We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE AMERICAN FILM
Wegener, was a bad adaptation of Somerset's Maugham's novel, and is memorable only for an operation scene which was handled in the best Ingram manner. The Garden of Allah, save for some beautiful panchromatic photography at the end of the picture, was drearily done in the true Ingram tradition of a story straightly told, with flashes of humour in the choice of crowd types. This curious mania for eccentric types is typical of Ingram. He seems to take delight in searching out the most ugly of mankind, making them useful in a close up. One recalls the man with the bomb in The Prisoner of Zenda\ the revolutionaries in Scaramouche\ the crowd in the bazaar in The Garden of Allah; the hunchback in The Magician. Later, The Three Passions was an effortless picture, distinguished only for Shayle Gardner's character study of a ship-builder. The film as a whole was one of the worst of Ingram's artistic attempts. Perhaps it is possible that this director will regain his old skill, but he will have to jolt himself out of a deep rut. Perhaps he, like Griffith, does not keep abreast with the current films of the world. Perhaps he, like so many other directors, has exhausted his knowledge of the film.
Clarence Brown is another American director who has shown short flashes of cinema in between long stretches of picture-sense. Some time ago, in 1925, his clever handling of The Goose Woman and of Louise Dresser aroused some interest. During the first portion of this film, while Miss Dresser played the drink-sodden prima donna who had fallen beside the way, Clarence Brown's direction was remarkable. He made her live in the filthiest squalidity with gin bottles and geese, and at night she would hunch up her back over her precious book of press-cuttings, to read over the reports of her glorious days. So far the film was excellent, handled with sympathy, but the latter half was quite ridiculous, Miss Dresser, the direction, and the film going to pieces. Among the many films credited to Clarence Brown were The Light in the Dark (1922); The Eagle, with Valentino at his best; Smouldering Fires, with Pauline Frederick, in 1925; and The Trail of yg8, a film that was meant to be an epic, but succeeded in being a first-class super film, without interest to the intelligent-minded. Flesh and the Devil, however, made in 1926, was a film of more than passing cleverness. It was, it is true, another example of the committee-produced picture, with John Gilbert, Lars Hanson and Greta Garbo as the star appeal, but it contained short sequences that strengthened Clarence Brown's claim as a 1 129