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Julia Faye, Kay Johnson, and Conrad Nagel respond to Cecil DeMille's demand for perfection in "Dynamite."
ere erv m E>eVieur
Cecil DeMille redeems himself with a glorious gesture to the box-office, stage players score on their first appearance in pictures, and the fall season is in full swing.
CECIL DeMILLE'S first experiment with dialogue is completely successful. In employing speech to drive home points, as well as play upon nuances of thought and feeling, he has produced a brilliantly effective picture called "Dynamite," yet dialogue entails no sacrifice of the traditions of the screen — and of DeMille. The film has movement, excitement, the strong, farfetched contrasts in which he revels, as well as the uniquely glittering embellishment for which he is famous, including something trcs chic in the way of bath tubs — a glass one !
Often "Manslaughter" has been cited as his picture of most popular appeal. This, in my opinion, exceeds it. For, aside from the newly found advantage of speech in portraying character and emotion on the screen, the situations in "Dynamite" are poignant, contrived with the utmost skill to pique curiosity, to accumulate suspense and gradually to storm the emotions. All this is timed with tactful shrewdness, directed with superb, easy authority, photographed beautifully and acted magnificently. "Dynamite" is an astonishing picture.
A recital of the plot would give you the same unfavorable reaction that it gave me before I saw the picture, for robbed of its optical and aural appeal it is, I fear, completely moviesque. I am faintly ashamed of it, because the bare synopsis has Cynthia Crothers bound
by the terms of her grandfather's will to marry and live with her husband on her twenty-third birthday in order to inherit untold millions. And Cynthia is in love with a married man, Roger Tozzme, the husband of her friend, Marcia. So the girls talk things over, Marcia asking $200,000 to divorce Roger and Cynthia offering half that amount, in the deliciously cynical manner expected of society people animated by Mr. DeMille and Jeanie Macpherson. But when you see this scene played in dialogue by Julia Faye, as Marcia, and Kay Johnson, as Cynthia, it takes on unexpected values — ■ and you believe it, as you do the whole story. ,
When Cynthia and Marcia make their pact, there is still another step that Cynthia must take to be sure of her inheritance. She must marry at once, for the time before her birthday is short. So she offers $10,000 to Hag on Derk, a miner convicted of murder, to go through the ceremony before his electrocution. But within a few minutes of the fateful moment he is pardoned through discovery of the real murderer. He goes to the girl's modernistic home to see what's what while a jazz party is in progress.
Out of this situation it is no tax on the imagination to believe that Mr. DeMille and Miss Macpherson have left no stone unturned, no word unsaid, no emotional impasse unguarded to build up a climax that shall unite