The Play and Screen

...Powers is one of the best of the ancient line of clowns, but he never foregoes a chance to spread himself over the stage in the breadth of his farce...

...It would have been hard, I imagine, to find a better vehicle for this first experiment in spoken drama than the part of Anna...

...Yet her very aloofness is like one of those blue flames, cold to the eye, and capable of burning through steel...

...She has earned the right to be included among the really fine actresses of our day...

...Her upper lip is too long...

...Fiske in The Rivals EVERY now and then-but not too often-it is pleasant to slip back into the artificialities and the conventions of the period of Sheridan, to listen to discreetly rounded periods, to watch obvious human types neatly packaged and labeled, ready to trot forth their stock emotions at the least cue...

...But even with this handicap, Miss Garbo manages to make her debut in a speaking part distinctly impressive...

...Sheridan's works can boast no such mental substance nor poetic endowment...

...There have been, and probably will be, many finer films from the technical and production aspects, but as an example of the authentic art which an actress of real ability can bring to the screen, this Anna Christie merits honest attention and spontaneous praise...

...But the experiment of watching this special aspect of another day must be made in a mood of surfeit with the current theatre, of organic discontent with a mental chaos which generally mistakes bluster for power and emotion for thinking...

...Her forehead is distressingly high...

...George Marion's Swedish father-of a line that has always followed the sea, hated it, loved it and found death in it-is a small masterpiece...

...Yet even on the silent screen, she can arrest and hold attention with a single gesture...

...At Erlanger's Theatre...

...But there are many foreign actresses who speak with an accent that is labored...

...He had little or nothing of the poet in his make-up...

...This is especially true of Andrew Mack, who manages to make the colorful Sir Lucius O'Trigger rather drab, and adds to the difficulties of the occasion by being none too sure of his lines...

...You see it being towed up the New England coast, in both fair weather and foul, you see it anchored in a choking fog, you see the rescue in which the sea coughs up that dynamic man who is destined to bring Anna to a new understanding of life and love...

...The Garbo personality has long been an elusive puzzle to film critics...

...For sheer excellence within a restricted frame, Pedro de Cordoba easily gives the most finished portrait...

...He seems to relish the greater freedom offered by the screen, and his voice, rich in this instance with Irish brogue, records splendidly...

...She is the very opposite of the engaging or appealing personality so prevalent among screen heroines...

...She is not, in the accepted sense, a beautiful woman...

...One gathers from such a play as The Rivals a rather restful sense of order and arrangement and of that surplus ease of life which makes minute detail important and the trivial incident all-engrossing...

...Margery Maude, on the other hand, is duly demure and precise and hysterical by turns as Lydia, and is well aided at all times by Betty Linley as Julia Melville, and by the sprightly Georgette Cohan as Lucy, the intriguing maid...

...The introduction of speech into the films has broken that barrier which once divided the two types of actors and actresses...

...The cast assisting Miss Garbo has been picked with amazing skill...

...I can heartily recommend this revival for its general excellence and buoyant spirits, even though it lacks many of the crisp touches one especially looks for in a Sheridan play...

...At the Capitol Theatre...

...Behind the almost mask-like quality of her face one feels a burning intensity, not alone of feeling and emotion, but also of will and intellect-a sort of sullen superiority to her surroundings...

...de Cordoba's excellent diction, explosive rantings in the first act and general command of niceties of gesture establish a standard all too rare in these days of sloppy naturalism...

...There are still many differences in technique between screen and stage performances, but there is no longer the wide gulf which separated the art of sheer pantomime from the art of the spoken drama...

...I have no way of knowing what Eugene O'Neill would say of the adaptation which has been made of his famous play in which Pauline Lord achieved her fame...

...Many of her phrases are whipped out as quickly as if English were her native tongue...

...But as usual in such revivals, the chief interest centers in individual performances rather than the ensemble...

...Greta Garbo in Anna Christie TO THOSE who are sceptical still of any true artistry appearing in so mechanical a medium as the talking screen, I can earnestly suggest a visit to the nearest theatre in which Greta Garbo is appearing under the auspices of Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer as Eugene O'Neill's heroine, Anna Christie...

...Above all, a speaking part adds noticeably to the rounded perfection of Miss Garbo's art...

