Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

The Picture of the Month Bv LAURENCE HEID "M= KNHANDLED" (Paramount) is one of those r\ rare screen entertainments thai serve to projecl the entire business of motion picture production on to a pi. me closely parallel with the artistic, if indeed, it doesn't project it to the very plane of art itself. Here is a picture, not new in it- essentials of plot tn an) means, that is so humanly told, so truthfully sketched in characterization, so convincingly acted and cleverl) presented, that it makes us forgel the undeniable fact that sometimes pictures are poor and at other times very had. It presents the very simple story of a girl and a hoy in New York City. And for the most ^ part it draws accurate _v^ and true pictures o i c 0 m m on. every-day types. In this, indeed, is its great merit. Here are characters living and breathing the very air of Manhattan. They are not stuffed p u p p e t s who jump into activity thru the manipulated strings of a director. They are wholly animate and alive. They are truly the characters of which scenario editors beg amateurs to write. They are the people next door or in the apartment across the hall. There is drama in their apparently drab existences. I f you are a clever dramatist or story-teller you can find it. Arthur Stringer found it and wrote "Manhandled." You, who distribute prizes, step forward. Mr. Stringer was fortunate in that his story fell into thoroly competent hands. Gloria Swanson is the girl, a department-store worker, and Tom Moore is the boy, an automobile mechanic. Theirs is the life of Xew York, of early rising and trips to work in crowded underground cars, of long, hard days of labor, and of subway rides back "home" again. Sometimes a chop-suey dinner is thrown in to round off the day. It is a simple yarn, rather slight of plot — but it is In "Manhandled," Gloria Swanson sets herself a new record. She is a brilliant screen comedienne, a quality hitherto unsuspected in her make-up. She and Tom Moore share the honors as simple, human, every-day young people of the working class told so humanly that the picture rises above its talc b\ means of the introduction of 'plaint divert) m-iii< Neither Chaplin nor Lloyd has done anything funnier than Miss Swanson's pictured adventure in the ul. at rush hour. It is the opening sequence of "Manhandled" and it carries a gale of laughs. It is burlesqued slightly, but nol much at that. It ma) seem ridiculoui eople in cities where there are no subways, but then so may all New York seem ridiculous, The story, as said, is utterly simple. While the b is away exploiting a mechanical invention, ^^^^^^^^ the girl tastes a bit of Broadway life. .1^1^^ She has left the subway for od after the first -cene — a subway in which ^^ the men archeavy to be young anil too crowded to be wealthy. So she rides on a cushioned seat in taxis or private cars. Well, the upshot of her rise from the department-store trenches is that she escapes without harm, but the escape is close and at first, when the boy returns, he wont believe her. A 1 1 t h e gowns are honest, as she explains when he comes back to find them hanging guiltily in her wardrobe. But there are signs that determine her true character that he cannot ignore. So there is a veryhappy love scene for the finale. The scenes bet w e e n Miss Swanson and Tom Moore are some of the prettiest the celluloid has revealed. They rein i n d us of Griffith at his best. Often these two players are motionless yet their scenes seem to vibrate with a vital current. They are a great credit to the players themselves and to Allan Dwan, who directed the picture. Previously we have associated Mr. Dwan with unreal stories and similar settings. Rooms in plain houses have become as enormous as the Louvre under his evident desire for space. Here he gets (Continued on page 92) (Forty-seven)