Screenland (Apr-Sep 1924)

No actor is as well equipped as John Barrymore to play the Beau. John himself is said to have remarked that he owes a great deal of his success to his shapely underpinnings. His performance is matchless. I say this disregarding, with an obvious effort, the handsome figure he makes of Beau Brumr::l in the first reels and recalling the pitiful, shabby man in middle-age and obscurity and finally the broken wreck he becomes before the picture ends. Next to the work of Mr. Barrymore and his director, Harry Beaumont, comes Willard Louis' priceless caricature of the fat and fatuous prince. Altogether, Beau Brummel is one of those rare events — an almost perfect motion picture. Yolanda a Lovely Spectacle A costume picture about which there can be no doubt is Yolanda. There is a battle every so often and all sorts of skirmishes just as it begins to look as if the extras may have a little breathing spell. The Cosmopolitan spear-carriers are the hardest-worked supernumeraries in the world. Another one of those billion-dollar dime-novels in rare bindings, with Marion Davies, five thousand men in armor, genuine antiques, and a moat. The moat deserves all the publicity it receives on the program: It is all that it's cracked up to be. A good old trusty moat even if it did cost $21,000. Handicapped with gothic tapestries, all, we are assured, the real article; a palace extending over two city blocks; and the largest outdoor set ever constructed. Yolanda provides good entertainment, if you like to see masquerading royalty and tournaments and romance. Robert Vignola directed and if anyone could make this pageant real it's this signor. He manages mobs and Marion with equal skill. The gold-and-white Miss Davies, under his guidance, becomes alert and interested; she acquires a childlike elusiveness often reminiscent of Mary. And surely she is a lovely picture in her medieval robes, as human as possible weighted with gemladen gowns and crowns. The acting honors belong to Holbrook Blinn. As a creator of kings his only rival is Herr Jannings. He makes the crafty Louis Eleventh plausible and terrifying, particularly in the most imaginative scene in the picture — that in Louis' dreadful orchard, with the bodies of his victims hanging from the trees. Marion's moment of honest emotion occurs soon after this; her Princess Mary becomes a very real and a badly frightened little girl. In all her costly costume plays Marion reminds me of an excited youngster parading in gorgeous grown-up clothes and having a wonderful time doing it. Her appeal, like Pickford's, is that of a sweet, ingratiating and slightly spoiled child. When a Man's a Man Insipid Hokum ^6Jt is as I wrote it," runs the solemn advertisement of Harold Bell Wright's epochal novel, When a Man's a Man. "Greater than the book" is another way they have worded it. They can't prove it by me because Harold, right or wrong, is not one of my passions. However, judging by the fact that the film ran for some weeks in Manhattan, he has his following, and if they liked it why should I complain? The New Yorkers wallowed in his conception of the great open spaces, which seems to prove you can't kill a thing by kidding it. After innumerable satires have been indited on this very subject, with red-blooded heroes and distressed damsels from the effete east and God's own outdoors coming in for a complete kidding, here is Mr. Wright, the principal exponent of Nature in her gentler aspects, the most faithful champion of the sjlent hills, the ardent advocate of western sunsets, still going on about it at great length and, what is stranger, still entertaining multitudes with his murmurings. It is all beyond me because I refuse to admit that because a man lives in a nice house with good plumbing and dresses for dinner, he must necessarily be a weakling or a bum; and that the moment he discards his manners he becomes God's own gentleman. Sombrero, a swagger, dirty hands and a horse are, in Mr. Wright's opinion, the apparent qualifications for initiation into that noble fraternity of Men, who are Men. I won't go into detail about this thing because if you like it you like it and won't want your fun spoiled; and if you don't like it you won't care. Except to remark that its cast is possibly as insipid a collection of actors as has ever been assembled under one all-star banner. John Bowers is somehow invariably chosen to play a man who 'is a man. I don't want to be hard on him because after all he didn't write his own role and as far as I know he may prefer Remy de Gourmont to H. B. W. But the shot of him here that I liked best was the long one showing his descent into, an . especially splashy sunset. ' ■ " '7~'.~. ' Shadows of Paris Not Worthy of Pola Shadows of Paris, or, Twixt Love and Dooty. When I see Pola Negri in such slush and remember her Carmen and her Du Barry I could cry without calling for my glycerine. It's a shame, that's what it is Yes, I am worked Up over it. I, as a fair-minded reviewer, had to sit through all six reels — it seemed twelve. You can walk out on it if you want to. If it weren't for the lavish settings and the expensive Pola you would suspect it of burlesque tendencies. It is almost, but not quite, funny enough for farce. A weak edition of The Humming Bird, it has its motion-picture-Paris society, its apaches, its "Forward, wolves of Montmartre" motif. Charles de Roche as an apache is an unconscious caricature. The only reason for seeing it is Vera Reynolds. She, not Colleen Moore, should be the screen's stellar flapper. Hers is an electric personality, and if she doesn't go far — in the right direction — I am perfectly willing to eat my spring chapeau, feather and all. The prize sub-title of the month happens here. It is, "And now, my beauty, I want you!" The title writer was evidently unaware that this title is no longer being used except by Mack Sennett — and even Mr. Sennett doesn't use it any more. (Continued on page 84) d Adolphe Menjou does some splendid work in The Marriage Circle. 5°