Hollywood Spectator (1931)

18 Hollywood Spectator during which Betty marries Nagel, are a trifle complex and considerably more absorbing than one usually finds. Frankly I enjoy a story which permits me to meditate as much about the plot as about the players. The reason why characters act as they do is more interesting to me than the pure technic of their actions. But perhaps in this preference I do not reflect a popular attitude. However that may be, I feel that whatever virtues Three Who Loved possesses are virtues of the story rather than virtues of action or of direction. I thought Nagel a fool for marrying the girl, Miss Compson, a treacherous little package for falling in love with Ames, and Ames a complete bounder, although a rather likeable one. I must therefore conclude that a picture which forced me to think in such terms is a very fair show. Max Ree handled the settings, and his boarding house is excellent. Whether he is dealing in mansions or kitchen doors, Ree never exaggerates. The de Mille idea is utterly foreign to him, and he is cognizant of the fact that people are exactly equal to those things with which they surround themselves. If there had been less dialogue, more action and a little less Betty Compson, Three Who Loved would have been a better picture and a bigger money maker. A Puzzle ▼ V THE NIGHT ANGEL. Before viewing this picture I did something that is not my usual procedure. I read other reviews about it. All were rather frightful. Someone suggested that the title should have been Night Mare. Other remarks were equally dubious. I was disappointed because I thought Night Angel one of the best titles to come out of Hollywood in a long while. A picture with such a title, I reasoned, could not be absolutely wet. So I went with misgivings and I returned with a thankful heart, because I liked it. It is a writer-director affair, with Edmund Goulding at the helm. And whatever its faults, it shows considerably more director-sympathy than the usual tale which goes through at least five hands before the script is ready. This writer-director combination is something that will become more frequent, and when it does we will have better pictures. There is something wrong with me, I think. I am too sympathetic. I can glimpse behind the rocky points of a sincere cinematic effort something of the care and aspirations that are bound up in it. Moreover I attend a showing not as a critic, but as a spectator seeking amusement. I endeavor to grant the players their situation, and to throw myself into their story. As an audience of one, it is good business for me to do so, because I have paid money for amusement, and I am going to make conditions as favorable as possible in order that I may derive all the entertainment value that the picture holds. Possibly that is why I liked Night Angel. ▼ V Fredric March and Nancy Carroll hold the spot in this Paramount picture. March 'and Leslie Howard are two of the most fascinating gentlemen on the screen, and no picture in which they appear is utterly bad. Miss Carroll faltered badly in the opening sequences, but as the story unfolded she improved, and in the latter half I thought her work excellent. The setting of the story is rather vague, but anyhow it is foreign. March is a young prosecutor and Miss Carroll is the daughter of a countess of dubious reputation who maintains a dive and does small jobs of petty theft on the side. When the countess is arrested March prosecutes her, and his love affair with the daughter starts at the trial. If such a proceeding be termed illogical, I can point out several instances in life where cultured gentlemen have fallen for such shoddy little intellectual tramps as Miss Carroll’s part portrayed. The picture is slow, but I didn’t mind the deliberate tempo. Its settings are beautiful in a time when drabness on the screen is getting to be a common fault. The photography is more than satisfactory. Distinctly Night Angel is not a photographed play, but neither is it completely a motion picture. Slow tempo, weak story, dialogue notwithstanding, there is something about the picture that places it rather high on the list of shows I review in this number. But even that may not mean a great deal. Spiced to Taste ▼ ▼ THE MAN IN POSSESSION belongs entirely to as charming a pair as may be found anywhere on the screen — Robert Montgomery and Irene Purcell. There are others, certainly, but the audience hangs upon the entrance of the two stars, together with C. Aubrey Smith, than whom there is no more theatrical English gentleman. Reginald Owen as Montgomeiy’s brother gives us a performance which is a little exaggerated, and Beryl Mercer has been given so many moaning mother parts that I am a little afraid she will faint whenever she appears on the screen. Sam Wood directs, and achieves a laugh in every sequence. Not a guffaw, mind you, but a quiet laugh that is always the response to cleverness and wit. I confess that I am somewhat troubled by this M-G-M picture. It is filled with dialogue, yet I enjoyed it from end to end. There are, of course, a few scenes in which action is predominant, such as that soup spilling affair, and at no time does the action cease entirely. But fundamentally the thing is a play, and it is perhaps because it is so obviously a play that I can not condemn it as a motion picture. Nor do I have the slightest idea how the cleverness of The Man in Possession could have been attained, let us say, in complete silence. It is something like Rebound in this respect, a very witty play transposed to the screen. Its sparkle can not fail to attract, but it will be quite another thing when the picture goes through Kansas. If its small town billings are completely successful, I shall miss a guess. Miss Purcell improves with each performance. Her work in this latest endeavor can not be compared with her char YOU AUTO KNOW OTTO GASOLINE AND OIL Service Station Opposite MARCAL THEATRE, HOLLYWOOD For Reservations or Orders Phone OXford 2239 OLIVE CLAIRE TEA ROOM 325 North Beverly Drive Beverly Hills, Calif. Specialties to Order Luncheons 75c — Afternoon Teas Pies, Cakes, Fancy Rolls, etc. Dinners $1.00 and $1.25 Closed on Mondays STRAUSS BOOTERY A Life Time Experience in Catering to the Most Fastidious of the Motion Picture World Inventor of the Famous Seam'ess Arch Support Shoe 5519 Hollywood Blvd. Phone HO 9107 Hollywood, Cal.