The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Ten THE FILM SPECTATOR December 1, 1928 AS THEY APPEAL TO A YOUTH By Donald Beaton — The Spectator's 18-Y ear-Old Critic THERE was a time when any German made picture brought shrieks of ecstasy from everyone connected with the industry, due to what was supposed to be their artistry. However, that time has passed; and American pictiires are far better than anything Germany has to offer, judging from Homecoming, which is supposed to be the greatest ever to emerge from that country. All I can say is that the Germans must be patient people who must have everything explained plainly for them, and who can't understand subtlety. No American audience would stand the nine reels which were used to tell five of story, nor could it sit through all the careful explanations of what it was all about. The Germans must be a peculiar people, anyway. In this country, if a man comes home and discovers his best friend living with his wife, he picks up a chair and bounces it on the friend's cranium; but the man in this picture just sat around heavily and moaned. Then he departed and got a job on a ship, leaving his wife to the friend. True, he nearly shot the friend, but after due deliberation, he changed his mind. In a situation like that the tendency is to shoot and think afterwards. All this was put over in a series of uninteresting closeups which made the picture drag like a travelogue. It wouldn't have been so bad if the picture had told the story swiftly and concisely, and had been only five reels long; but the way it was, it would have worn out any audience. Foreign made pictures have to be very good to go over at all in America, because the temperaments of the people are so different that what seems natural to the one is abnormal to the other. Action is the only thing understood by both nations, and there wasn't any of that in Homecoming. There were just a lot of close-ups showing them trying to put over some emotion or other. It was quite difficult to know what they meant. There were only three people in the cast of Homecoming. The latest foreign importation, Dita Parlo, was one of them. I will admit that she is somewhat better than most of the Europeans, but there are hundreds of girls right here in Hollywood who are far better than she. They can speak English, too, which is a consideration now. Lars Hansen, whose soul or something was revolted by the way they made pictures in America, is also a member of the cast. No sour grapes, but we haven't lost much. His emotions are a bit too obscure for my obtuseness. The other member of the cast was a man with an unpronounceable and unrememberable name, but he put it all over the rest of them when it came to acting. He was good. Joe May handled the direction, which probably makes him responsible for all the slowness. He must be given credit, though, for the way he used his camera at times. Why he put in trick shots which were good and speeded up the action, and then threw av/ay all he had gained by a lot of stupid closeups is a mystery. Germany isn't going to be America's great rival if this is the best it can do. * * * THE latest stupidity to be committed by the motion picture moguls is the feverish signing of stage people to play in sound pictures, when there are so many picture trained actors who could do just as well. A motion picture actor who knows a lot about the mechanics of acting before the camera and nothing about stage stuff is far more valuable than the man who never has been filmed before, but has done work before the footlights, because the art of acting in talking pictures is something absolutely new, and it is far easier to teacli someone something than to make him forget the training of a lifetime. Picture people will soon pick up the art of speaking for the microphone, but it will take much longer for the stage actors to unlearn everything they have known for years. Another popular but mistaken belief is that sound will make up for pantomime, thereby making everything but the knowledge of correct speech unnecessary. The main fault with Interference was that it was nothing but a camera view of a stage play, and didn't realize its opportunities as an exponent of an absolutely new and different art. Sound pictures are going to reach their ultimate as an art when they have reduced the dialogue necessary to the telling of the story to a minimum. Therefore, trained screen actors are going to be the important people; because of the two qualities vital to sound pictures, whicli are a knowledge of film technique and the ability to speak dialogue, the picture training is the most important. Stage actors will have to learn to tone down their voices and not make their emotions quite so robust as they do when appearing before an audience which is a little way from them. Sound pictures bring the actors so close to the people viewing them that the stage calisthenics are too actorish. An actor before the footlights has a tendency to throw his voice out as much as possible, while sound pictures demand that they be not so powerful. It is going to be hard for stage people to hold themselves back in the dramatic moments; but a picture actor, who is trained just for the talkers, will experience no difficulty, because it will be the thing to which he is used. Incidentally, while this rush is going on, some producer will do very well if he goes down and takes a look at the work of Stanley Taylor, who is playing in Nightstick, the current offering at The President. Taylor does a scene which is masterly due to the repression and feeling in it, and makes it the outstanding thing in the play. He has done good work in small parts on the screen for a long time, but never has seemed to get a break. Whoever gets him is going to be glad of it later, when the public signifies at the box-office its approval of his talent. While I am speaking of Nightstick, I must pay my ri' spects to the other member of the film world who is in the cast — Patsy Ruth Miller. Pat hns a poor part, bui she handles it so well that I can truthfully say that she i^; as charming on the stage as she is on the screen. * * * WHOEVER has the job of thinking up and selecting the stories for the Emil Jannings vehicles ought to snap out of the present type, which is being done to death. I'm getting awfully sick of seeing Jannings going to wrack and ruin, even though he does it well; and I imagine that there are other people who think the same thing. The .Tannings pictures are being made more and more dependent on the star himself. There is no man who can carry a whole picture himself, and it would be far more profitable if .Jiinnings were given more stories on the order of that of The Patriot, where he had plenty of support. Also, I think he ought to essay some comedy, which he could do splendily. In spite of the old story, Sins of the Fathers is a good picture, though it drags in spots. Ludwig Berger directed with intelligence and cleverness, his work saving the picture from dullness. The whole thing might have been speeded up by the elimination of a lot of scenes which weren't vitally necessary to the development of the story, and the big moments didn't seem to click as they should have. There were some intensely dramatic scenes which didn't realize their opportunities, and left one with a rather unsatisfied feeling. However, much to my gratification, they didn't put on an unhappy ending just because it happened to be a Jannings picture. 'There was no reason why the story shouldn't have ended with everybody happy, but everyone seems to think that any picture which Jannings is in must end with him jumping in front of a truck or dying with a gizzard full of lead. One thing in particular which I liked was the fact that Barry Norton wasn't given back his sight by a miracle or something. Things like that