Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

The ^Movietone in France At last the silence was absolute ; a thin, razor-like silence, making one think of the taste of an early morning over a still, oily sea. Now came the directors difficulty. In the ordinary movie he could use his megaphone. He could bellow his commands and excite his actors to yet higher feats of emotionalism. But in the talking-film the most complete silence must be his part. He was reduced to impotent gestures, he could but conduct orchestrally. What a penance for a Frenchman ! Menjou had learned his English in America ; his French partly in childhood, but revived during the War. He showed undoubted linguistic talent, but he dodged any difficulties by acting the part of an American in the French version, a Frenchman in the English. Thus any minor shortcomings in accent were easily glossed over. To watch the effect of tongue and of company on his personality was amusing. By contrast with the French company he seemed definitely American, but in contrast with the English actors he reverted to the country of his birth, France. Indeed, his personality seemed to be lodged in a half-way house. The contrast in the dramatic powers of the two languages was also interesting ; in the present scene, a little dialogue between a husband and a newly married wife, the French had a wholly untranslatable crispness, but in that photographed during the afternoon, between a young man and a butler, the English had the undoubted advantage. Only one short dialogue had been photographed before the whistle blew for lunch. All the while I had been only an interested spectator. A few dashes into the crowd by C in an attempt to catch the assistant director had met only with wild Gallic gesticulations indicating hurry, impotence, absolute impossibility, and the like. The whistle let loose a turmoil : mothers hurried in to clutch their children, children ran to find their mothers, nurse-maids, policemen, bourgeois t [>89]