Hollywood Spectator (1931)

July 18, 1931 9 two to four hours overtime. They get no pay for this. They are told to keep track of the overtime and are promised that at some time in the future they will be given holidays in duration matching the hours they have overworked. They never get these holidays. Such conditions do not prevail on the Fox lot. There the girls in the stenographic department are treated with consideration and reasonable hours are the rule. On the Paramount lot conditions are bad. There are more cases of nervous breakdowns there than on any other lot. Warner Brothers, of course, try to squeeze the utmost hours of work out of their girls. ▼▼ The NEW law provides that girls must work but eight hours each day to earn their weekly salaries. They may work four hours overtime for which they must be paid time and one half. Under no circumstances will they be permitted to work more than four hours in excess of their regular eight-hour day. If they are called back to work at night they must be supplied with their dinners at the expense of the studios. The producers opposed the passage of the law as they can not see that stealing hours from lowly employees is about the meanest form of pilfering known to man. The alert girls are aware that their employers will offer the same opposition to the operation of the law as they did to its enactment. Every device will be resorted to to make the measure innocuous, but its terms are specific and the girls intend to see that it is enforced. To help them in this worthy endeavor the Spectator offers its assistance. If the girls will report to it every infraction of the law that comes to light, the Spectator will give it publicity and in each instance the source of the Spectator' s information will be considered as something strictly confidential. ▼ y ▼ These I ve Seen— Rebound THERE is ONE love scene in Rebound that of itself gives the picture distinction. It is acted with exquisite tenderness by Ina Claire and Robert Williams, and directed with rare understanding by E. H. Griffith. A tribute, too, must be paid to the artistic values lent it by Nor’bert Brodine’s superb photography. It is one of the many beautifully done bits that make Rebound an outstanding production. Horace Jackson made the adaptation from a Donald Ogden Stewart play. The dialogue throughout fairly scintillates, being rich in humor, terse and intelligent. Carroll Clark, the art director, contributed some highly satisfactory sets. We never have had a talkie directed more capably, nor one in which the performances were more creditable. For downright smartness Rebound is matched only by Holiday, also directed by Ned Griffith. As a comedy Rebound excels Holiday, consequently there is more diverting entertainment in the new picture than in its predecessor. Rebound has more audience appeal as it provokes more laughter. If the public wants its screen stories told in dialogue, if this form of screen entertainment is legitimate and fundamentally sound — if it has any hope of permanence — if it is to be instrumental in restoring prosperity to the film industry — then Rebound will remain at the Carthay Circle theatre longer than Holiday remained there. y y Ip the Spectator's contention is correct; if on account of their fundamental weakness talkies will not continue to entertain the public — if the industry’s persistence in making them can serve only to add to its financial worries — then Rebound's run will be shorter than H oliday' s. Holiday ran at the Carthay Circle for nine weeks. Rebound will not run for more than four weeks. I am writing this two days after Rebound’s opening, although it will not reach Spectator readers until the four weeks are just about up. (Later — Rebound’s run was three weeks, three days.) Rebound is not box-office. It is an almost perfect example of a variety of entertainment that the public does not want, a variety it endured for a time on account of its novelty, but which, because it is not true screen art, can not continue to entertain audiences that want motion pictures. I say this even though Rebound delighted me. It is not a motion picture, and its only weaknesses are the results of its attempts to be one. The charm of the opening sequence lies in the fact that the whole story is planted in conversations that take place at a breakfast table. The members of a house-party come and go, indulge in clever and witty remarks, and all the time breakfast goes on. ▼ y A SEQUENCE of this sort should have been presented in a manner that would have led us to believe that the breakfast was the most important feature of it. If an effort had been made to persuade us that the coffee was more important than the conversation, we would have thought a great deal more of the conversation. Audiences will enjoy the sequence because they are not trained to look for a display of high intelligence in the presentation of talkies ; they would enjoy it much more if its treatment had revealed a greater understanding of its values. Instead of the dialogue being secondary in importance to the serious business of having breakfast, it is trotted out to the front through the medium of a series of close-ups which seem to say “Just listen to the clever things these people are saying.” Witty lines are spoken oy characters who appear to be concentrating upon making them witty. If one of them had been spoken absently by a character whose chief thought seemed to be on the desirability of one more lump of sugar in his coffee, it would have sounded much more witty. Throughout the production close-ups are resorted to constantly to rob the film of pictorial effectiveness that with more intelligent editing would have been retained. Lines always convey their own meanings. The mission of the camera ;n a talkie is to present the effect of the lines, to show us a character’s reaction to what is said. The photographic emphasis should be on the listener, not on the speaker. In Rebound almost invariably we have close-ups of the speaker. ▼ ▼ Both Miss Claire and Williams give magnificent performances. Robert Ames, who apparently is doomed always