Motion Picture (Feb-Jul 1929)

THE SCREEN MAGAZINE OF AUTHORIT^• <-<)-<M MAJOR GFORGE K. SHULER Pul>!isf,er M ay ^ 1929 LAURENCE REID Ma>ia^iii«; Editor DUNCAN A. DOBIE, JR. General Manager e am era: I ^S women watch each other on Fifth Avenue /^ for fashions, so do the movies scrutinize L — -^ themselves for what is popular. 1 m One company makes a big success, and another and then another goes home to see if it can't make something just exactly like it. This isn't new. It's been going on for years. One instance of it was, nearly a decade ago, the importation of "Passion." Up to this time, the costume picture was taboo. No less a deity than Cecil B. DeMille had said so. But when the Germans came forward and proved that a subject could be both historical and human, this dictum died. We had "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "Monsieur Beaucaire" and a raft of others in silk knee-pants. Another and more recent manifestation has been the rash of gang-war dramas. What the public didn't know about bootlegging and hi-jacking before, from reading the newspapers, it soon found out from the screen. We shouldn't be surprised if it weren't just this modern form of gun-toting hero that killed off the old westerns. Moderit Tno-Giin Men Ar any rate, the underworld had its day, a day that is passing. Perhaps because the pictures copied one another so much as to rob the scene and subject ' of novelty. Perhaps because in real life, as in Chicago's wholesale murder of a month or so ago, the thing is done on a scale that even the movies had not the imagination to conceive. And right now we foresee the incoming of another vogue, one incident to the more facile manipulation ot the talkies. It is the movie musical comedy, hitherto untried and impracticable for the screen. The germ of this undoubtedly dates back to the early Jolson pictures, "The Jazz-Singer" and "The Singuig Fool." But it has been elaborated upon and brought to a very high point in entertainment value by the production of "The Broadway Melody." This is a most excellent picture. Even at the high price of admission, from a movie standpoint, that it could demand, it was money's worth. Well written, intelligently cast and adroitly and forcefully directed, its viewing was an evening well spent. And there is much to be said in support of its director's claim, that the field of the new speaking screen cannot be better appreciated than m its adaptation to the singing and dancing, as well as talking, form of entertainment. To what Broadway has frequently referred to as eye-and-ear attractions. Take It Easy BUT with the advent of "The Broadway Melody" to the scene of its setting, there comes word that other pieces patterned upon it and upon its appeal for popularity are in production and in preparation for production. In one sense, this is good news. In another, it is not. It is good news in that the public will more than welcome any picture of as all-round excellence as "The Broadway Melody." And it is bad news in that it forecasts an epidemic of imitations and emulations. There should be more like it — more like it, in general. But producers are unwise if they think that this kind of picture is the answer to all the public wants or will want in talking pictures. They are unwise, too, if they think that the talking pictures cannot be as effective in straight comedy or in serious dramatic pieces. It so happens that the first big successes have come in the pictures with music. But the makers of pictures will make the taste for these last longer if they do not serve them too often. Chicken a la King is unquestionably appetizing. But serve it every day for a week and there comes a violent hankering for steak and potatoes. 11, '^ is our estimation for the musical comedy would suggest mixing their provision with contrasting items of diet. I