What it should strive to do is to create the maximum amount of laughter. When Chester Conklin's suit expands on the dance floor it is greeted with some laughter. I did not laugh at it because I could see no humor in a situation produced so laboriously and with such lack of logic. Harold Lloyd gives us in every picture a string of happenings more ridiculous than Conklin's experience with the clothes, but they are strung together so well, and presented with so much logic and gravity that the comedy value in them is enhanced tremendously. The obvious answer to this argument, of course, is that Harold takes a year to make a picture and that such a one as Fools for Luck must be thrown together in a few weeks to get its place on the program. That is all right as an excuse for me, but offer it to a furniture worker in Grand Rapids and he would tell you that he is not interested in how much time a producer had, how much money was spent, or how many difficulties encountered; what he wants when he spends his money is entertainment, not explanations. But I don't think it would take any more time or money to make our comedies more logical. A little more thinking should do it. Before getting away from Fools for Luck I want to tell you that it is a pleasing little comedy and exhibitors need not be afraid of it if to obtain it they do not have to purchase also the New York Central terminal and Central Park. * * * Submerging the Production Under Senseless Close-ups THE latest picture which Alexander Korda directed, The Yellow Lily, starring Billie Dove, probably will do well at the box-office. It has the superb Billie in a role that suits her, and perhaps the best production that has been built around her, as well as such people as these to support her: Clive Brook, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Nicholas Soussanin, Marc McDermott, Jane Winton, Eugenie Besserer, and many other capable people doing small parts and bits. While I can recommend this picture to my exhibitor readers as being a little more meritorious than the majority of the films being offered them, I must say that it comes a mighty long way from being a picture that meets my personal requirements. But it is an interesting picture to study. As I am convinced that the close-up habit is the greatest single blight on screen art to-day any discussion of it will profit us to some extent. First National has given The Yellow Lily a picturesque setting that has considerable pictorial value. The brief glimpses we have of the bigger scenes reveal that Korda can handle ensemble shots to good advantage. The interiors are elaborate and attractive, the lighting and photography good. The story is interesting enough, and you can see for yourself that the cast is excellent. Then what's the matter? Simply that the whole thing, from beginning to end, is a parade of close-ups. We see just enough of the beautiful settings to irritate us into wanting to see more, which is the least important effect of the close-up orgy. Korda makes all his characters act with unusual restraint. He carries repression to its ultimate, which is all right as a change and interesting as a study. But when he presents u^ with two or three hundred huge close-ups of repressed faces he obviously is carrying either repression or closeups too far. The only possible excuse that anyone can offer for the use of a close-up is that it gives us a more intimate view of the emotion a face is expressing. I fail to see upon what ground one can defend the use of a closeup of a face revealing no emotion. Billie Dove and her sweetheart (Brook) meet in jail. The scene derives much of its strength from the fact that it takes place in the grim atmosphere of a prison. This grim atmosphere is blotted out the instant the two meet. The entire sequence is shown in huge close-ups that convey no impression of a jail. Billie asks Brook what he thinks of her cell, and the two survey it, but we see nothing of the cell even