Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Hollywood Spectator Page Five ing our resources, managed to produce the right num¬ ber of pennies, and the deal was concluded just as there came to us the tinkle of the Good Humor bell. Would anyone like to take off our hands two used beer bottles? All we are asking for them is the amount of our investment in them. No profiteers are we. SOME LATE PREVIEWS WALTER WANGER SERVES HUMANITY . . . • BLOCKADE; Walter Wanger-UA; producer, Walter Wanger; director, John Howard Lawson; photography, Rudy Mate and Russell Lawson; special effects, James Basevi; music, Werner Janssen; film editor, Dorothy Spencer. Cast: Made¬ leine Carroll, Henry Fonda, Leo Carrillo, John Holliday, Vladi¬ mir Sokoloff, Reginald Denny, Robert Warwick, William B. Davidson, Fred Kohler. Peter Godfrey, Carlos de Valdez, Katherine de Mille, George Byron, Nick Thompson, Rosina Galli, Ramon Ros, Dolores Duran, Guy d'Ennery, Edward Brady, Murdoch MacQuarrie, Harry Semels, Baby Marie de la Paz, Demitrius Emanuel, Hugh Prosser, Arthur Aylesworth, George Lloyd, Allen Garcia, Herbert Heywood, Roger Drake, Paul Bradley, Carl Stackdale, Skins Miller, Evelyn Selbie, Mary Fox, Belle Mitchell. Cecil Weston. Ricca Allen. HE screen has made its plea for peace, has stripped war of the remainder of its rapidly disappearing glamour and has raised an eloquent voice in behalf of all humanity. Walter Wanger's Blockade is some¬ thing more than just a motion picture. It is motion picture history — the first definite recognition by the screen of the fact that its mission is to serve mankind as well as to entertain it. Blockade is entertainment, a gripping spy drama that will hold any audience. It does not preach a sermon in which war is de¬ nounced and peace extolled. It shows us peace in the opening shot, and later the story leads us through scenes in which in passing we see the crime which war commits — see it in the eyes of hungry babies and their mothers, and read it in the faces of aged men and women, people, all of whom have done nothing to disturb peace, but who pay the biggest price when it is distorted by war. War itself we do not see — no marching troops, no false trappings in which murder is disguised as patriotism — just the stark skeleton of war as it is, a gigantic, heinous in¬ ternational racket in the hands of maniacs who wear the mask of patriotism. For that, the world owes a debt of gratitude to Walter Wanger. Dieterle's Direction Great . . . OLELY from the standpoint of screen entertain¬ ment — the determining factor in the extent of its service to the cause of peace — Blockade will prove to be a notable box-office success. It is done on a mag¬ nificent scale, is directed brilliantly and powerfully, and acted by a cast of outstanding merit. Both Madeleine Carroll and Henry Fonda have many good performances to their credit, but never before have they been inspired to rise to the heights they achieve in this picture as their response to the superb direc¬ tion of William Dieterle. Differing widely in all its essentials from his Zola and Pasteur , Blockade further stamps Dieterle as one of the screen’s really great directors. The script of John Howard Lawson, his own story written in screen-play form, is brilliant screen writing. The picture rises from the pastoral peace of a Spanish valley in which oxen draw a farmer's wagon and a shepherd pipes to entertain his sheep, from that to the terrific manifestation of man’s supreme insanity, suggesting wholesale slaughter on battle fields and showing wholesale suffering in the homes of the slaughtered. But through it all the story pursues its unbroken course, as if interested only in itself, in the recital of its inhumanity and the development of the beautiful romance which still makes it human. You hear the story as it is told in dialogue and you see the sermon as the camera records it; you buy the entertainment and will be satisfied with your investment; you will absorb the sermon and will applaud it. Some Fine Performances . . . HE beauty of Madeleine Carroll has been the chief feature in some of the parts she was given to play in former pictures, but in Blockade she makes us lose sight of it in our admiration for the feeling and understanding she reveals as a member of the war racketeering group and her ultimate reformation as she exerts her efforts to checkmate her former asso¬ ciates. She and Henry Fonda share some strongly dramatic scenes. What an admirable actor Fonda is! The simplicity of his technique, his earnestness and sincerity make him impressive in any part he plays. To me his appeal is the same as that which makes Jimmie Stewart one of my favorite screen actors. There is something primitive about each of them, an ingenuousness which makes us sympathize with them even before we become aware of a cause for sym¬ pathy. I hope Blockade will make the demand for Fonda so emphatic that Hollywood will keep him busy. Another feature of the picture which pleased me is the appearance of that able actor, Leo Carrillo, in a part free from the use of dialect. I enjoy him in any role, enjoy his dialect, but the lack of it in Blockade comes as a refreshing departure. He gives a fine performance. Technically a Triumph . . . LOCKADE has many speaking parts. In the longer ones we have John Halliday, Vladimir Sokoloff, Reg Denny, Robert Warwick, William B. Davidson and Fred Kohler, able actors all. Scores of others have bits with a line or two each and each does his or her full share towards maintaining the sinceri¬ ty with which the story is told. Dieterle, being an intelligent director, makes his players talk like the characters they play, a display of directorial tech¬ nique which the Spectator has pleaded should be a feature of all productions, but which we see so seld¬ om it makes it apparent that Hollywood has not sufficient intelligent directors to take care of its en¬ tire output. Technically, Blockade is a cinematic triumph. The sets of Alexander Toluboff and Wade Robottom lend themselves admirably to the photog¬ raphy of Rudy Mate. The special effects by Russell Lawson and James Basevi are one of the picture’s strong assets; and a word of praise must go to