Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

The Screen in ReViextf 03 color, but all the color is, unfortunately, in the photography, Mr. Gilbert's voice being too mincing and affected for words — Shakespeare's glorious words! However, when they burlesque the scene in slang Mr. Gilbert shows that he hasn't spent fifteen years in the studios for nothing. Yes, the "Hollywood Revue" is vastly entertaining from one standpoint and another. It isn't conspicuously original or intelligent, but it is so easily the best of its kind that one must not only see it, but wait eagerly for the next edition. Genius. "Hallelujah" is a great picture — so great, indeed, that the conscientious reviewer, overwhelmed, feels that no words of his can convey its majesty, its epic grandeur. For the words commonly used to describe other pictures become pale, inadequate. Enough to say, then, that there has never been another film like it ; that it is the most American picture ever produced ; and that it has the sweep and surge of an opera rather than the emotional appeal of a mere story. For it portrays the soul of the negro race as no work has ever approached the subject, neither sublimating nor ridiculing the poetry, superstition, religion, music, sensuality, and optimism inherent in all negroes, but combining these qualities in a magnificent, sweeping whole. The picture has no relationship to a dramatic plot, but it is intensely dramatic, this simple story of a young negro cotton picker, Zeke, who is lured into a crap game, is fleeced, and in attempting to wreak vengeance upon his enemy, accidentally shoots his young brother. In atonement, he becomes a wandering preacher, conducting revival meetings among his people. The girl responsible for his downfall again comes into his life and, first jeering at him, her scorn turns to love, her love to religious hysteria, and the two go away together. Again Zckc's enemy, the girl's former paramour, appears, and their elopement is interrupted by the death of the girl by accident and Zckc's savage murder of the man. Released from the penitentiary on probation, Zckc returns home lightheartedly to the musical rejoicing of his family. Indeed, music is the emotional expression most often heard throughout the picture — the happy singing of the cotton pickers, the crooning of the mother as she goes about her work, her lamentations when doom is in the air, and the superb outpourings of the congregation when laboring in the throes of religious fervor. All this is a glorious symphony of American melody. As for the all-negro cast, not one of whom has ever appeared on the screen before, perfection of type, of acting and singing is so uniform that individual praise is unnecessary. But let us not fail to spell out the name of King Vidor, the director, in platinum stars. Rough Stuff — and How! "The Cock-eyed World" is a broadside, an explosion, the only picture of its kind. But you must have heard all this by now. Never have I known the fame of any film to spread so quickly, to excite audiences on the first warning of its coming and to keep theaters crowded long after the time allotted to it. Frankly, outrageously vulgar, profane, and abandoned, it depicts the amatory exploits of two marine sergeants — and it is irresistibly funny. In spite of whatever qualms its immorality arouses, and notwithstanding the shocking impact of its dialogue upon sensitive ears. "The Cock-eyed World" quickly "gets" you. puts you in the spirit of the thing, and immediately you forget yourself Lily sexes Damita and Victor McLaglen wage the battle of the for laughing purposes only in "The Cock-eyed World." entirely and become one of the rowdy company on the screen. At least that's what it did to me. and I dare say thousands of others feel the same way about it. for I have seen no one leave the theater while the picture was in progress, whereas in the course of many a "nice" picture it requires no clairvoyant to know that the persons constantly departing are doing so from boredom, and not to catch a train to the suburbs. But it i not only because of the racy, close-to-the-soil humor and biological dialogue that makes the picture a success. It is .superbly directed and acted. What more is there to say? Of plot there is little or none. Just a series of episodes involving Top Sergeant Flagg and Sergeant Quirt — those immortals of "What Price Glory?" — ina continuation of their jealous rivalries in scenes that shift from Vladivostok, by way of Coney Island, to an unnamed tropical territory. It is in the latter that most of the ribaldry occurs, and it is there that Lily Damita joins the boys to contribute more than a lady's share to the rough indecencies of sex rampant. And. really — but what am T saying. T who applaud Betty Bronson for purity? — well. Miss Damita is a flaming signal to forsake one's books and seek the tropic' As for Victor McLaglen. as Flagg, and Edmund Lowe, as Quirt, they need no cue from me to pat themselves on the back. Fl Brendel. the comedian, is conspicuous in the horseplay, while Solidad Jimmez, the mother in "In Old Arizona." again explains why her daughters need never go to a finishing school.