Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1919)

68 Photoplay Magazine FT! r v" f \ ■Hk June Elvidge and Frank Mayo in "The Appearance of Evil," a recent and rather unusual World picture, which may be described as a rebuke to the gossiping habit in small communities. £& ^B 1 aiMtoNM V o i 1 8SSB \ vLJ ■-5! Madge Kennedy and Tom Moore, in "The Kingdom of Youth," the romance of a lake. Miss Kennedy's interest in her reading seems simply intense. William Desmond and Ethel Fleming in "The Pretender/ perfect handling of a delicate subject, and in its treatment the comedian has shown, more completely than ever betore. his faculty for getting inside a character, and grasping, as if by intuition (but really by hard work) all that character's salient points. The best thing about this film is that the rookie sees his own little weaknesses, his hardships, his hopes, his glories, his quaint vanities and small fears — he sees himself. If this film is not ioo percent triumph in our army camps in Europe all bets and guesses fail. Right in the midst of a guffaw one stops to admire a skilful mastery of even the new technique of war. Camouflaged as a tree, and motionless in a grove, he is absolutely undiscoverable until he moves. What a chilling satire on Flanders rain, too, is that scene of sweet slumber in the inundated dugout! Daintily shaking out his submarine pillows the comedian tucks the watery blanket about his shoulders — and sinks beneath the black flood with only the phonograph horn to give him air. Looking at this passage is enough to give one pneumonia by suggestion. The customary hint of breezy amour is lightly, deftly touched in a momentary scene with the cynical and evil-thinking crown prince. Being completely funny on a background of completely terrible war is not only difficult, but dangerous. As far as we can see, only Chaplin and Bruce Bairnsfather have been whollv successful and wholly apropos. MY COUSIN— Artcraft Enrico Caruso's first photoplay is better than most people"; anticipations, and not as good as it might have been. This is no paradox: to most people Caruso is merely an incarnate voice, the world's greatest tenor; but people who know Caruso, and know his broad comedy vein, must realize that this play, lively as it is, does not properly exploit Mr. Lasky's really immense inspiration. Whether this is the fault of Caruso, or of a management and directorate who were altogether too obsequious to Caruso, I don't pretend to sa}\ Here's the notion which, a number of months ago. seized upon Jesse the Impresario; the greatest personality in the artistic world, to a lower or middle-class Italian, is Caruso. He fills the entire universe. Were a poor maker of plaster images, then, to claim relationship and get away with it. his whole neighborhood would bow and scrape before him. Which is exactly what happens, and la bella signorina, daughter and heiress of the table d'hote, sweeps forward on the tide of homage. An ac cident shows that lo dlv'uw tenore never even heard of the wretched sculptor — and down goes his house of cards — only to be built up higher than ever, even to love's full fruition, when Caruso, taking pity on the lying lover, hails him as "my cousin." I'll say that all the authors in America, in convention assembled, couldn't have gotten out a simpler, more human, more racially true plot for Caruso to work upon. Perhaps I am wrong in viewing this piece as somewhat of a disappointment, it will please, it will surprise, even. But. in the first place, Caruso's own name is dropped from the tenor character, the meaningless name of "Carolyi" is substituted — and there goes the reason of the whole thing. As the halfwit Michelangelo of the plaster, our celebrity is simply delightful; as the artist of the Metropolitan Operahouse. he is altogether too grand. The subtitles simply fawn, and where they should trip with the feet of wit. they wear arctics and goloshes. Much good material was taken in the operahou-e. Caruso as the moulder was well directed; Caruso as himself — or Carolyi — seems not to have been directed at all. Evidently, everybody salaamed and got out of the way, and the resultant action is oi" the pre-Selig period. Carolina White, celebrated American prima-donna, gave graceful and girlish life to the opposite role. WOMAN — Toumeu r Maurice Tourneur's new picture, an extensive allegory with the one-word name above, is one of the most beautiful things physically that has ever been made, with the most superb lighting and photography, and further evidences of Mr. Tourneur's positive genius in grouping and general comoosition. Nevertheless, it has one cardinal fault: a lack of any sustained interest, composed as it is of separate and distinct episodes, with no central human theme to bind all these together. In argument, it is an exposition of woman's place, and service to the human race, throughout the ages. Most of the episodes show woman at her worst : Eve led Adam astray in the Gar