...Today we can make a legitimate comparison between Greta Garbo and, let us say, Pauline Lord or Lynn Fontanne or Alice Brady...

...But this much is certain, that not only does a considerable part of the O'Neill quality of dialogue break through the screen barriers, but there emerges as well an authentic atmosphere of the sea which could never be created in the four walls of a theatre...

...That "old davil sea," to which her father keeps referring as a sort of leading motif, becomes a very real protagonist...

...He is invariably amusing, but always incredible...

...Clear-cut style is of the essence of a Sheridan comedy, and Mr...

...In the long speech in which she dominates both men, holds them to unbroken silence, and confesses what her real life has been, she reaches a dramatic power which needs to ask no indulgence...

...The sailor is played by Charles Bickford, Anna's pathetic father by George F. Marion, and his drink-sodden companion by that grand old character-actress, Marie Dressier...

...The famous coal barge in which Anna takes up her life after returning to her drunken father is not a static stage property, or something talked about, but a thing in life and motion...

...Bickford brings a curious rough sensitiveness into his performance which has at times been lacking in his stage work...

...Miss Garbo gives one the sense of being at home in English...

...She has mastered the English idiom with surprising ease, allowing herself the privilege of a slight accent entirely logical in the part...

...Moreover, the relaxation which inevitably comes with spoken lines brings a new grace and charm to her lighter passages, adding to the varied pattern of her work without detracting from its essential quality of strong reserve...

...Fiske as the undying Mrs...

...As a group they supply the old framework with considerable new paint and varnish, acting with the precision and certainty which only practised troupers can display, and entering into the mannered complexities of the situation with zest and good humor...

...It breaks through the still mask which was her chief characteristic in the silent films, but this proves to be an advantage...

...They are comedies of manners...

...James T. Powers runs true to form in his Bob Acres...

...John Craig makes the temper and fury of old Sir Anthony thoroughly alarming, but fails, as so many others in the cast, to give the clarity of outline required...

...In such a mood Sheridan can be delightful...

...The Rivals is one of the best of them, highly involved in its plots, counterplots and subplots, but following a perfectly intelligible pattern with adroit ease...

...Fiske second in any play in which she appears, but it does not seem to me that her Mrs...

...Miss Garbo endows her with something quite different from the unremittingly drab quality always associated with Pauline Lord...

...She can vary the tempo of her words readily, with none of that slow and laborious mouthing which breaks all sense of illusion...

...Her features are neither classic nor striking...

...Miss Dressier is, as always, supremely sure of her technique, merciless with herself in her swift characterization and highly effective...

...Her speaking voice, though none too well recorded in the present film, is low and gutteral, almost masculine in quality and utterly in keeping with her singular power...

...Behind the frail rigging of the comedy there is always the solid substance of a great mind at play among the foibles of humanity...

...It is probably heresy to place Mrs...

...But fundamentally his mind was too thin to be able to pass down through the centuries as anything more than a relic of style sprinkled with a forced type of wit and a good deal of broad humor...

...Malaprop the arch-type of all snobs...

...But it is primarily the artistry of Greta Garbo, in her first efforts at English dialogue, that deserves the serious attention of drama lovers...

...The present revival has a more than competent cast, with Mrs...

...Her movements are often sluggish to the point of awkwardness...

...It enables her to time gestures and facial expressions more accurately, to give them added distinctness and purpose, and to increase the impact of her occasional and rare moments of explosive action...

...In the broadest or most artificial farce of Shakespeare there are always passages which are of the life breath of poetry-rich truths of the mind or heart caught up imperishably in a phrase...

...Her moments of facial animation are rare...

...Malaprop is one of her happiest roles...

...In her timing of the fatal and notorious use of the wrong words, she is undoubtedly past mistress, but her nervous restlessness takes away much of the pompous dignity which can render Mrs...

...Anna is a character that must be created from within, with both intellect and feeling, and Miss Garbo obviously brings both to the task in rich measure...

...As an example of efficient sound recording, the film falls far below the standard established by several recent experiments such as Disraeli...

...Malaprop, James T. Powers as Bob Acres, Margery Maude as Lydia Languish, Rollo Peters as Captain Jack Absolute, Pedro de Cordoba as the tortured Faulkland and John Craig as Sir Anthony...