Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Page Ten May 8, 1937 friendship exists between them. One is the son of professor of music, the other the son of a railroad engineer. A prank annoys the generally genial professor and he refuses to give further lessons to the engineers son. We have here a demonstration of the relativity of dramatic values. To the boy the cessation of instruction at such a crucial time is a real tragedy. So beautifully has the story been told, so completely has its mood been established and our sympathy established for the central figures, that we share with the boy the full force of the tragedy. The story is told quietly, naturally, and never suggests either the actor or the director. Dialogue is read in easy, conversational tones, the superb music featured in the production is played softly enough to be easy on our ears without losing any of the musical values composers put in it. So completely are we carried along by the story, the brilliant success of the two boys at the national trials will produce one of the rare emotional thrills the screen gives us too infrequently. It shows what can be done in the way of making decency entertaining. r CASTING was done expertly. The professor is what we would expect him to be, a stoutish, good natured, softly spoken fellow, merely suggesting the artistic type. Hollywood probably would have cast Gregory Ratoff in the part to develop comedy by screaming at his pupils. The engineer is just an engineer; and the two boys differ in appearance and temperment precisely as we would expect the sons of two such different fathers to differ. A girl is prominent in the cast, just a girl. As I recall her, I believe she wears the same dress all the way through. I know she is without lipstick or make-up of any kind. What Hollywood would have done with her is a disturbing thought. There is an airedale dog who contributes a great deal to the air of authenticity the picture creates. All the many people on the screen are at complete ease in every scene. The children are permitted to be children, not encouraged into being actors. There is no glamor of any sort ; it is as if the picture was too intent on being human to take on any airs which would have suggested the artificial. I cannot refrain from once more claiming that here is a picture which supports the Spectator's theories as to what constitutes the proper talkie form. Whole sequences have no spoken word, yet the photography attracts no attention to itself. It is pure homespun, like all the other elements. A technical feat of outstanding quality is the synchronization of train noises with music as an accompaniment to an important sequence which takes place during a railroad journey. It is handled much more artistically than was the same treatment in Monte Carlo made by Ernest Lubitsch a few years ago. The dialogue is in Russian, but the picture has English titles much more illuminating than most of those we have had in other similarly treated foreign-made pictures. Question marks are appended to all translated questions, which will cause RKO studio executives dreadful annoyance. However, they should take into consideration the fact that the picture was edited before the executives handed down their decision declaring the question mark unconstitutional and banishing it from the screen. CAFE METROPOLE, Twentieth Century-Fox. Directed by Edward H. Griffith; associate producer, Nunnally Johnson; screen play by Jacques Deval; original story by Gregory Ratoff; photography, Lucien Androit, A.S.C.; art direction, Duncan Cramer and Hans Peters; set decorations by Thomas Little; assistant director, William Forsyth; film editor, Irene Morra; costumes, Royer; sound, Joseph Aiken and Roger Heman; musical direction, Louis Silvers. Cast: Loretta Young, Tyrone Power, Adolphe Menjou, Gregory Ratoff, Charles Winninger, Helen Westley, Christian Rub, Ferdi , nand Gottschalk, Georges Renavent, Leonid Kinskey, Hal K. Dawson, Paul Porcasi, Andre Cheron, Andre Beranger. HEN we first see the hero (Tyrone Power), he is i drunk in a Parisian cafe. The head waiter (Adolphe Menjou) adroitly eases him out of the place and receives a thousand-franc tip from the young American drunkard. The next sequence reveals Menjou as an embezzler, jointly with Christian Rub, of the cafe’s money, Rub being a bookkeeper. Then we go to a gambling club where Adolphe has the bank at baccarat. Tyrone loses nearly half a million francs in one deal. A little more sober now, he writes a check to cover his losses; crumples the check and confesses he has no money in any bank. Club officials are about to handle the young man roughly, but Adolphe rescues him, picks the check from the floor, and later Adolphe, on threats of imprisonment on the charge of what the headwaiter calls “forging” a check, forces Tyrone to agree to make love to the daughter (Loretta Young) of an American millionaire (Charles Winninger), the idea being to get enough money from Winninger, in the way of a marriage settlement, to enable Adolphe to restore what he had stolen from the cafe. A screen romance has entertainment value only to the extent of our regard for the parties to it, and our desire to see it end happily is dependent upon the degree of our respect for them. We can become interested in a purely intellectual way in the working out of the romance of two people we do not respect, but a screen creation containing that sort of romance lacks the emotional appeal which spells box-office success. We watch it much as we would a game of chess between two players who had no interest to us as individuals. Here we are asked to become interested in a hero who is a drunkard and a cheat, a^girl the daughter of a millionaire who is ass enough to radio a head waiter to have wild strawberries for himself and celebrities for his daughter awaiting him when he reaches the cafe; and the head waiter, really the leading character in the story, is an embezzler. HE ingrediants I list could have been mixed to produce a hilarious farce too amusing and ridiculous to challenge our critical sense. But Cafe Metropole is “played straight.” We are asked to believe it and respond emotionally to it. It is motivated solely by the threat of imprisonment of a young man who committed no crime, Power himself protests that French law does not recognize a gambling debt; Menjou agrees, but charges Power with Rather Illogical Story