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THE AMERICAN FILM
Thirdly, 'Sunrise has a new technique.' Although these announcements, issued with the severest gravity, were probably due to Mr. Fox's new 'art' film publicity department, they are significant of the price that Murnau and Mayer had to pay for their Hollywood engagement. The theme of Sunrise was meant for intelligent people; it was very successful with housemaids and their boy friends. The picture itself was well done. The city looked really well. The technique was clever. Mr. Fox was perfectly sincere when he said that the picture was a masterpiece. It was. A masterpiece of bluff, insincerity, unsubstantial nonsense. To those who had read the lesson in the American work of Lubitsch, Sunrise was not a disappointment. A little foresight showed that Hollywood would dismember Murnau, just as she had Lubitsch, Seastrom, Buchowetzski. Sunrise turned out to be exactly what had been expected. At the same time, many London film critics bleated restlessly over the 'rhythm' of the great picture. . . .
Murnau 's second picture for Fox was The Four Devils, a 'story of the circus ring,' which was (save for some moving camerawork) an uninteresting film. Sunrise was at least meritorious if only in a small way; but this second film, with its puling sentiment, its little boys and girls, its wicked men and sensual vamps, was Mr. Fox in his post-war days of white-haired mothers carrying baskets over the hill. The German director has made another film for Mr. Fox, but as yet it is in the future. In the meantime, I wait to hear of Herr Murnau 's return to Berlin, where perhaps it will be possible for him to pick up the threads of cinema where he laid them down after The Last Laugh and Faust.
Erich Pommer, whilst not strictly a film director, is nevertheless a supervisor, and the productions which have resulted from his control are all of considerable note. He left Germany after the making of Vaudeville, which was directed by E. A. Dupont, and supervised by Pommer. Exactly what the supervision of Erich Pommer amounts to is hard to ascertain with any degree of certainty, but the fact remains that there are directors, who, whilst working under him make excellent pictures, but are disappointing when alone. Dupont is a case in point. Vaudeville, from all standards, was a brilliant film and, on the strength of it, Dupont went to Hollywood to the Universal Company. There he made an unmentionable picture, Love Me and the World Is Mine, which is not remarked upon by any
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