The Screen

...The day seems to be passing when only the freshness of the early twenties could be counted on to draw fan applause...

...But its chief interest is the stimulus it gives to one's imagination...

...It recounts the struggle of two sisters over one man, with Lois Wilson as the patient and understanding sister, and Olive Borden as the sister who wins out at first and marries her man, only to lose him later, via the divorce courts, and thanks to her own indiscretions...

...The machine of war has grown so terrible today that a picture of its realities should always be before the minds of those who make decisions on war and peace...

...Unlike so many screen stars, and even so many recently converted stage stars, he appears to be utterly undismayed by the recording microphone...

...But on the screen, because it is flat and because its entire framework is within the line of vision, the pictorial effect naturally assumes the commanding influence...

...Between this rising importance of the experienced actor and the increasing need for fine playwrights, the screen may easily look forward to a maturity of its own in the course of the next few years...

...At the Winter Garden...

...At the Strand Theatre...

...By entrusting the dialogue to George Abbott and Maxwell Anderson, and the direction to Lewis Milestone, Carl Laemmle has presented us with a document of enduring power...

...A few examples may serve to show the extent to which this production takes full advantage of screen freedom...

...This, of course, is merely a trick of double exposure taken in two widely varying perspectives...

...I cannot make comparisons with the novel of the same name, not having read the book...

...Those who might expect a large measure of spice and scandal in this tale of Holywood intrigue will be disappointed...

...A screen-trained audience is more ready to relish pictorial beauty than a stage audience...

...By this time it ought to be obvious that the future of the screen, financially as well as artistically, depends on its doing what the stage cannot do...

...He then opens a suitcase, takes out of it a miniature platform, sets it on a table, and at last dumps from the bag a group of tiny figures who rush to the platform and take their places on it...

...For this reason, John Murray Anderson finds himself at last working in a medium made to his order and temperament...

...The foreshortening is too great, and the human element, the personality of the actor, is too strong...

...It tells a stark tale of terror, darkness, filth and the hysteria which makes men kill without knowing why...

...He trusts it, so to speak, with the result that one catches the full flavor of unforced and beautifully timed diction, which flows naturally and with perfect ease...

...But it is obviously an effect impossible to achieve on the stage...

...It is the first of the screen war stories to omit entirely the theme of heroism and glamour...

...Or—to take a longer leap—what of adaptations of the Wagner Ring cycle...

...This is partly because the screen grew up in pantomime...

...Warner has discovered a particularly happy technique...

...In spite of the agonized protests of all those who resent mechanical reproduction of music, there would be far-reaching compensations in a production of this sort...

...A second example of screen freedom comes soon after in an animated cartoon, telling the fantastic story of how Whiteman first earned the title of King of Jazz—once more an impossibility on the stage...

...The beauty of the technicolor process merely gives Anderson his charter of freedom...

...There are, of course, moments during which the authors descend to obvious commentaries on the events...

...Nothing could better emphasize the imaginative daring of King of Jazz than the contrast offered by Show Girl in Hollywood...

...also because the very size of the screen framework gives pictorial effect a greater unity than it can achieve on the stage...

...King of Jazz is important, not so much because of any superlative beauty or distinction as through the progress it marks over earlier attempts at transposing musical entertainment to the screen...

...The first result is both delightful and promising...

...It is simply a copy of stage methods and technique...

...I do not wish to minimize the entertainment value of the King of Jazz...

...It does serve, however, to set a rather high premium upon the potential value of both Lois Wilson and H. B. Warner as artists of the talking screen, and to indicate an important trend in the industry brought about by dialogue possibilities...

...Show Girl in Hollywood IN EXTENDING the chronicles of Dixie Dugan to cover a career in Hollywood, J. P. McEvoy has not done much to enhance his reputation...

...The new movies are giving their old ghosts short shrift...

...His tendency in stage production was toward very beautiful pictures to the neglect of the sprightlier features which the stage demands for well-varied entertainment...

...He will catch many scenes that tion applied to a new medium...

...Warner is far beyond the years of the traditional movie lover, and Miss Wilson, though still young and attractive is no longer to be classed among the ingenues...

...As the review progresses, more and more novel effects are introduced, reaching a climax in the imaginative rendering of the Gershwin Rhapsodie in Blue, with the miniature band concealed in a gigantic blue piano, and one scene melting into another in fantastic and delightful sequence...

...At the Roxy Theatre...

