THE CINEMA
"Parnell." At the Empire-"Yiddle with His Fiddle." At the Academy IN a letter last week COunt Ostrorog expressed his annoyance at my criticism of his new cinema, the Berkeley.. I must say he seems rather hard to please. I called his theatre " an elegant little addition to the ranks of London's 'Continental cinemas " ; and reviewed favourably its first presentation, Der Herrscher. But since criticism must concern itself with the flies as well as the ointment, I added : " I beg the manage- ment, if they wish to emulate the consummate amenities of the Curzon, to attend to two things : the quality of the sup- porting programme and the quality of the sound." The programme contained (and may still contain for all I know) an " Aquatic Short " of incredible silliness and vulgarity ; Count Ostrorog rebukes me for remarking that it lasted close on half an hour : only ten minutes, he says. For this error I apologise ; I should have said it appeared to last half an hour. The rest of his letter is beside the point : he does not come into the open with a defence of the Aquatic antics in question, leaving us to infer that if a film lasts only ten minutes its quality does not matter. My second complaint —the quality of the sound reproduction—he also ignores. The comparison with the Curzon which so upset him is in both respects perfectly relevant : each is a small theatre presenting foreign films to fairly sophisticated audiences, but one of them is careful to see that the odds and ends of the programme shall appeal to a cultivated taste, and that the sound-nack is. reproduced in a realistic and unexaggerated manner. What a difference this makes to one's pleasure everybody knows.
I should not have devoted so much space to this little tiff if the week's programmes had contained anything of out- standing interest. But these are the dog days of the movies. Parnell is not so badly put together as people say ; but the extraordinary choice of Clark Gable and Myrna Loy for Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea kills any interest it might otherwise have had, and even provoked titters in the not specially high- brow Empire audience. I think Mesth.s. Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer have been' too timid : having cut adrift frOm all plausibility, they should have gone further and engaged Tom Mix and Mae West. This would have been funnier and scarcely less real. Lest .this shOuld seem an unjustified crack, let me record that the part of Aunt Ben (already a somewhat conventionalised portrait in the stage play) is caricatured out of all sense by .Edna May Oliver. Normally I dote on this actress's eqiiine countenance and the 'dignified wisecracks Which proceed .therefrom ; but as Mrs. O'Shea's aunt she kicks over the realistic traces altogether. Parnell's beardless- ness and the telescoping of his career are unimportant ; the real trouble with Mr.' Gable's performance is the enormous geniality, coupled with intellectual vacuity, which he lends to the stern, embittered patriot Kitty, in the hands of Miss Loy, is charming and rather vapid, with little suggestion of spiritual depth except for a penchant for strumming Mozart on the piano. There is some very sound' character 'acting among Parnell's supporters and opponents, the O'Gorman Mahon and Michael Davitt emerging with conspicuous solidarity. The best part of the film is that which deals with the exposure of the forged Piggott letters, and Mr. Neil Fitzgerald gives a sensational and persuasive performance as Charles Piggott himself.
Yiddle with his Fiddle was made by a Polish company in Warsaw, and has Yiddish dialogue with superimposed English titles. The prevailing fashions in movie plots have reached Warsaw too, so that we have Miss Molly Picon dressing up as a boy although her 'features and indeed her outlines are ill-suited to Transvestismus : nor are matters improved by her retention throughout the film of a Cupid's bow of lipstick. The hero, as usual, thinks her an awful mollycoddle and treats her rough until she emerges from her improbable chrysalis, when he instantly capitulates. All this takes place against a background of vagrant fiddling and Polish countryside and old Yiddish customs which is fresh and attractive. The picture is full of the ancient and unquenchable vitality of the Jewish race, overflowing into dark, abundant pools of melan- choly, lawlessness, vulgarity and beauty.
CHRISTOPHER SHAWE.
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