The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

May 12, 1928 THE FILM in love with O'Brien and cannot endure her husband. In a tustle with her husband in O'Brien's apartment, the husband is killed while O'Brien is lying unconscious on the floor from a poke on the jaw. But O'Brien goes to jail for the crime because both he and Estelle refuse to talk. The weakness I referred to lies in the fact that there is no reason whatever why the two should remain silent. I warn all women now that if they bring their husbands to my library and shoot them there, I'm going to talk and keep on talking until all danger of my going to jail has passed. In Honor Bound O'Brien's action makes him out a fool. Possibly in the book he went to jail more logically than he does on the screen. In a book there is more room to develop mental reaction than there is in a picture. Thus we have in a book a full exposition of the cause that produced a given effect, but when we makeover the book for the screen we appropriate bodily the effect and ignore the exposition of the cause. On the way home from Honor Bound I told Mrs. Spectator that I thought O'Brien was an ass for going to jail and she disagrreed with me. I thought it was illogical, and she did not. But she had read the book and I had not. Everything that happened on the screen was logical to her because she had read its explanation in the book, and some of the things were illogical to me because I did not have the book to help me understand them. Pictures must be made for people who do not read books, and when one is being adapted it would be well to remember that the picture made from the adaptation must make each of its own points logical. If you take seriously the opening sequence of Honor Bound and refuse to ignore the fact that there is no reason why O'Brien is in jail, you have nothing left. The screen should not ask you to ignore anything. What can not be made plausible in a picture has no place in it. * * * About a Picture's Mood Matching Its Environment SOMETIMES we see a picture in which the mood of the direction does not match the mood of the story, and then we have a picture that is not as good as it should be, no matter how good it happens to be. The Valley of the Giants is typical of this sort. I liked it for its tiirilling scenes, its fine photography and the virile quality of its story. It is satisfactory screen entertainment, but not completely satisfying because by the manner in which it is told the story is thrown out of tune. I doubt if Charles Brabin, who directed, ever spent much time in the woods and rubbed elbows with those who cut down the trees and make lumber out of them. Except for its own noises, those of creaking trunks and moaning branches, and the sound the wind makes, a stand of timber is a silent place, and it breeds men who are undemonstrative and who hate or love with quiet passion. Brabin gives us men who react most extravagantly to every emotion. There is enough acting in his picture to outfit half a dozen others. You might argue that it can't make much difference to the success of a picture, for mighty few people know anything about lumbering or lumberjacks and would be unable to detect any departure from the authentic atmosphere. I do not believe pictures should be made or excused on this theory. The mood that men born in the woods develop must of necessity match the mood of their environment. The mood of Arabs must match the mood SPECTATOR Page Nine of the desert; that of sailors must match the mood of the sea. Inharmony is something that an untrained person can sense without being able to place his finger on it. When something is out of tune he knows it subconsciously at least, and he knows it consciously if he has had experience that gives him the necessary specific knowledge. At all events, the only safe course for a picture producer to follow is that of assuming that if his picture be out of tune, somebody is going to feel it. The number of people who can tell why a given picture does not please them is so small that the support they give the industry would not pay for its gatemen, yet they are the very people for whom producers should make their pictures. The weakness that one person can spot is a weakness that a thousand others sense. Constructive critics do not support the industry, but they act as the interpreters of those who do. I believe that Valley of the Giants could have been made a really notable picture that would have appealed to those who know nothing of the woods if it had been made exclusively for those who do. No one can sense an inharmony that does not exist. The men in the picture should have been stern, quiet and determined. Instead they are volatile, noisy, and emotional. If any picture ever called for restraint in acting, this one did, but we are given the opposite. When Milton Sills and Paul Hurst engage in a grim struggle they mug terrifically, and in order that that fact will not be lost upon us we are given huge close-ups of the mugging which amount to exaggerated exaggerations. The drama all the way through the story is dissipated by waving arms and extravagant grimacing. It is impossible to take a lumberman seriously when he behaves like a ballet dancer. But, as I have recorded already, Valley of the Giants is entertaining and as a production is a credit to First National, something that can not be said of all its pictures. There are some inspiring shots in it, and the whole picture has a sweep that almost gives it an epic quality. Doris Kenyon plays opposite her husband and contributes greatly to the charm of the production. Paul Hurst, whom I discovered as a comedian, comes to bat in this picture as a most detestable villain, which surprised me greatly. George Fawcett again proves himself a sterling trouper, and many others in the long cast give good performances. The value of going to actual locations to shoot pictures is exemplified strikingly in this one. * * * Some Remarks on the Construction of a Comedy THEY are beginning to do right by our Bebe on the Paramount lot. After giving Miss Daniels a number of most indifferent stories they shortly wiU present her in The Fifty-Fifty Girl, a comedy that will amuse and interest any audience anywhere. It is not a fifty-fifty proposition as far as the laughs go. Bebe, Jimmy Hall and Bill Austin provoke half the laughs, and George Marion Jr., alone and unassisted, gets the other half. No picture with a set of such titles could be altogether a failure. A feature of the Marion titles that I like is the fact that they always are punctuated perfectly. I started to harp on punctuation in the first Spectator I published, and at that time every executive on the Paramount lot proved to me conclusively that he knew all about punctuation, but that the world would get cock-eyed and the motion picture industry collapse if titles were punctuated