The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Fourteen THE FILM SPECTATOR December 1, 192S letters. Like a super-chessman, he raises up his pawns from the North, South and Border soil, New Englanders, Southerners, Kentuckians and Pennsylvanians and moves them symphonically into the maelstrom of civil war. Whites and Negroes, aristocrats, farmers, clerks, Congressmen, slaves, move for a brief moment across his board into the center of play, and are retired to give other players their innings. Through it all runs the theme of useless war, bloody and terrible, relieved at times by sudden notes of haunting beauty, of pure lyric poetry. I remember best a Negro spiritual or two, bits of slave dialogue; that charming picture of Sally Dupre, daughter of a Southern belle married to a French dancing master, whose relatives and neighbors always speak of her as a good match for "some Northern boy''; the unforgettable glimpses of the South: That langurous land ivlicrc Unclt Toms Groaned Biblically underneath the lash, And grinning Topsies mopped and mowed behind Each honeysuckle vine .... where The girls zvere always beautiful, the men Wore varnished boots, raced horses and played cards And drank mint-juleps till the titne came round For fighting duels with their seccnd cousins .... a South summed up in the description of one of its sons who .... could harrow the li-ater and plow the sand But he could tiot do the thing at hand. * • « OVER against the warm, wasteful South, impulsive and gallant, Benet places a somewhat cold and rigorous North, whose type of justice he portrays in that prayer of John Brown's, "by his narrow bed". / saw Thee tvhcn Thou did display The black man and his lord To bid me free the one, and slay The other ivith the sword. . . . And should the Philistine defend His strength against our blows. Hotel Mark Hopkins San Francisco A place to rest near the shops and theatres. New, comfortable, quiet, airy. f Anson Weeks' Orchestra playing ) (. nightly in Peacock Court j GEORGE D. SMITH President and Manager The God who doth not spare His friend. Will not forget His foes. One could quote from this book forever. I understand that the publisher's reluctance to print it because of its form was only overcome by Benet's own enthusiasm and perseverence. We can be thankful for that. As a piece of writing, it is a glorious departure from our dull history and slang-bitten fiction. Certainly it will be much read, and there is meat there for a second reading, and a third. The fact that the entire book, with the exception of one or two pages, is couched in verse forms, should deter no one; it reads as smoothly as a novel. * * * WITH winter here, one of the things we have always lacked, it seems to me, becomes more glaringly apparent. The city fathers who let loose on Los Angeles that horde of real estate subdivision builders responsible for this blight have much to answer for — but I spanthem. I am more concerned with the indifference of the people themselves. For, be it known, Los Angeles has no fireplaces. At least, comparatively few. It burns gas. Now a fireplace, as everyone knows, is the chief prop of the Anglo-Saxon home (and the Teutonic and the Icelandic and many another for the matter of that) and was, before the radio was even thought of. A man who hasn't a childhood to look back on which includes pictures of the whole family gathered around the crackling logs of an evening, not leaving their warm glow 'till Pa or Gran'pa banked I THE LAST WARNING TITLES and DIALOQUE TOM REED