Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

on Restraint and Bathing Cut/es Yes, the Revolution is with us. Which reminds us of that famous tradition of our stage — that plays of the Revolution always fail. It isn't possible to make characters affecting wigs seem flesh and blood, ran the legend. Still, the screen has accomplished that feat. Lubitsch turned the trick a number of times and John Robertson does it at the present moment with Barthelmess' The Fighting Blade. It all depends upon the director. sets and big sets — but no one has quite touched the magnitude of D. W.'s Babylon." The Bathing Cutie Returns has been taboo. T ^^HE bathing girls are back. For, lo, these many months the bathing girl The censor has stood between the public and the one-piece bathing suit, occupied by the conventional cutie. Maybe the censor is relenting. Maybe the producer is getting more courageous. Anyway, the bathing girl is back. Even Mack Sennett has restored her to her own. Which is as it should be. The screen has been too darned refined. But why worry now ? The gals are with us. Sometimes I am amused at the chasm lying between the stage and screen. Apparently the footlights can dare anything. While the bathing girl is just managing to get a screen foothold again, the speaking theater reveals a revue such as Artists and Models. This current New York success is a cuticle expose such as no theater this side of the Paris Folies Bergere has attempted. Yet the stage gets away with it ! The Ten Best Pictures GREENLAND'S investigation into the ten most significant motion picture dramas ever made has brought about some interesting sidelights. It is curious how closely most of these lists resemble each other. Nearly every tabulation carries at least four productions, The Birth of a Nation, The Kid, Broken Blossoms and The Covered Wagon. If I was to make my own particular list of ten again I would be tempted to add two pictures : The Golem and The Gay Old Dog, that almost forgotten little gem made by Mrs. Sidney Drew and Hobart Henley. And possibly I would add The Jack-Knife Man, made by King Vidor before he gave way to the disconcerting shrieks of the boxoffice. ND, too, I might be tempted to add David Wark Griffith's Intolerance to the list, if I Griffith and the Big Set could make it elastic enough. This despite the fact that I have already named Judith of Bethulia, which I consider the forerunner of Intolerance, and, indeed, the forerunner of all cinematic spectacles. Certainly no set, desphe all the frequent blare of many trumpets, has ever equalled the massive Babylon of Griffith's — created in make-believe back in 1915. And that isn't my opinion alone. Just before he sailed for Europe the other day, Rex Ingram told me the same thing. "I saw a revival of the picture only recently," said Ingram, "and I realized for the first time the greatness of Griffith. We've had big Lighting Vs. Actors OW long are screen productions to be studded with trick lighting? The present policy in making motion picture dramas seems to be to light some single part of the set — and let the expensive $l,000-aweek actor remain in the dark. To speak the truth, our films are getting too arty. After all, the story and the actor are the essentials of the photoplay. Backgrounds should be backgrounds, suggesting rather than thundering. The screen has too many overloaded sets — and too little real acting. The Newer (>^J OME of the best — or worst Screen Setting *™mpl?s of, over-ornate o settings have been coming from Joseph Urban. To our way of thinking, When Knighthood Was in Flower will be a monument to excessive screen settings. Where Urban would have gained a thousand fold by simplicity and suggestion, he lost immeasurably by filling his sets with scenery and properties. Against this sort of so-called art background we place the settings of Everett Shinn, whose drawings are well known to Screenland readers. Here are simple sets full of the mellow atmosphere of the Cromwellian period. The streets for instance, aren't massive things with the smoothness of a billiard table — or a studio floor. Perhaps others believe with me. Anyway, Shinn is now doing the settings of Marion Davies' newest production, Janice Meredith. Lack of Leading fl yVNE °* ^e reaHy serious probPlayers V\ ) !?ms of scree? Production in ■/ tms year of our cinema, 1923, is the complete lack of good leading men and women. The silversheet hasn't been creating new material, it hasn't been developing its players, it has failed to realize that it must experiment and seek new blood all the time. Talk to any director casting a new production — and realize the truth of this statement. It being impossible to find new leading players without venturing with un-tried material, the director finally accepts the actors at hand. You can count the promising leading players on one hand. Dorothy Makaill, Ronald Colman and a few others. Who else? It's about time that directors experimented. Just now they're too complacent and self-satisfied. The Aging of the Stars ^HIS seeking for new histrionic material must go on — • or the screen will slowly collapse. It must have young blood. Consider our stars. At best, a large proportion of them have but a few celluloid years left. Time is taking its toll — and the men behind the camera haven't had the foresight to build for this inevitable contingency. The photoplay must have youth ! Cinematic Achievement ^^HE ultimate in cinematic advance has been made ! The screen may develop a little further but we doubt it. Really, what else can happen ? They're beginning to soft-focus Strongheart, the dog star. ll 1