The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

May 12, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Eleven tator that when you correct a fault in a picture you gain more than the mere fact of being right; that the right way of doing a thing has the most entertainment value in it. Take this sequence. The camera is on the ore train as it comes out of the mine, and as we look down the track we see that it leads straight to the powder house. Instantly the viewer has the thought that no sane person would build a repository for dynamite in such a place as that, for a loaded car is liable to get away at any time. But we have to have the explosion, so what are we going to do about it? I would have placed the powder house in an apparently safe place at a lower level than the tracks and near a spot where the tracks curve. Then I would have the cars hit the curve at a terrific rate, jump the tracks and leap madly at the powder house. As the picture has it, Bebe and Jimmie see they are in danger and make a fljnng leap from the train. Good stuff that would have been better if they had been making love with so much concentration that they were unaware of their peril. Being unfamiliar with mining, it would be reasonable to expect them to be unaware of the fact that ore trains did not travel at such a mad pace as part of their regular routine. When the train hit the curve it would hurl them down the embankment, thus saving their lives through no volition of their own. They could roll clear of the area affected by the explosion. As we have it now, they save their own lives. It would be better to have fate step in and do the saving. And I would have carried the excitement farther than the picture carries it. It is not the fact of doing assessment work on a mine that fulfills the legal requirements. Mining regulations recognize it only when it is recorded. I would have had Bebe and Jimmie, already reconciled to the loss of the mine through their failure to do the necessary work, suddenly realize that it was done for them, and hot-foot it to the assessment office with such adventures on the way as would make them reach it in the nick of time, and foil Harry Morey, the villain, when his hopes were highest. People familiar with mining will find the same faults with this picture that I do, but Paramound would argue quite reasonably that it does not make pictures for miners, who constitute such a small portion of the public that they may be ignored without disastrous results at the box-office. This paragraph, however, is not intended to be a treatise on mining, but is offered as an exposition of the theory that there always is more good screen material in the right way of doing a thing than in the wrong way. An audience does not need to know anything about the proper place to locate a powder house to get more fun out of watching a train jump a track and hurl itself at one, than it can by watching the same train continuing on a straight line and smashing into one. As we have it in this picture, the audience knows there is going to be an explosion as soon as it sees the house; if it had been done the other way, the explosion would have had the element of surprise in it. And a surprise is good screen material. MANY months ago Beatrice Van wrote me a letter in which she asked me why I did not mention her as the writer of the scenario for a picture which I had praised in The Spectator. I told her why in a letter which has been whispered about ever since. My friend Jimmie Starr used to whisper about it at Henry's, and another friend of mine came to me in alarm about three months ago and told me that Variety was going to publish the letter in full. I renewed my subscription to Variety to assure my not missing the number which contained my epistle to Beatrice, and each week brings a fresh disappointment. But the whispering has kept up. However, whispering will not content me. I want the scandal to break with full force and despairing of anyone else doing it, I will bawl myself out. I will not reprint my letter in full for two reasons: I do not want to destroy all hope of Variety printing it, and I am writing this at night, when my secretary is off shift, and I am not going to paw over the files searching for my copy. I wrote Beatrice that I was sore at all writers, very few of whom at that time subscribed to The Spectator, but all of whom complained about almost everything in it, and that I had adopted a policy of mentioning in my reviews only those scenarists and title writers who advertised in this profoundly intellectual journal. I told her the rest could go hang. I have stuck to that policy, which is narrow, grasping, selfish, shortsighted, mean, horrible, terrible, and anything else the whispers have contained, but which, by the great horn spoon, I'm not going to change! I had hoped that Beatrice would post the letter on the bulletin board at the Writers' Club, for I wanted all the writers to know about it; and then I expected Variety to give me the necessary advertising, and it has failed me, leaving it up to me to tell the world what a narrow-minded guy I am. * * * TJOBART Henley has made His Tiger Lady a nice little ■*■■*■ picture. In it we have Adolphe Menjou and Evelyn Brent, two splendid performers with ability enough to make any picture acceptable if they are given half a chance. An interesting feature of this production is the fact that Ernst Vadja both adapted the story and supervised its making into a picture. Not until story-tellers do all the supervising will we get pictures that will strike a satisfactory average of entertainment value. In this instance the plan was a success. We may assume that His Tiger Lady reached the screen exactly as the adapter, if not the author, wished it to, and that Vajda must share with Henley the credit for whatever share of merit it possesses. The locale is European, which always has seemed to me to be particularly appropriate for Menjou's personality and manner of acting. Henley preserves the Parisian atmosphere throughout, and the picture leans heavily upon it, for there is not a great deal of story. What there is, is interesting and amusing; the production is artistic and adequate, and the acting of the two princi DR. EDMOND PAUKER 1639 Broadway, New Yorit representing LAJOS BIRO Author of Hotel Imperial The Yei:ow Lily The Last Conunand, etc. The Way of AU Flesh (adaptation) la the Night Watch (adaptation and cootmuity, now in preparation)