The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Twelve THE FILM lows are making. The direction of Tom Terriss is intelligent. He apparently is enough of a showman to know that one formula for picture making can not go on forever, no matter how perfect the formula may be, and he introduces a little variety by giving us a sweet and tender romance without a kiss in it, and he does not show us one unnecessary close-up. In every scene in which the boy and girl come together they are not separated by the camera. Terriss seemingly realizes that two parties are necessary to a romance, and when his picture is concerning itself with its romantic phases we are not allowed to lose sight of either party to it. Such reasoning should be obvious to the most elemental mind, and when the minds of all supervisors and directors grow strong enough to be classed as elemental, no doubt we will have more departures from the conventional methods of shooting pictures. But Tom Terriss, director, is not responsible for all the novelty that distinguishes Clothes from the majority of pictures. Tom Terriss, author, makes a great contribution to it. He writes for the first time into a motion picture a story of a romance that develops during the making of a motion picture. The locale of the story is frankly the Tiffany-Stahl lot, and love scenes are played on sets built for sterner purposes. I can not make a complete check of my memory every time I write a review of a picture, but off hand I can recall no other production in which motion picture studio scenes are handled as intelligently as Terriss handles them. No effort is made to distort anything. We see the inside of a studio exactly as it is, and we see it functioning as if it were totally unaware that it was being photographed. There is an air of sincerity about all the scenes that will make them believable anywhere. The picture opens with a gripping sequence dealing with one of the most pathetic moments in history: the assassination of the Russian royal family. For me, it is not good screen material. I rather enjoy crying in a theatre as Seventh Heaven made me cry, but I do not like being depressed; and I have known so many fine Russians both here and abroad that the political significance of the Russian tragedy is submerged by the feeling of sadness any reference to it engenders in me. Perhaps if Terriss had directed it less impressively, thus making it necessary for me to criticize him for doing it, I would have looked upon it more favorably as screen material. Liberty is taken with history when the author saves the life of Princess Anastasia and brings her to Hollywood to work in pictures. The role is played by Eve Southern, whose performance in Wild Geese evoked my warmest praise. I am not quite sure what she does in Clothes, for her eyelashes drew all my attention. They had so much mucky make-up on them that they fairly flapped. A handsome young chap who sat in the projection-room with me assured me that Miss Southern had put no extensions on the lashes with which nature had endowed her so extravagantly, which puts the blame for her distracting appearance on the fact that she went to the unnecessary trouble of starting where a generous nature had left off. I hope that in her future pictures she will restrain herself. Walter Pidgeon makes a manly hero, and Adolph Millar a convincing motion picture director. Evelyn Selbie, a fine character actress whom the big producers are overlooking, has a small part. I have seen her give some splendid perform SPECTATOR June 23, 1928 ances that entitle her to more frequent appearances before the camera. George Stone, another capable artist who apparently is not kept busy, makes a considerable contribution to the picture, and we also get a few glimpses of the beautiful Corliss Palmer, who I believe would get somewhere if she were given the opportunity.. There are many others who do their bits towards making Clothes Make the Woman thoroughly acceptable. I commend it to all exhibitors from Roxy down. * * * Trying to Interest Us in Something Uninteresting THE Actress was underway when I sank into a loge at the Westlake, and I don't know how much of it I missed. The tempo of the sequence that began as I arrived was so slow that it was irritating, then as I recalled the story I presumed that Sidney Franklin, the director, had opened the picture at a brisker rate and in the country home sequence had slowed down to emphasize the difference between the Bohemian life and that of genteel England in the mid-nineteenth century, the period with which Pinero's play deals. Quality Street goes back farther, but when he directed it Franklin had the same problem on his hands that he found in The Actress: that of putting on the screen something inherently uninteresting, and which became more uninteresting in ratio with the degree of faithfulness with which it was presented. Quality Street was directed beautifully, but it bored me because it dealt with perhaps the silliest era in the development of man. For about fifteen minutes while viewing a picture I can enjoy good direction, but I wish to spend the time in excess of that in becoming interested in the story and the performances. In both these stories of a past English life Sid Franklin commits the crime of doing them too well. A martinet grandfather such as that por FRED STANLEY (In collaboration with James Gruen) Original Story "NONE BUT THE BRAVE" Now in Production at FOX Winifred Dunn is contributing to the support of the Spectator in the hope that Welford Beaton, the Spectator's papa, will eventually contribute to the support of the writer by recognizing him-and-her in his reviews.