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DECKM15KK 1925
The Picl~\jreyver
17
o
e\ste
of those little touches of pathos and
humour that make so human an appeal iny audience, is as insipid as a Christmas pudding without the spices that, blended by a master hand, make just that little difference that counts.
The ingredients of the average film are, roughly speaking, a story ... a hero ... a heroine ... a villain . . . a villainess . . . and one or two minor characters.
The first five are the equivalent of the body of the pudding:, flour, breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, sugar and butter. The character people are the plums and the spices that make it good to taste instead of plain and uninteresting. And the manner in which all these ingredients are welded together will make or mar the finished production.
I7or instance, a Lubitsch will use a scene like the now famous one in Forbidden Paradise, in which the reflection of a kiss in the lake is broken by the ruffling of the waters just before it reaches its climax. Nine directors out of ten would have bored us with the customary close-up.
A good director will choose his cast of character people with painstaking care, and will see that they are introduced into the picture at just the right moment, and in just the right way.
It is the character work, supplied by Raymond McKee, Raymond Hatton, and Noah Beery, that raises Contraband above the level of the usual film, and the little gem of a character study that is Wallace Beery's contribution to Right: Noah Beery in "The Thundering Herd." Beloiv.' : Charlie Chaplin on location during the filming of " The Gold Rush."
Above : Irank Stanmore and Betty Balfour in " Satan's Sister"
The Sea Hawk helps to justify that picture's claim to greatness.
Stoll's picture Not For Sale owes a
great deal to the inclusion in the cast.
of Mary Brough, who can always
be depended upon to raise a
laugh with her clever comedy,
although she isn't always too
fairly treated by directors.
Welsh Pearson's films are helped tremendously by the presence of Frank Stanmore, and those who have seen Satan's Sister will carry away an amusing impression of the plump comedian's lugubrious pirate.
Sydney Fairbrother is another British character actress, whose presence in any film, in however small a part, is alw-ays a treat. Amongst the Americans, Raymond Hatton stands out as a character man who, under the right treatment, adds a savour to the film in which he appears, and in Big Brother, featuring Tom Moore and' Edith Roberts, he gives an excellent study as a "slinky" type of crook.
All the people quoted above, and many more besides, may be numbered amongst the ingredients that, properly used, help to make a film worth watching.
They can never be really bad in themselves, but their relative value to the rest of the picture varies considerably.
May not a plum pudding, bulging with the best of good things, be as heavy as lead? E. E. B.