Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Hollywood — The Qomic Film ones as these of Lupino Lane the silent film reaches a suitability to its medium that is one of the essential elements of a true art. The ordinary film is always the creation of a number of people : the author, the continuity, the gag-man, the director, and so on ; the comic film on the other hand depends almost entirely on the talent of the leading comedian, thus reaching a unity missing from any but the pictures of the big fixed stars. The talent of the chief comedian does not depend on his power of being funny, but on his gift for using the unexpected ; not on his grimaces, but on the ingenuity of his imagination. The best comic characters are serious, even pathetic men to whom incongruous things happen. The man who tries to be funny usually ends in being a bore. The big film uses many camera tricks and stunts ; few such are needed in the comics. Charlie's films are almost always straight photography. Comic films are exercises in new combinations of old ideas, new rhythms or unexpected endings to outworn situations. For instance, in one film Lupino drives an old Ford car into a tunnel just as an express enters at the other end. A number of endings are possible, but most suggest catastrophe. We expect him to come out clinging to the funnel or in rags clasping the ruins of the steering-wheel. But when he emerges at the other end, his car flattened to a pancake between the locomotive and the side of the tunnel, but still going strong, the solution is so ludicrous that a roar of laughter bursts out naturally. The ingenuity of the comedian cannot rest for a moment during production. He hovers on the edge of creating boredom, but must always avoid the fall. Jokes wear out more quickly than a cheap shoe in a thunder-shower. And at last the comic film must pass a test more rigorous than any other. At the big first showings, or -premieres^ the new dramatic film is always hailed as the best that has ever [221]