...The screen greatly enlarges his pictorial scope in two ways— first through the almost limitless freedom of photography, and, secondly, through the very fact that it is a medium in which the picture can and should dominate...

...It requires only the slightest imaginative insight to feel the crush of events as Paul Baumer must have felt them—the endless accelerating slaughter of youth, the shattering of nerves, the parades of death, the contrast between the suffering demanded and the trivial results achieved...

...I imagine, however, that those who found it interesting because of its subjective quality may feel that the screen version is greatly limited by the necessities of objective story-telling...

...Whiteman replies, "In my bag...

...Given the fired imagination of a great director (Norman Bel Geddes, for example) it is easy to conceive of a pictorial miracle in which the gods and mortals would be on different planes, the gods huge and shadowy, the mortals struggling and minute, and Valhalla an abode of towering magic...

...The introduction of speech makes it possible for the older actor to interest an audience through the maturity and poise of the character as well as through looks alone...

...That is the theme of the story, and it is unquestionably true...

...Those sitting in the front orchestra rows of an ordinary theatre can never get the true perspective of a stage picture...

...It would achieve a unity of mood between music and vision utterly impossible on the stage...

...Most of the credit for this, I imagine, must go to John Murray Anderson...

...Wedding Rings BASED on The Dark Swan, a novel by Ernest Pascal, Vitaphone has produced a none-too-interesting triangle story in which H. B. Warner, Lois Wilson and Olive Borden have the chief roles...

...it is merely furnishing the material for honest appraisal...

...As to the technicolor sequences which close the film, giving excerpts from a screen production of a musical show, they only serve to demonstrate what happens when the screen, instead of living up to its full scope, allows itself to be limited by stage conventions...

...THE SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER King of Jazz NOTHING could better illustrate the growing flexibility and range of the talking color screen than the general excellence, variety, charm and occasional imaginative interludes of King of Jazz—a sprightly musical review presented by Carl Laemmle with Paul Whiteman and his band as the major attraction...

...After the informal introduction of Mr...

...Obviously, the story has nothing to recommend it...

...At the Central Theatre...

...The screen play would have been more powerful without these interpolations...

...They are fresh, varied, and spring right out of the full and unique possibilities of the medium...

...To let people know exactly what the cost of war can be is not pacifism...

...In imaginative direction, in swift moving sequence, in everything except the undeniably American faces of the supposedly German soldiers and one needlessly suggestive episode, this film is an amazingly dramatic and authentic achievement...

...Whiteman, the master of ceremonies asks him where he has put his band...

...It has in it excellent short sketches, and much deftly rendered music, as well as enthralling pictures...

...He directed the entire production, and it bears the imprint of his marked genius...

...The effect, however, so far as an audience goes, is decidedly subjective...

...Miss Wilson has something of the same direct simplicity—in pleasant contrast to Olive Borden who forces her speech and endows it with an accent that varies from the most precise cosmopolitan to an unengaging New Yorkese...

...The cost of war can be greater than death itself...

...At the same time, those who expect considerable vitality and originality in Mr...

...On the other hand, it is interesting to see that dialogue has opened up screen possibilities to artists of reasonable maturity...

...I can readily see a successful blending of the two media on the screen, whereas I am sure it is impossible on the threedimensional stage...

...I prefer to think of it as an honest effort at objective truth...

...All Quiet on the Western Front IT IS good to know that the talking screen can accomplish such a service as this poignant and impressive rendering of Erich Remarque's war story...

...McEvoy's writing will be equally disappointed at the banal treatment of a highly conventional story...

...Anderson has always been one of the most imaginative of review producers—though not always the most successful within the limits imposed by the stage...

...The motion picture industry has been struggling with a ghostly past in these first days of the talking screen, but the directors are already showing signs of realizing their sudden freedom...

...Some may call it a pacifist play...

...One leaps toward the future, and toward possibilities in many other fields than musical review...

...There is no ghost of old stage practice limiting these scenes...

...It is trite in basic idea, anything but subtle in its development and barren of any worthwhile conclusion...

...The tension is relieved at times by plausible comedy—but always of the ironic sort...

...Take, for example, the rather unsatisfactory efforts of the Lewisohn sisters to combine music and the dance, and project this same effort onto the technicolor screen...

...Yet if any one is dubious concerning the future of the talking color screen, I would advise him to see this Whiteman film, and to keep an open mind as he watches the power of a fine imagination applied to a new medium...

...All this, of course, is a far cry from King of Jazz...

...May 21, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 81 The effect of real genius applied to a new medium is strangley exciting...