Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

Why Movies Go Wrong (Continued from page Q2) ventional practice of ignoring anything he might have said about it anyway, one cannot know. The picture from start to finish showed complete disregard of the common characteristics of London slum dwellers. Arabia gets it right where the cork gets the bottle in "Fazil," the exotic William Fox extravaganza of life in the far (very far) East. For this picture one of the greatest authorities in America on Arabian customs was engaged as technical adviser. He was Jamiel Hasson, a young man of a wealthy and important Arabian family who had only recently left his native country. The picture came out as an extraordinary jumble of modern atmosphere and that of a hundred years ago. Hasson replied to questions about how this happened with a dignified silence, which fairly well explained it. It is unquestionable that if his advice had been listened to throughout there would have been no technical errors. AS IMAGINED, NOT AS IS THE strange point here is that Howard Hawks, the director of "Fazil," is an intelligent and well-read man and could not possibly have been unaware of the mistakes he was making. One can only ascribe this strange piece of screencraft to the theory in his mind that the American public is more ready to believe in the reality of an Arabia d la Ziegfeld than in that of Arabia as it really is; that if the real thing were presented, they would decry it as false. In which pious sentiment there is perhaps more than a little sound common-sense. The harem in "Fazil" was its most preposterous ingredient. Even if one puts it a hundred years ago, the fact that the door was unlocked and that it was full of almost completely naked ladies of various breeds attending to such intimate details as shaving themselves, makes it ridiculous. Harems were closely guarded and could not be entered by anyone, while the inmates wore a terrible lot of clothes. Today, however, young Arabs of the better class are wellknown to have abandoned the practice of taking unto themselves more than one wife — an entirely admirable restraint on their part. The effort to show Fazil 's crudeness by putting him in a double collar with full evening dress was only one of the many absurdities, as everybody knows that Arabs and Indians of rank are the most meticulous of men when in Europe. The gondolier who sings and wears comic-opera dress is another touch going back a hundred years in the midst of a story supposed to be modern. Today's gondolier wears an old shirt and pants and all the singing he does is expectorated into the canal. "Fazil" exemplifies once more the old Hollywood idea that everything must be made up to date. If it had been played in the costumes of the last century, the romantic glamour could have been retained without sacrificing correctness of detail. 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