Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

60 A REAL picture is "The Barker." Which is to say that it has plot, human interest, emotional content and first-rate acting by arresting, magnetic players— and that expresses my opinion perhaps too mildly. But when one watches a picture with unbroken attention, feels a stirring in the region of his heart, and finds his critical faculty applauding the intelligence of the proceedings, there is cause for enthusiasm without misgivings. Such an entertainment is "The Barker," and it is inconceivable that any one should find it otherwise. Then, too, there is dialogue, and excellent it is. So much so, that one wishes there were more of it. Happily, when the players speak they do not spoil the illusion, but their voices enhance their characterizations. The more I write of this review the more enthusiastic I wax. The film is unreeling before me again. I hear the hubbub of the carnival and above it the droning voice of Milton Sills, as "Nifty" Miller, bidding one and all to look at the beautiful Hawaiian "princess" on the platform. '.'Her movements are like a dish of jelly on your grandmother's table" he says, urging his listeners to step up and buy a ticket to see her do the dance "that makes old men young and young men old !" The girl in the grass skirt is Betty Compson, as Carrie. Out of her costume she is Nifty's girl, sullen, jealous, but loving. Then comes young Chris, Nifty's, son, his pride, his beloved. The boy is being educated in the law. Nifty will have no son of his besmirched by carnival life. Chris, shy, awkward, feels the glamour of his father's nomadic existence, and gets ATifty's consent to travel with the troupe for a while. From the first, the boy's presence makes a difference in his father to Carrie. She hates Chris, because she thinks he has taken Nifty from her. To her poor mind comes the only answer — to take Chris from Nifty. She bribes Lou, another girl of the circus, to do it — twenty dollars down and the rest when the youth is "landed." Out of this develop unexpected and poignant crises. It will spoil no one's enjoyment of the picture to reveal that after Nifty has given up the carnival racket, in which he reigned as barker par excellence, he is irresistibly drawn back to see how the show is going without him. His successor is so poor in Nifty's eyes, and the new dancer so impossible, that he bullies them both off the platform and resumes his old stand, with Carrie once more in the grass skirt which she alone knows how to twitch and wriggle profitably. What lies between these episodes is what should draw you to the picture. Such scenes of rough tenderness between father and son, as played by Mr. Sills and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., are not soon to be forgotten, nor will the echo of Mr. Fairbanks' eager, young voice die before a gentler one is heard. Vocally Mr. Sills is magnificent. It is not elocution, either, but characterization by which his voice makes Nifty piercingly real. The fellow's glibness, toughness, looseness, all bred by the life he has led for years, only thinly cover his pride and love for his son, as well as his alarm and anguish on discovering that the boy has been seduced by a despised girl of the show. All this is unerringly reflected in Mr. Sills' voice, unmarred by even a faint reminder that he is any other man than the veteran of a hundred carnivals. Dorothy Mackaill, as Lou, is effective, but for that matter you will look long to find anything less than perfection in any of the players. "For Decency!" "The Green Hat"— pardon, "A Woman of Affairs" — is interesting if for no other reason than the process of • purification it has undergone to make it "fit" for the screen. It is a skillful equivocation and a fairly interesting picture, which should be especially welcome to admirers of Greta Garbo. In my opinion she gives her finest performance, particularly in one scene, and thereby contributes more to the picture than any of her associates. For the most part their roles are those of elegant walking gentlemen, but distinctly walkers of Hollywood Boulevard rather than Mayfair. Not that it particularly matters whether they look like Englishmen or not, so long as theirs are the old, familiar faces which have belonged to characters of every nationality under the sun, and properly revolve around the neurotic heroine whose name is purified from Iris March to Diana Merrick — of the "mad" Merricks. I confess that to me neither Iris -nor Diana is the most interesting heroine ever created, nor are her affairs in the picture really worth a whoop. She is simply a modern version of Camilla, whose promiscuity is excused by calling her "a gallant lady" every now and then, when she is not "a mad Merrick." Meanwhile Diana traipses all over Europe for seven years. Like the traditional sailor, she has a sweetheart in every port, but the film doesn't credit her with adding to their gayety, or pepping them up. Instead, she is possessed of a wistful melancholy, a vast ennui, which is supposed to have come from Betty Compson, Milton Sills, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., are only three perfect reasons why every fan should see "The Barker."