Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1924)

96 A Turn in Pola's Career Continued from page 33 A bad woman is a bad woman." the deep, throaty voice rose in cadence, "and I will not play her 'good.' "In 'Men,' the girl is disillusioned, bitter, and makes men suffer for what one has done to her. She is mercilessly frank, will not lie to herself, until love brings her understanding, readjustment. No, she is not a pretty character ; she is hard. But she is drama. "So now I feel new life born into me." Standing in the doorway of her dressing room, she flung wide her arms. "With these concessions, if I fail, Pola alone will be to blame. And Pola will take the blame, head high." She has started by changing her attitude. Abroad, they say she was Pola the magnetic, the "full of fun." Everybody was Pola's friend — unless he angered her. Her American debut bewildered her — heralded by publicity, feted — then criticized. Too, one little minx, as a prank, gave her the hunch of high-toning everybody. To an extent, 'that epithet of "snob" was deserved. I shall never forget the righteous anger that welled up in me when, despite our previous meetings, she would look by, over, through me, without recognition. Abruptly, she changed — due, I think, to the tactful influence of Kathlyn Williams, her only intimate friend. Now she uses those little graces known so well to a woman of her experience, to make friends, to win back those whom her arrogance alienated. No small thing, this turning in the face of ridicule to the deliberate opposite. Knowing that bristling Hollywood had its tongue in its cheek, questioning her sincerity. Pola's realization that she could dominate her directors was almost fatal. With Buchowetzki it is very different. He directed her in "Mad Love" abroad and she recognizes his experienced control. One day she talked for twenty minutes, demanding a certain retake. Patiently, as one humors a child, he listened. Finally, with one volcanic "Nein!" he ended the discussion. Then, aside — "Now, how I get dat retake? I too vant it. But vunce I gif in to Pola. again I got to gif in, und dat iss not goot for actress." Later he got around the difficulty by telling her, "Pola goot girl. You do dis scene fine. Now I reward you — I gif you dat retake you want." And Pola beamed like a schoolgirl commended by teacher. "Pola is much greater artiste to day dan ever in Europe," Buchowetzki expressed his enthusiasm. "Dere, she was all emotion, all impulse. Crude talent, it flamed, it went out, not always sure. Now she has had heartache. She t'ink herself treated not so kind here. Goot. Her feeling is more real." It is difficult to associate stability with Pola Negri. Cometlike, she flashed first to vis — and dropped from favor here. I cannot think of her as occupying a fixed position where other less refulgent but more dependable stars shine steadily. She believes that in answering her own impulses lies her surest destiny — but haven't women, since Eve first discovered the bitter truth, found their instincts not always reliable? Her reaction to amatory influences at times colors her work but in the ultimate consideration adds to that feeling of impermanency. She does not personify some mass-need or unrest— as Valentino makes animate 'visioned romance, as Meighan stands for the solid rock of American respectability, as Gloria is glamour and sartorial splendor. The incoherent desires that are in all of us find public idols to sum up their measure, and about them we drape in our imagination the garments of our dreams' expression. Pola, though, because of her volatile character and the versatility of her art, cannot be thus easily rubber stamped to answer some fancied need. Her heroines are rather primitive, all physical lure and strong feeling, unreceptive to the American woman cramped by inhibitions. To men, she no doubt has great but transient appeal and that very quality in her acting, as it is in men's hearts, is not dependable. Pola's emotions and her art are inseparable. The technique of pantomime she has mastered leagues ahead of our own girls who may boast a love affair or two but never so colored with dominant passions as have been Pola's heart conflicts. That technique, though, always is subservient to her feeling of the moment. Once, because an artist who loved her was dying, she flung aside her career and went and nursed him until he died in her arms. Her romance with Count Dombska flamed, went out, left no ashes to mourn over. Such. too. was the Chaplin affair. For a time she loved him intensely. During that brief romance, she was heart and soul in her work ; when it ended, for clays she could do nothing but cry and sulk. Too much, one feels, will she always be reactive to any influences which tend to create within herself strong feelings. They give, briefly, an added flame ; but with their passing comes lethargy. When she is interested, she is fused to restless, whole-souled activity. I have seen her work like mad, impatiently pacing the set, eager to plunge the dramatic fire of her into a scene that, with her deep, harsh voice exclaiming, her eyes flashing, pulsed with something far more real and brutal than I ever felt before on a movie set. And I have seen her, when her wishes had been crossed or when she wasn't in the mood, sit hunched in a chair, smoking furiously, sulking. Perhaps that is art, I don't know. Certainly those flashes when she is in the proper key do add something momentarily vitalizing to our screen. I would pass up six dramas of our home-town heroines going through the daily dozen of their technique for one glimpse of Pola with the muffler off. In a way. though, perhaps the jog-trot of the middle path is preferable to the undependability of these occasional flares. The desire of Mary Pickford and of our other stars is to keep up an even balance, to retain public interest by uniformly good, conscientious work. Unless something should happen to settle that inward restlessness, I don't look for Pola to give anything of lasting value to the screen. But moments of rare fire — of a vivid beauty — of brittle realism — these the spell of her genius, when inspired, will weave for us. to stud the monotony of little girls' little plays. Can Pola come back? A while ago I would have given a negative answer. Just now I am theoretically on the fence. Certainly she is, at the moment, en rapport with her work. She revels in having won her fight, in her plans. She is heart free. But confronting Pola always there is that question mark of how to-morrow will strike the flint of her emotion and thus influence her acting. When the fire of interest goes, there goes also Pola's flame. The present, though, is promissory. If she can make good her battle cry : "There shall be no concessions to that drivel called boxoffice appeal !" she will unquestionably recapture, if but for a moment, the glory and fire that first won our attention. But she, and those who control the making of her pictures, are confronted by the limitations laid down by censorship and those elements of popular taste which protest against some of the qualities which should go into her best work.