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42
P ho toPlay Journal
To use so much space on a bad film would be a waste, if I did not believe that perhaps this review and the many others which are being published at the present time, will reach Nazimova and make her give up her efforts to remain constantly in the limelight, as star, director, producer, and all the rest. Let Nazimova place herself in the hands of a good showman, one who knows what the public wants in drama and in art, and she will win back her lost place in the screen world.
OCCASIONALLY YOURS
(Robertson-Cole)
"Occasionally Yours" has a good story. By that I mean it could have a good story, because it contains a good story idea. But Gasnier has botched it and Lew Cody has killed it. And you have "Occasionally Yours," a film with a few semi-nudes thrown in to catch the yokels, and tiresome stupid society drama for all but a few hundred of the 5000 feet. The nudes appear in the first reel. They seem to have wandered out of "Kismet" and feel quite unhappy in their so-called Bohemian surroundings. The story idea is that of a young man who tries to get married properly, but finds womankind fickle as mankind and decides to live a bachelor life, with divertisements from ladies who sign themselves "Occasionally Yours." We might have had a ticklish comedy. We only have drivel.
The best actor in the picture is a dog. His work is marked by intelligence, vivacity and a keen desire to please. The others: Lew Cody has one expression for all emotions. It probably is his natural expression, boredom. Betty Blythe is physically handsome, but acts atrociously. Elinor Fair weeps and faints with monotonous regularity. The settings are cheap.
WHAT DO MEN WANT?
(Lois Weber — Paramount)
Heaven only knows what men want. And Lois Weber certainly does not. A maudlin production, this; reminiscent of endless states right films, only produced on a slightly more lavish scale. Girls are betrayed and villains abound; high jinks go on in dreadful film fashion at dreadful film parties. Husbands get tired of domesticated wives; and wives grow bored with over-business-like husbands, and there is a soldier who brings in the patriotic motif by the heels and drags it before the camera just in time to reconcile everybody to everybody else, leaving all hands about where they were when the camera crank began to turn, though, perhaps, a little more tired.
Lois Weber has obtained some rather different types for this screen play. They vary from the normal in that they are everyday looking people. But her story is all out of kilter. Inconsistencies creep in to the point of showing scenes tinted to depict night followed by full lighted scenes which in their turn are followed by night scenes again. She has depended upon two novelties in building up the picture; a daring orgy in which one of the women auctions off her clothing, the camera man fortunately irising out just in time; and the suicide of a woman character who has gained the sympathy of the audience.
A lurid film, far below Paramount standards.
PASSION
(First National)
"Passion" is the first German film to be shown in the United States since the war broke out. It features Pola Negri, a charming and vivacious Italian actress, and tells the story of the life of Mme. Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, king of France. Five thousand persons are said to have performed before the camera. The settings are elaborate and an effort has been made to follow history in the story. The film is several reels beyond the usual length.
"Passion" will undoubtedly please the average audience, because the average audience doesn't know much about Mme. Du Barry, Paris, Versailles, or the spirit that moved in those days before the deluge, and the consequent French revolution. By all artistic standards, however, it is a clumsy pageant, containing scarcely any dramatic situations sufficient to hold the interest through eight or more reels. With the exception of Pola Negri, who is a decided Latin type, and the unnamed actor who played the role of the King, scarcely any of the cast suggest Frenchmen or Frenchwomen to the slightest degree. They are Germans, and it is without prejudice to the Germans that I mention this fact. But to watch Germans act the roles of famous French characters breaks the illusion.
The sets have a vague identification with the Paris and Versailles of 1775. They are stagey, however stupendous they may seem. The quality of the acting is not quite up to the American standard, with the exception of the star, who is entirely capable. The mob scenes, of which there are many, are well handled. Lighting varies from indifferently bad to some excellent shots. There are many grotesque incidents in the film. The court scenes prove, for instance, that manners were quite as bad in the court of Louis XV as in some Berlin bierhaus of 1918. The costumes remind one of a masquerade ball given by a war charity organization in the Biltmore. As a pageant, "Passion" is fairly good ; as a drama it is tiresome.
the Party" are spread rather thinly over the five thousand feet, they are near enough to each other to make the viewing of this picture enjoyable.
The story of an attorney who attacks the milk trust, a fat lovable attorney, who likes the flowing bowl and the ladies, and who wins the mayoralty and a cold on the chest all in one evening is well known. It is competently presented by Paramount, with Viola Daniel and Julia Faye assisting the erstwhile Fatty.
THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
(Cosmopolitan Production)
Winston Churchill's novel created quite a stir when it was published a few years ago. It was so daringly radical, so nouveau, and all that. But the screen adaptation looks like a sermon by the Rev. Bowlby on the eve of the passage of a constitutional amendment prohibiting week-days. It has the technical merits of some excellent sets, some splendid photography and occasional good acting and direction. It gets over well ; and it will undoubtedly get over in easy fashion to the average audience. But that does not prevent it from being a tedious boresome picture, suitable for a showing at the Sunday evening movie concerts of the First Zionist Church of Fairthewell, Kansas.
The only trenchant argument for the "happy ending" is that the public wants happy endings; there is enough misery in real life. But the public doesn't want to be preached at, sermonized, made the object of a thousand and one moral Sunday school lessons when it goes to a picture theatre. It wants entertainment. Quotations from the Bible are good and are true at all times. But even a Bible teacher can have too much to them. The very bad villain — portrayed in this instance by the very good actor, David Torrence — meets a villain's bad end, and everyone else is happy ever after. But your audience feels no great uplift on seeing this unreal film. It only feels bored, particularly when the picture is a few reels too long. _
This adverse criticism does not imply that "The Inside of the Cup" is not a meritorious picture, as pictures go. It is overburdened with too much morality, and too many morals. The large cast includes Edith Hallor, whose screen personality is strong and likable; Marguerite Clayton, who plays better than she ever has heretofore; Richard Carlyle, excellent in a character role ; and Albert Roccardi, who overacted to the point of being grotesque.
Albert Capellani's direction is adequate, and frequently noteworthy for its realism.
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
(Paramount)
Fatty Arbuckle, now Roscoe Arbuckle, since he has deserted the comedy field for the feature, has spread humor over some five reels in bringing this Irvin Cobb story to the screen. Arbuckle does contrive to furnish his audiences laughter and while the laughs in "The Life of
THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM
(Cosmopolitan-Paramount)
"The Passionate Pilgrim" serves to display several players who have been among the stalwarts of screendom, players who have never quite reached the position of a star, who have done consistently good but never brilliant work. And it gives them an opportunity which they have seized, especially in the case of Matt Moore, who plays the lead, and Ruby de Remer, who plays opposite him.
The story has to do with a poet, whose illusions are destroyed by a murder case in which his wife is innocently implicated. His happiness destroyed, his wife lost to him, he conceals his identity. Then he gets a job in a most unlikely place, a big newspaper office. The remainder of the film, which seems to be somewhat overlong, details the manner in which the retiring poet develops into a fighting reformer, and wins a girl.
Robert Vignola's direction has been excellent, although not infallible. The continuity makes occasional jumps, perhaps due to the large cast and the numerous threads of the story, but it holds the interest throughout.
Matt Moore does a fine bit of character work as Calverly, the poet. Ruby de Remer displays new ability, and plays better than she ever has in the past. Claire Whitney, Charles Gerrard and Van Dyke Brooke play excellent! v.
THE CHARM SCHOOL
(Paramount)
Wallie Reid wins no new laurels in this improbable story of the young man who inherited a girls' school. Like the play of the same name which appeared on the New York stage this season, the picture is frothy entertainment, so frothy as to become dull occasionally. There are pretty girls in the picture, Lila Lee among them, and a certain momentum which gives the impression of speed. Beyond these virtues, the photo-play is decidedly average.
IDOLS OF CLAY
(Paramount)
Pictorially, the photo-plays directed by George Fitzmaurice are among the best produced. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Mr. Fitzmaurice is primarily an artist. In some way, however, they lose in realism what they gain in the beauty of their settings and the harmony of the groupings. "On With the Dance," perhaps the best of the three pictures in which he has directed Mae Murray and David Powell, was a story of metropolitan life. And the scenes of metropolitan life in "Idols of Clay" are easily better than those in the South Seas or in Greece. But at most times during the screening of "Idols of Clay," the spectator is fully aware that he is watching characters that never, never were, in a story that never, never was.
The early part of "Idols of Clay" is reminiscent of many a South Sea Island picture, with the exception of some scenes in a dive which are thoroughly Conradian in atmosphere. And the story goes along quite in the good old happy ending way until the hero, confounded egotist that he is, refuses to fall in love with the girl who has salvaged him from desperation. Back to London he goes, and she follows, as a burlesque chorus {Continued on page 55)