Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Seven tered, if the purpose was to place her where Romero could overhear her? Why — (Why am I interrupted constantly? Why should I be held responsible for the disappearance of the box with the shower curtains and bath mats in it? I distinctly remember putting it under the bed in the front bedroom and if it isn’t there now it’s not my fault. That box? Oh, that’s one with something light in it that I have been standing on to hang my pictures. All right, go ahead and open it. I’ll never get the Spectator written at this rate. So the bath things were in the box, were they? How was I supposed to know that? I tell you I put it under the bed in the front room.) fr HY — well, why what? What question did I have in mind ? Let us start again. How did Romero know where to go? There is nothing in the picture to indicate he had previous knowledge of Hale’s apartment. And why all the movement involved in taking Tala through one room to another when it would be inevitable that the audience would ask how Romero found the right door at which to listen? The listening, too, suggests another fundamental point that applies to all screen creations. Romero is shown, in semi close-up, standing outside the door listening to what is said within. The camera is the eye of the audience; the microphone is the ear of the audience. The audience always is as near the player as the camera is when the scene is shot. When we see a big close-up of a player, following a long shot in which he is but one small figure, we do not get the impression that he has increased in size, but merely the feeling that we have moved closer to him. Thus the camera moves us into and out of scenes. When Romero stands — (Excuse me. ... I agreed with the man at the door that the hedge needed trimming, and I told him to trim it. We walked all over the garden, and he certainly knows things about flowers and shrubs. I left him starting to put everything in shape after telling his small daughter, who was with him, to hurry home and tell her mother he had a job. The little girl’s name is Maggie.) w rf HEN Romero stands outside the door, the audience is standing so close to him that it must hear anything he hears, even though not quite so distinctly. But the audience does not hear a word spoken within the room ; does not imagine Romero is hearing anything, but when he enters the room it is revealed that he had overheard the confidences exchanged in ordinary conversational tones by Tala and Hale. He shoots Hale and to incriminate Tala, leaves a photograph of her on the floor besides the corpse. At the subsequent trial of the two for murder, the photograph is accepted as proof of Tala’s guilt, and the fact that the fatal bullet was fired from Romero’s gun condemns him. How a jury could conclude that the girl was foolish enough to engage in a murder and leave her photograph beside the victim, is something else an audience would question. (I give up. Since writing the above, Arthur, the spaniel, and I went back to where we came from in an effort to solve the mj'stery of the disappearance of the pink blanket. We were unsuccessful. I was unaware that we ever had possessed a pink blanket, and, in any event, there seems to be so many heaps of bedding on the floor now that the loss or addition of one blanket would be a matter of no importance, although I confess a pink one would add a touch of gaiety to the heap I can see outside my door. I have troubles of my own now. I can’t find the screwdriver. I discovered its disappearance after I had returned from a fruitless search for Arthur. No one had seen him since we got back from the trip in search of the blanket. If you have lost a dog you know how distressing the feeling is. All of us were heartbroken at the thought of the poor little fellow vainly trying to find his way back to his new home in a locale strange to him. I walked all over the neighborhood, calling his name. One woman who heard me asked me what my little boy looked like. I caught only part of her question and when I told her he was red and white and had long ears, she looked at me in a funny sort of way. It was then I recalled that she had said something about a little boy. After eating a sandwich in the kitchen I assured Mrs. Spectator that Arthur would turn up all right, that I would drive all over the valley until I found him. I went out to the car and found him asleep on the back seat ; and now, if I only could find the screwdriver. My toggle bolt is quite useless without the cooperation of a screwdriver.) A Lesson from Overseas CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS. Produced by the Films Sonores Tobis; from the story by Charles Spaak; screen play by Bernard Zimmer; directed by Jacques Feyder; presented at the Four Star Theatre. Cast: Francoise Rosay, Alerme, Jean Murat, Micheline Cheirel, Bernard Lancret, Alfred Adam. 117 HEN we provincial Hollywood people wish to say rr anything complimentary about a picture made abroad, we remark, “In some respects it is fully up to the Hollywood standard.” If France sends us many more trivial comedies told as wittily and mounted as handsomely as Carnival in Flanders, perhaps some day we can boast that one of ours “in some respects is fully up to the French standard.” Over here we grade our productions according to the literary magnitude of the stories. It never would occur to us to hang royal trappings on a bedroom farce. It would cost too much money. The French producers made the Flanders story important by the simple means of giving it an important production, by telling an old story in glamorous pictorial language, casting it perfectly and giving it expert direction so nicely shaded that immorality becomes amusing and bad taste is refined by a cleansing sense of humor. If the insane people who rule the destinies of European countries do not plunge the continent into another general war, the development of picture making over there will become a real threat to the world dominance of the American film industry. Prior to the outbreak of the World War in 1914, Europe was making vast strides in improving the quality of its screen entertainment. The best pictures shown in this country were those which came to us from European studios, Italy, especially, sending us several imposing productions as good for their day as any