The Play and the Screen
Skinner, R. Dana
288 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 1926 THE PLAY AND THE...
...the environs of Hamburg, falls in love with one of his danc- Emil Jannings, already familiar to American audiences, ing girls, forsakes his wife and child to go off with her to takes the part of the German trapeze artist...
...A trapeze artist who, in the one gradually-features or a single feature enlarging before interval after an accident, has been running a cheap show in the eye as everything else is slowly blotted from consciousness...
...Take the moment of the The Girl Friend trapeze act mentioned above...
...He says nothweek" while this film is running, he is stating at least half of ing...
...Some of the critics have described this as an "adult" use of "close-ups...
...It is the hulking mass of his back, seated, F OR sheer excellence and novelty of photographic effect, for with the line and posture of his head conveying everything that compactness of dramatic presentation, and for the over- most actors need half a reel of grimaces to register-a silent whelming power of restrained acting, this German-made film, impassive rock of determination and contained fury, like the Variety, is so far ahead of the standardized American product sculptured shadow of doom...
...But it is not his face-master vani~:y of most picture and lyrics, The Girl Friend is just another musical comedy...
...suspicion of a play...
...The old formulae, the His eyes wander...
...But perhaps a few illustrations of method will is quite strong and true enough without these added trappings...
...The story related is in many respects a close parallel to They are a slow overpowering of the attention, creeping on that of the opera of Pagliacci...
...He pours water the truth...
...The German kills him, delivers 'iimself up to the his companion in much the same key...
...But a man-the simplicity, the finality of it all...
...When, however, one of the metro- and the Englishman has been stabbed, the German returns to politan movie critics announces that "it is not young people's the room where the woman is waiting for him...
...The story itself is not, as one might imagine from into a basin...
...The Englishman also falls in lcve with the danc- the expert use he makes of his great bulk...
...That is precisely the feeling created by thusiasm or recommendation...
...It is no more adult than the impulse of children to low the mental states of the observer...
...The music strikes up-the English- ing informality gave so much life to last year's Garrick man makes his leap-the German catches him-and holds...
...It manages to convey, not only NE instinctively expects a good deal from The Girl Friend the outward appearances of things, but the inward emotions...
...Lya de Putti enacts ing girl...
...help to indicate wherein this German film has contributed something new to the motion picture art...
...I want to because one is physically nearer to it, but because for the instant make this point clear at the outset, so that praise for special all one's attention is held to it by the menace or the meaning qualities in the production will not be taken as blanket en- of its next movement...
...In spite of the music for him...
...The German is seated there, waiting tricks of holding the centre of the stage...
...June Cochran, whose fresh and ingratiatcusing, mocking, leering...
...Then you see the good "book" is quite as necessary as good music and lyrics, act itself, taken from tremendously long range-the confusion and, whether you believe it or not, so is good acting...
...for the simple reason that Richard Rodgers has writJust before the act takes place, the Germane sees in his own ten the already popular music (tuneful and insistent, as every mind the loosening of a grasp, the death plunge of the English- radio fan can testify...
...A cold sweat breaks out on the German's face...
...The camera shows you the chaos that sud- old hokum, the rheumatic gags all prevail...
...She watches him...
...They are gradual, not broken...
...you are shown the one man in the audience who has reason You would think, after the sensational success of such musito know what might happen-his nervous guzzling of an extra cal plays as The Student Prince, The Vagabond King, The glass of beer...
...in another-to put into words the effects meant to be gathered The main theme of sin, retribution, remorse, and returning hope by the eye...
...They are not merely detailed views...
...She has no suspicion of the tragedy...
...Then back to close range-the German swinging Princess Flavia, and others, that a few managers would see on his trapeze, waiting for the Englishman to put his life in the value of a play set to music rather than music set to the his hands...
...the close-ups in Variety...
...For an instant these essentials, The Girl Friend is doleful...
...That is all...
...They folquality...
...realism at various moments which serves no other purpose than Then, throughout, there is an important variation in the sensuality...
...and Lorenz Hart the lyrics...
...Gaieties, lends a fleeting charm to certain moments...
...It is only in the scenes police, and, after ten years of imprisonment, is at last released where this economy and restraint are sacrificed in favor of a due to the petition of his wife who still has faith in him...
...The most notable Berlin, and there joins with a famous English trapeze star in feature of his work is its restraint and ecomony of gesture and a triple act...
...But they do not...
...In both of lights-the grim tenseness of the audience...
...The book of The denly swims before him-the audience as it looks from a swing- Girl Friend is just that, and the vaudeville methods and antics ing trapeze-turning, swirling lights, and a great mass of of Eva Puck and Sam White simply make the near-serious rolling, staring eyes that surround him-eyes everywhere, ac- moments ludicrous...
...But the other half of the truth is this: than scenes of futile rage, ruddy sub-titles and captions and all that the film indulges in a brand of conti iental and coarse the accepted tricks of screen melodrama...
...The water turns red as he such a statement, immoral, although it deals heavily with both puts in his hands...
...detailed and quite unnecessary sensuality that the real inner It is, of course, extremely difficult to describe one medium power of the drama breaks down into vulgar sensationalism...
...Everyone has probably draw coarse pictures on an old board fence There is a de- experienced moments when some minute detail of a face, an liberateness in the introduction of such scenes which makes it eye, a hand or a foot seems to catch the entire attention-not impossible to believe in their artistic sincerity...
...288 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 1926 THE PLAY AND THE SCREEN By R. DANA SKINNER Variety stars-that you see...
...Later, when the two have fought as to leave one bewildered...
...Quite the contrary...
...But how vastly more effective illicit love and crime...
...But she The act is over ! is not yet quite adequate to routine professional performanceOr again-there is the scene when the Englishman returns at least not when surrounded by old-timers who know all the to his room that night...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 11
