Movie Makers (Jun-Dec 1928)

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SOUTH SEA SILHOUETTE A Still from White Shadows of the South Seas. Photo b-y Metro. PHOTOPLAYFARE Reviews for the Cintelligenzia The End of St. Petersburg DECIDEDLY, if the Russians can divorce propaganda and the cinema — no less dignified term will suit their screen product — they will lead the world in the production of great photoplays as they already lead the world in the art of cinematography. However much one's patriotism — chauvinism, it would be, a la Russe — makes the pill bitter, it is only fair to admit, roundly and generously, that no directors and no cameramen can touch the modern Soviet Russian exemplars of their art in real understanding and ready application of those things that make the motion picture an independent medium of expression. This we admitted to ourselves in "Czar Ivan the Terrible." In "Potemkin" it was forecast but not made definite. "The End of St. Petersburg" clinches the matter. We can only urge our American cine-artists to profit by what has come out of Muscovy as they have already profited by what has come from Germany; and the Russian example is worth a round dozen of the German. But as a photoplay — ah, there's the rub. However vigorously one narrows art into the ways of propaganda one always loses because art is a poor servant. The Russians understand the art of the cinema but they do not understand the ways of art itself. Hence "The End of St. Petersburg" leaves the intelligent playgoer in that irritation which "Dawn" gave him, which Tom's Cabin," "Damaged and other prostitutions of "Uncle Goods" playwriting into political or social pleading have aroused. The thing is so full of venom, of exaggeration, of moralities rammed home with a tenfoot plunger, of the wickedness of a whole nation — because, after all, a government reflects the nation's capa city— before 1917 and the dawning saccharine goodness of that same nation after 1917 (an overnight miracle) that anyone with a shadow of cynicism goes out of the theatre shouting "tosh" and "buncombe" to the house-tops. A peasant suffers everything that he can suffer and still live; his family and friends are likewise martyrized. Aristocrats exult and crush him, circumstance flays him — because it is the Czar's circumstance. Then comes the Revolution and he is free. Kerensky will not stop the foreign war, so Kerensky is berated and proved a traitor. Eventually the people win and invade the Winter Palace where our protagonist and his kinsmen are top-dogs. And other childishnesses ad infinitum and ad nauseam make up this greatest of all cinematic achievements. But if one can forget the idea behind the film, can consider it as a fairy tale or as a primitive and somewhat hysterical Miracle Play, he will be literally stunned by the avalanche of cinematics. There is no new thing which the art of the motion picture has developed that we do not see in "The End of St. Petersburg." To describe these in detail is to catalogue each scene. It must be viewed to be appreciated. This, then, is the astounding combination of the most subtle screen art that has yet been projected and the most un-subtle and obvious roughshod propaganda. But Mr. Pudowkin, the director, who is an artist in spite of the government, has done what Schu( Continued on page 606) Photograph by Metro JUST A PRETTY GIRL One of the Charming Compositions Which Photographically Enrich White Shadows 582