THE CINEMA
" The Little Foxes." At the Gaumont.—" The Two-Fac Woman." At the Empire.—" World Premiere." At Carlton.
FILM-MAKING as a business is deeply concerned with acto whereas film-making as a creative activity has accorded its playe considerably less respect. To dismiss the film star as a gau commercial embellishment may be to strike a highbrow attitude yet in this matter history is on the side of the highbrows. development of the cinema has owed immeasurably less to actor than to the technician. Even Chaplin, Pickford and Fair banks will be remembered as much for innovations of subject matter and styles of production as for their acting.
This week there are three new films highly appropriate to an general consideration of the role of the actor. Bette Davis is be seen in The Little Foxes, Greta Garbo wears the laurel-wrea of an American banning in The Two-Faced Woman, whilst Jo Barrymore, in World Premiere, contributes a somewhat surpris performance, coming, as it does, from America's most fam family of actors. For World Premiere is a slap-stick burlesq about Hollywood in general and Hollywood actors in particul and contains a gorgeous caricature by Barrymore himself of worst extravagances of the classical school of acting of which himself was once a shining ornament. The story is about a company which has made an anti-Fascist film which the tries to sabotage. The film is packed with excellent broad-come situations laced with subtler satire, and director Ted Tetzlaff man to watch) has a magnificent sense of timing and pace. B the most striking quality of the film is its merciless exposure the emptiness of Hollywood histrionics—both on and off screen The Two-Faced Woman appears to represent an attempt turn a famous star from an actress into a peep-show exhibit. He in fact, is Greta Garbo performing all the antics which—know' the quality of her early work—one would least expect her to asked to undertake. To provide a reason for the transformati the plot contrives in hackneyed fashion that she shall win back husband's wayward love by posing as a woman of hysterical gai and loose morals. The result is mostly embarrassing, but moments as entertaining as a brilliantly miscast charade. Melvyn Douglas, as always, is very good indeed. The cho of themes for the recent Garbo films culminating in The T Faced Woman, appears to have been based on a theory film stars cannot hope to preserve status unless they are prepar to turn their professional reputations into some kind of a cir stunt. Just as John Barrymore succeeded in developing an ac style which has been regarded as a burlesque of his own ear performances, so we now have Greta Garbo belying her o greatest work, and doing so less in proof of virtuosity than in interests of sensationalism.
Fortunately, the third release of the week proves that career of a great actress need not follow so unhappy a path. Little Foxes also demonstrates that a genius (and Bette Da has a claim upon the word) may mould a film as surely f the front of the lens as from behind the camera. She is h directed—as she was in The Letter—by William Wyler, and o more he balances the tortured spirit of the character Ass Da interprets with the confinement of his studio sets and dramatic mood of his camera angles and movement. story is of a family living in the southern States America at the turn of the century and of the vici cruelties they practise in exploiting for financial g their fellow-citizens and more scrupulous relations. Miss Da —exhibiting scarcely a single redeeming feature—is the mid aged leader of a cold-blooded conspiracy against her husb Only the involuntary movement of a hand sometimes betrays qualm beneath her poise, or occasionally she will stand motion! her head tuned slightly aside as if listening with rapt atten to some forbodeing music. But greater than these character of style are the usual careful details by which the part is roun out, together with the emotional understatement which belo so surely to the screen and not to the stage. It is clear that w we have players of the calibre of Miss Davis the actor will al have a part to play in the development of the cinema. Moreo the drama of narrow, personal experience which is so much creation will never entirely give way to the broader themes w are normally more appropriate to the film medium.
• EDGAR ANSTEt
Previous page
