Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

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68 Charles Farrell and Greta Nissen are the principals in "Fazil," tragic story of an Arab's love for a European. IF you are so constituted that whatever you see on the screen is real and true because it is there, then "Fazil" will please you mightily. If, alas, your mind functions as well as your eye, there will be an achingvoid in your intelligence as you view this highly pictorial but hollow attempt to revive interest in the love life of a sheik. The sands of the desert have long been cold, I fear, and there is not enough hot air even in Hollywood to warm them back to life, now that sheiks have become comic, instead of romantic figures by reason of too much kidding. And though Charles Farrell is earnest and sincere in any role, and convincing enough as a Frenchman or an Italian, his Prince Fazil is hardly more than what you would expect a new Englander to be, when he dons dark make-up and submits his locks to the curling iron. It is, therefore, too much to expect him to be mysterious, inscrutable, and terrifying. And he isn't, though his eyes are supposed to frighten the heroine by their intensity. Prince Fazil is a Europeanized sheik, who is able to wear tweeds and turbans with equal style. In Venice he meets Fabienne, who is described by a subtitle as "a child of caprice." To the knowing this paves the way for her romance with the Arab. And because the locale is Venice, gondola scenes must of necessity be a hectic detail in the courtship that follows their meeting at a Hollywood — no, Venetian — ball. And because the picture is a confection and not a drama, there must be scenes in Paris, where they spend their honeymoon — and where both the sheik and the society girl spend far more time in changing their clothes than in learning to know each other. That is, except by straining embraces, and what are vulgarly described as "tonsil kisses." No one so describes them on the screen. Far from it. The kisses, embraces, and carnal manifestations are committed in the name of love. A great, great love. Have you ever noticed how rarely real love finds its the way to the screen, and how often liaisons are offered in place of tenderness, sympathy, sacrifice? Be this as it may, Fazil and Fabienne quarrel. It is inevitable. A surfeit of kisses always brings about mental illness, just as too much candy sickens a Pomeranian. Fazil returns to his native sands and — oh, horrors! — his harem, from which he remains coldly aloof, because he is the hero of the picture and must not be sullied, and thus lose that distorted thing known in Hollywood as "sympathy." These harem scenes warrant another chapter, but as they are. the old, familiar version of what a director thinks goes on in a seraglio — or perhaps only what he thinks the public thinks goes on in such places — it is as well to forgive them — and him. But some day, somewhere, somehow a director will brave the conventions by forgetting this, and actually employ some one who has been inside a harem, to show picturegoers that the Mohammedan religion does not tolerate the looseness of burlesque shows. Fabienne comes in upon all this, and ensuing events end in an attempted Romeo and Juliet tragedy when both die, thanks — I said thanks — to a poison ring. Mr. Farrell is a thoroughly nice young man, no matter what role he essays, and Greta Nissen is capricious enough to warrant the subtitle. Being capricious — prettily — is no small art. John Boles and Mae Busch play minor characters, and there is faint, though distressing, comedy from Tyler Brooke. All this being the inspiration for an expensive and beautiful production. The Tragedy of a Clown. There is nobility, and beauty of thought and feeling, in "Laugh, Clown, Laugh," even though the spectacle of a punchinello who must caper while his heart breaks, is not among the season's novelties. But vividly sincere acting is a novelty in any season, and here we see a great deal of it, combined with exquisite photography, vigorous yet sympathetic direction, and a fascinating study of character. The result is a notable picture, and one of Lon Chaney's finest portrayals. It is dependent on no disguise, save that of the traditional white-faced clown, and many of the most effective moments come when Tito, away from the circus, is without any make-up at all. The story begins with Tito's adoption of a foundling while he and his partner, Simon, are strolling players. As the little girl, Simonetta, grows up, success comes to the two, and presently she attracts the attention of Luigi, a profligate young nobleman, almost at the moment Tito discovers that he loves her. The two men meet in the reception room of a nerve specialist, from whom each seeks a cure for his malady. Tito's manifests itself in uncontrollable tears when he is under any emotional strain, while Luigi gives way to paroxysms of wild laughter under similar conditions. The doctor shrewdly surmises that each suffers from suppressed love. Without knowing they are in love with the same girl, count