Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

62 Wilhelm Dieterle as Valentine and Camilla Horn as Marguerite are seen in a magnificent Ufa production of "Faust," in which Emil Jannings is a superb Mephisto. The Screen The latest film offerings are By Norbert Johnny Storm, a veteran vaudevillian, has trained her for his dancing" partner. She leaves him to team with another actor who Dolly thinks has more class, and fails utterly. Finally, she is seen just as one of the girls in a dancing act, sadder but only slightly wiser for her experience with upstaginess. At this point comes the most thrilling — legitimately thrilling — climax I have seen since "Variety." Weaver and Weston, in a knife-throwing act, are about to go on despite the fact that "Miss". Weaver is distraught because her child has disappeared from her dressing room. But an audience must not be kept waiting. So she goes through the FAUST," as brought to the screen by F. W. Murnau, makes every other version of Goethe's poetic drama look like a parody of the immortal legend of the old doctor who bartered his soul with the devil for youth. The story in its essentials is familiar to every one, but Murnau's visualization of it will prove a revelation to those who follow pictures closely as well as those who are skeptical of what the screen offers and therefore avoid it. And this "Faust" has Emil Jannings, too ! His Mephisto beggars description. He towers magnificently through the sheer robustness of his portrayal, and at the same time wins exclamations on the score of the minute detail, the rich byplay, of his Satan. He is no symbolic figure of evil, but a living incarnation of diabolism, touched with sardonic humor, his inner fires kept alive through love of depravity. Jannings is superbly convincing. The same can be said of all the characters — less commanding, of course, by reason of their place in the story, but chosen with unerring instinct and directed by an inspired mind. Gosta Ekman is Faust, Camilla Horn Marguerite, Valentine is Wilhelm Dieterle, and Yvette Guilbert Martha. Happily, not one of them follows operatic tradition. Marguerite is a simple girl of the middle classes who delights in a gold chain, rather than a prima donna who trills over a coffer of rhinestones in a velvet gown. Yet, apart from the acting, the production itself holds first place, with lighting, grouping and settings such as have never been seen before. When Mephisto transports Faust on his cloak to Parma their flight through the air places the magic carpet of "The Thief of Bagdad" in the category of a stunt in a Sennett comedy. "Faust" is a great picture, and I don't mean relatively. The Truth About Vaudeville. Dost remember Monta Bell's "Pretty Ladies?" You should, for it was the best picture of stage life ever filmed. Well, he's done another, in its way even better because it is more substantial and has a grand punch. "Upstage" is the name of it, and if you pass it up it will be because you are upstage yourself, as Norma Shearer is in the beginning of this story of vaudeville. She is Dolly Haven, an obscure and pretty performer whose head is turned by the good notices she gets after ordeal of remaining rigid while her husband hurls knives at her. Just then her baby is discovered, dead, by the others. She rushes from the stage after the first part of her stunt, and clasps the child in dumb agony. But the act must go on, and Norma Shearer bravely takes her place for the hatchet-throwing which follows. Thus she qualifies as "a real trouper" and her upstaginess is magnificentlv atoned for in a manner typical of the theater. The picture is deft, humorous, true to life, and the original story by Walter De Leon, himself of vaudeville, is no less responsible for it than Bell's direction and the acting of Miss Shearer, Oscar Shaw, Gwen Lee, Ward Crane, and Dorothy Phillips, of whom, by the way, one sees too little these clays. A Good Day's Work. "Everybody's Acting" may not mean much as a title, but it really fits the picture very well indeed, for with Betty Bronson, Lawrence Gray. Louise Dresser, Ford Sterling, Henry B. Walthall, Raymond Hitchcock, Stuart Holmes, Edward Martindel, Philo McCullough, Jed Prouty, and Jocelyn Lee all at it at once, everybody may be said to be acting — or doing their best to live up to the name. The story which engages them is a bit old-fashioned, but it makes a pleasant picture. Betty Bronson, left motherless while a barnstorming company is on tour, is "adopted" by five old cronies who educate her up to the point of her debut as a leading lady. The young man who eventually comes into her life is presumably a chauffeur but in reality is a millionaire novelist in search of local color. His mother, a captain of industry, objects to Betty because she is an actress, and objects all the more when she discovers the stain on Betty's past, due to her mother's murder by her father. Needless to say it all comes out beautifully — and cleverly. Miss Bronson is exquisitely charming as Doris, and all the men offer excellent support. Louise Dresser is earnest and convincing as the boy's mother, and the role doesn't even suggest "The Goose Woman" or a courtroom scene. "Everybody's Acting" has many quaint and surprising touches of humor characteristic of Marshall Neilan, who wrote as well as directed the picture. We advise vou to see this one.