Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

The Screen in Review 61 — and you think they are ready to flee back to Baretti's circus — Tito suspects her purity.. So there has to be a tiff and a reconcihation before they finally escape. Even though Gustav von Seyffertitz is hopefully waiting, on the other side of the door, for Bianco to assassinate the king. It all begins back in the circus, where Bianca's beauty attracts Count Casati, as wicked a villain as ever leered from the screen. Lured to his hotel by a fake note, she plunges from a window to escape him. When Tito goes to see what is detaining her, he fares not so well. There is a vicious fight with the Count, who falls out of the same window, but lands less happily. Instead of catching onto the branches of a tree, as the agile trapezist did, he goes straight down to the sea — and is never again heard from. Tito must suffer the consequences, which in this case are novel indeed. Mistaken for Casati, he is told that he has succeeded his father to the throne and must depart at once to Illyria. Stammered protests avail him not. He is bundled off as if he were so much luggage. From there on the picture becomes strictly mythical kingdom. Bianca appears, with a revolver in her bouquet, bent on avenging the disappearance of her Tito. Her motive is approved by the Councillor who, providing her with black velvet, jewels, and a stiletto, ushers her into the presence of the king as a siren eager to give her all. Ultimately recognition comes, but very slowly. The way of escape having been made clear for Bianca, following her expected murder of the king, she and Tito take advantage of it. Now, all this is set forth with every technical excellence expected of a first-class picture— unusual camera angles, picturesque backgrounds, baffling double exposures, intelligent acting. But it remains in the realm of fantasy, because of the utter preposterousness of the plot. You have the spectacle of much skill, but little genuineness. Vilma Banky is lovely to behold, as usual, and Ronald Colman, as Tito and Casati, plays the latter role with such spectacular villainy that you feel his true metier lies there rather than in noble heroes. The Spell of the Sahara. There is only one Rex Ingram. His individuality permeates every scene of his pictures, every subtitle, and even the musical score. It is individuality that places beauty above everything else. But sometimes pictorial beauty demands too great a sacrifice of drama for an altogether satisfying picture. So it is with his latest, ''The Garden of Allah," a poem of the desert, but not a drama of the screen. It might almost be called a magnificent travelogue, so fully pictured that you feel you are under the spell of the Sahara as you never have been before, rather than under the spell of the emotions and the soul struggles of Domini Enfildcn and Boris Androvsky. You give them time to tell their unhappy but leisurely love story, only to find yourself more interested in the scenic backgrounds, because you are more conscious of them. The tale of the young Trappist monk who forsakes the monastery for worldly life, and marries an English girl without telling her of this, his eventual confession and return to the monastery, is removed from Photo by Samuel Goldwyn Production.^ Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky go through the mazes of a checkered love story, in "The Magic Flame." the sympathies of average audiences. Yet Ingram has told the story simply, sincerely, and with complete avoidance of meretricious detail. Ivan Petrovich, the Serbian who was first seen in "The Magician," is Boris. His performance is notable for its sincerity, but the nature of the story precludes any outstanding moments. Alice Terry, as Domini, is aloof, cold. The remaining players are foreigners, all of whom are well cast. Crooks Have Hearts. "Underworld" misses being the greatest of its kind, but its faults will not stand in the way of its being acclaimed by the majority. At this writing it is breaking records wherever it is shown, and George Bancroft has been rewarded with stardom on the strength of his performance of "Bull" Weed. Its merits, then, far exceed its weaknesses. It is the powerful acting of Bancroft that gives the punch to "Underworld." When all is said and done, the story is true to t3^pe — rival gunmen, the murder of one for making love to the other's girl, the death sentence, the escape, the discoverv that his girl loves the man he had sworn to "get," and his sentimental forgiveness of the pair. The moral is that a lawbreaker can't win because a soft heart won't let him.