The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Twelve THE FILM SPECTATOR May 12, 1928 pal characters quite up to the high standards they already have set for themselves. There is one scene that jars. Miss Brent is shown in a fashionable cafe, occupying a table with three titled Frenchmen. She rises to leave the table and the men remain seated. I can not understand how mistakes of this sort are made. Either Henley or Vadja would be prompt about jumping to his feet if a woman guest were leaving a table at which he was dining in either a private dining-room or a public place, yet both of them give us a scene in which cultured Frenchmen do not perform this' universal and conventional courtesy. A FTER I viewed The Tempest I made a note to write ■^* something about the habit pictures have of showing inserts in a foreign language before the dissolve into English. The Tempest is an all-Russian picture, therefore everything in it had to be Russian. The audience knows this, consequently when John Barrymore writes a note to Camilla Horn there is no reason whatever why it should be shown in the Russian language first and then translated into English. If John were Russian and Camilla were English, it would be all right, for it would emphasize their separate nationalities by showing her receiving a note which she would have to translate into her own language before she would understand it. It detracts from the spirit of an all-Russian picture when inserts are shown in these bi-lingual dissolves. The audience always should be made to feel that it is part of what is going on. When you translate things for it in such a picture as The Tempest you are reminding the audience that it is alien to what is going on. I said that I had made a note to write something on this topic, but along comes Ernest Lubitsch with his perfect Patriot and makes the comment unnecessary. In this absolutely flawless picture Lubitsch presents all his inserts in English, even though it is an all-Russian story. The signs on shops are in Russian, which is as it should be, but everything that the audience must read to keep abreast of the story is presented in English without dissolves from Russian. * * * "1^17 HEN executives are looking about for ways of sav* " ing money they might pause long enough to consider the economic aspect of punctuality. It has also an ethical aspect, but a man so unconscious of the dictates of courtesy as to keep another man waiting an hour, can not be reached by an argument based solely on an ethical ground, consequently we will make it an economic discussion. In analyzing what a man has to sell we find that the laborer, banker, author, druggist and motion picture Now Playing "Tfie Qossipy Sex' Phone GL. 4146 Prices: Mat., 50c to $1.00; Eve., 50c to $1.50 Matinees Thursday and Saturday VINE STREET THEATRE producer have one and the same commodity: time. In all businesses and professions other than the film business this fact of the value of time is recognized. The studio executive who can be seen at the time he himself fixes for an appointment is rare. During the course of a year I call on perhaps all of them and I know of only two whom I can see within reasonable approximation of the fixed hour. It is a habit motion picture people have of telling me that my time is worth nothing to me or to anyone else; all of which may be true, but when the people in the industry do the same thing to one another, then the industry as a whole pays for a lot of time that yields nothing. Not once in a thousand times is there any excuse for lateness. There could not be any excuse for anything that is both a bad breach of manners and an economic folly. * * * UNDOUBTEDLY the habit of calling upon extra girls to entertain parties of exhibitors or film salesmen will continue until Equity grows strong enough to stop it or until the actors' branch of the Academy gains courage enough to prompt it to say something that the producers won't like. At the present time it is an evil that is a disgrace to the industry. I have in my files detailed information about parties at which film salesmen and exchange managers were entertained by street walkers and such, who were presented as screen girls, because the decent girls who work in pictures could not be coerced by casting di JOHN PETERS CHARACTERS GLadstone 5017 'T^rinters of The Film Spectator and other high-class publications The OXFORD PRESS, Inc, 6713 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, Calif. Telephone GRanite 6346 .—~~^ CHARLES STUMAR CHIEF CINEMATOGRAPHER OF ''UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" "THE COHENS AND KELLYS IN PARIS" "HAS ANYONE SEEN KELLY" "THE MICHIGAN KID" UNIVERSAL PICTURE CORPORATION