The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Fourteen THE FILM SPECTATOR June 23, 1928 find an audience dull enough to consider such a sequence of events plausible. It is an astonishing thing to find in an otherwise sensible and logical picture. The close-up curse afflicts the picture. La Cava had a scene which apparently he did not know how to handle, consequently he resorted to the close-up, that unfailing haven for baffled directors. Two people are seated side-by-side on a couch, drinking. We are treated to a succession of individual close-ups of them just drinking. I wish some one would tell me why it is done. And we have one of those disgusting huge close-ups of a kiss, something that we find in nearly all pictures, and which shows us, more than any other one thing, how vulgar the producer mass mind is. However, we have to thank Half a Bride for not having Esther's hair marcelled all the time she is on the desert island. And we have to thank it also for being a bright and entertaining picture, in spite of the few frailties that I have pointed out. Esther Ralston pictures have a definite market which can absorb this one and do no damage to a box-office. I recommend it to exhibitors. although I had my little book open under the red desklight. I don't know how Chuck Reisner directed it, whether he had senseless close-ups that should make me mad or huge kisses that oflFend me. I don't know the name of the nice looking girl who played opposite Buster Keaton. All I know is that Donald and I laughed or giggled all the time the picture was running, and that it kept me so amused that I forgot my little book. I am satisfied that Reisner must have made a good job of the direction, for I am pretty sure that I would have noticed any serious lapses. I know that Buster and Ernest Torrence gave mighty fine performances and that Tom McGuire was quite satisfactory. The important thing, however, is that I laughed all the way through it and forgot that it was my business to search for flaws in it. As the purpose of a comedy is to make us forget business and have a good laugh, I must put Steamboat Bill Jr. down as perhaps the best comedy of the year thus far. Exhibitors should go after it. ■p OBERT Welch, who holds some important executive ■'•^ position with Universal, was quoted in the papers a month or so ago to the effect that Arthur Lake was put in a series of one-reel comedies to cure a fit of temperament that he gave evidence of having contracted. When Welch made that statement he knew that he was lying. Lake is a nice, modest boy, absolutely lacking in the quality that Welch attributes to him. He refused to renew a contract with Universal fourteen months before the expiration of the one under which he now is working. He felt that several pictures to be released might increase his box-office standing. Universal felt the same way about it, and wished all the benefit of such increase to accrue to it, and none to him. He was subjected to every sort of bulldozing that the studio could conceive, a threat to keep him in one-reel comedies until his contract expired being one of the devices that Universal used as an argument. Lake stood pat on his right to conclude one business arrangement before entering upon another. He did it pleasantly and without any show of temperament. If Welch had adhered to the truth in making his public statement, he would have said that Arthur was being punished for standing on his rights, and thstt he was accepting his punishment gracefully and without a display of the rancor he would be justified in feeling and making apparent. Ordinary fair play does not come within Universal's conception of business ethics. Because it could not browbeat Lake into submission it resorts to an effort to ruin his career, and then lies about him in the public press. It's a strange way to run a business. * * * GENERALLY when I view a motion picture I peer at it intently arTd find things in it to make catty remarks about. I laugh at funny things, but I do it sternly and judicially, and keep my eye peeled for faults the directors commit. When the picture ends I have notes in a little book, and I go home and sit in my backyard, hard by the hollyhocks and near the swing that is under the peach tree, and my two dogs and two cats gather around me while I write profoundly, elaborating the notes in my little book. Donald and I went into a projection-room and viewed Steamboat Bill Jr. I never made a blessed note, "11^ HEN talking pictures become universal the close-up curse will be less evident. I have contended persistently that it is idiotic to show the moving lips of an actor alone on the screen talking to some one whom a medium shot has shown standing close to him. It will seem more idiotic when we hear what the lone actor is TOM TERRISS TIFFANY-STAHL STUDIOS NOW IN PRODUCTION "THE NAUGHTY DUCHESS" By SIR ANTHONY HOPE Last Production: "Clothes Make the Woman" Original Story by Tom Terriss F. de MioUis Accredited Correspondent of "LE FIGARO", of Paris Technical Advisor on All Matters Pertaining to NAPOLEON Thoroughly Conversant With PARIS AND ALL PHASES OF PARISIAN LIFE Writers' Club