Screenland (Nov 1930-Apr 1931)

for December 1930 121 GEORGE ARLISS— BRAIN-STAR Continued from page 55 Fair," and then in Molnar's "The Devil." This latter — the satanic Nietzscheanism of which made a special appeal to me — is an unforgettable Arliss part. With it a new kind of actor and stage character had come on the English-speaking stage : an incarnation of cold pagan intellect, a spiritual Machiavelli, and enchanting immoralist, a man with the enigmatical smile of Mona Lisa and the super-morality of Napoleon. Arliss, in all his parts, is always this beneficent and eye-twinkling Satan._ This up-to-date gentlemanly Superman of Molnar's "The Devil" is the protagonistic role of all that is Arliss. Its most artistic characteristic is restraint. And in that word restraint I touch the very nub and kernel of the art of Arliss. He knows what to leave out, he knows what not to say, when not to raise the voice, when not to walk. His attitude is thus nearly always a negative one — in all his roles — but negation charged with dynamite, like the philosophies of Buddha and Schopenhauer. When his face says No as Zakkuri, Stcyne, Disraeli, the Devil or Heythorp it may mean a ruthless Yes, back of which the hidden intentions in his mind are laid bare to the most obtuse mind in the audience as plainly as if it were printed on the screen — for no human face of which I have any knowledge is more completely the slave of mind than the face of George Arliss. It is a veritable palimpsest of the human soul : it is a book written in invisible inks. Another secret quite Arlissian: how does this half-sleepy-looking spider with the fly-trap mouth and maliciously-benevolent smile always hold the sympathy of his audience no matter what he does? Humor is the answer. A rough, grim, irritable humor, a continued laugh swallowed up in the folds of a discreet bittersweet smile is the road to holding his audience. His is a cynicism of which we all recognize the truth. He flatters us and holds us by taking us into the secrets of his intelligence. A look out of the corner of his eye with a twist of the mouth contain fifty old-style printed titles and a whole chapter of talkie twaddle. What is subtlety in acting — one of the rarest of actorial gifts ? Subtlety is the art of conveying the shadowy so that it penetrates the observer like a velvet-covered poinard. It is nuance, an overtone, the very whisper of the unspoken thought, the unexpressed feeling. Subtlety is craft, cunning : the art of muted irony, of cutting your throat with a feather, of cursing you with a blessing, of doublecrossing you with the droop of an eyelid. Arliss is the master of all subtleties. Watch him closely — -breathlessly as almost everybody does in "Disraeli," as the Rajah in "The Green Goddess," and in "Old English" and you have seen what I believe to be the final word in human cunning, finely nuanced subtlety played to the quick of egoistic diablerie. Restraint, subtlety — and imagination ! Arliss knows the fine art of exaggeration, caricature and re-creating the commonplace and banal in the green-room of his imagination. All his portrayals are not only characters but types, also. Disraeli is not just Disraeli, but he is also the type of the cynical statesman. It is so with all his portrayals. He always lifts his character-portrayal to the image of a Pattern. In "Old English" Arliss adds another to his list of perfect portrayals. It is one of the most superb things ever done on or off the screen. Here is a picture of a typical Englishman of the old school who gives us his complete life-story — his soul-story — without a fade-back. The fade-backs of his devil-may-care youth, of his one love, of his sweet sexual transgressions, of his love of wine and meats are in his facial expressions. Who can forget the slight nod, the sudden tenseness of the withered face, the I sense of the irreparable in the lowering | of the eyes which are the answer to his grandchild's question as to whether he had loved her grandmother, whose illegitimate son was her father? There is the history of a heart contained in two seconds on the screen. His face is a doubleexposed film. And who can ever forget in "Old English" those last fifteen minutes of Arliss on the screen when he plans and executes his suicide by over-eating and drinking to forestall the humiliation that faces him the following day before his business associates? And the exquisite 'business' of that last supper ! Not to be enthusiastic over such a perfect triumph of the actor's art is to stamp one's self empty, stupid and ashamed of feeling, an emotional eunuch. But George Arliss has no sex appeal ! There is never any hot love story in his plays ! He hasn't It !— T hear the Old Guard yelp. Well, the Old Guard, I'm happy to say, is passing away. George Arliss' great success on the talking screen shows what can be done in this medium, as Lubitsch has shown us in the directorial field of the silents : give men of brains and imagination and courage a free foot and they will revolutionize the most banal of the arts and drag the Golden Calf into the box-office besides. I await, not too patiently, the next creation of Arliss. To me, he is always an event, from that first night I saw him in 1901 to his supremely great performance in "Old English." In the whole of the picture world since its inception to the present time there have been only three Artists — used in the sense of creative actorial genius — Tannings, Chaplin and Arliss. And the greatest of these is Arliss ! 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