Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

56 The Screen in Review "Fascinating Youth. The Dancer of Paris." "The First Year." "The Auction Block. who becomes a model at a dressmaker's establishment through the very earnest efforts of a rich young man" who is in love with her. She isn't a success at it, although, when her final chance comes, she doesn't fall down. But, during the rest of the picture, she does. It's that kind of comedy. There is a fashion show in it and some unpleasant rich people, but Mr. Green, the director, has so successfully held on to his musical-comedy atmosphere that these things do not intrude on the film any more than a chorus does when it comes onto a stage at the end of a song. Lloyd Hughes is the good-looking young hero, and George K. Arthur is very good as Madame Lucy, the fashionable modiste. Kate Price, Charles Murray, Eva Novak, and Laurence Wheat, are also in the cast. Charles Murray is a wonderful and intoxicated father. The picture, however, is Miss Moore's — but for that matter, she can have as many pictures as she wants, as often as she wants them, with the best of luck with them, as far as I am concerned. Greta Garbo and "Torrent." "Torrent," by Blasco Ibafiez, is like a story told by a very little boy. It runs on and on. Children's stories are apt to be, "And then the monkey fell down and broke his leg, and next he broke his arm, and then he broke himself all over." "Torrent" does the same thing. The lovers are torn apart, they are torn apart again, and then they are torn finally and hopelessly apart. The young man who sat next to me said that it could very well be called "Tor ( re) nt to a thousand pieces." But that way lies madness. It has one very beautiful recommendation. I am speaking of Greta Garbo, who, to my way of thinking, is about the loveliest importation we have had so far. She is even more eye-satisfying than Greta Nissen, although she could hardly be called a perfect beauty. But I don't know what makes perfect beauty, anyway. Her hair is dark, her eyes seem to be gray, and they are large, with rhe strangest form I have ever seen. They seem to be made up of hundreds of little angles which give them a sort of emeraldcut look. Her face is never the same. When I try to recall what she really looked like, I find I cannot remember. Elusiveness is the first mark of beauty, isn't it? Anyway, Miss Garbo has a bad time of it in this, her first American picture, which deals with the rambling love affair between a small-town politician, and a famous singer. Ricardo Cortez ages, toward the end of the film, but then so do the audience. There is a very bad flood, with miniature blocks of wood falling about. Gertrude Olmstead, Lucien Littlefield, Tully Marshall, and Mack Swain are in the cast. More Pleasantries from Mr. Dix. Gregory la Cava, the young director responsible for "Womanhandled," has turned out another light, hilarious comedy film in "Let's Get Married." This was adapted from the stage farce, "The Man from Mexico," and it is a fast-moving, entirely mirthful thing to see. Richard Dix is a gay young man who gets into trouble with the police, not once but several times. He is finally given thirty days in jail, and in order to explain things satisfactorily to his fiancee, he tells her he has been called away to Mexico on a business trip. Just before his time is up, he accidentally escapes, and then a little real slapstick winds up the picture. Edna May Oliver, whenever she is present on the screen, takes all the comedy and keeps it for her very own. She is the woman who was so very good as the aunt in "The Lucky Devil." Her comedy is perfect, neither overdone nor underdone. I should like to see her do some of Mary Roberts Rinehart's Tish stories. In "Let's Get Married," she is the inebriated head of a hymn-book company, who takes her fun where she finds it. Unfortunately, she is on the screen too short a time. Lois Wilson is "the only girl," so the program says, and "Gunboat" Smith makes a very authentic plain-clothes man.