The Cinema
`‘ The Black Room." At the London Pavilion. "Gentle men of the Navy." At the Plaza MR. Boras KARLOFF has been allowed to act at last. Like the
late Lon Chaney, he reached stardom with the sole assistance of the make-up man. Any face would have done as well on a
big body, and any actor could have produced the short barks and guttural rumbles, the stiff, stuffed sawdust gestures, which was all his parts required of him. A Karloff scenario Must have made curious reading. Were those grunts phonetic- ally expressed ? One pictures the Karloff arriving in his luxurioui car for a hard day's grunting' at the studio, the hasty study of the partln the dressing room while one eye is blacked out and all his teeth disappear, the dreadful moment when the distinguished actor forgets his part, whether this time he has to bark or rumble, at last the stately gollywog entrance under the 'lights. . But in The 1?aven Mr. Karloff was allowed a few minutes of ordinary speech before his face was mutilated and his tongue paralysed and we discovered that he had an expressive voice and a sense of pathos. In The Black Room he is given a long speaking part at last.
I liked this wildly artificial film, in which Karloff acts both a wicked Central European count and his virtuous, cultured
twin of the Byronic period. A curse rests on the family to the effect that the younger twin will kill the elder in " the black room " of the castle. The room is bricked up by their father, but there is a secret entrance known to the elder brother, the wicked count, who lives in the traditional atmosphere of boar hounds and wenches (when lie finishes with a girl he flings her body down a kind of oubliette in the black room). At last, to escape the wrath of the peasants and the curse as well, be Murders his younger brother, who is distinguished frcim liihi physically by a paralysed arm, and takes his Plaee. The story follows a natural Gothic course, the deception is discovered at the altar when he is about to marry the young, pale, "proper" heroine, he is pursued to the castle by the enraged peasants, takes refuge in the black room and is knocked into the' pit 13y his brother's dog, falling on the dagger which sticks up through the rotting corpse. Karloff is not quite at ease with virtue, suavity and good look's, but he gives a very spirited performance as the wicked count and carries the whole film, so far as acting is concerned, on his own shoulders.
The direction is good : it has caught, as Mr. James Whale never did with Frankenstein, the genuine Gothic note. Mrs. Radcliffe would not have been ashamed of this absurd and exciting film, of the bones in the oubliette, the scene at the altar when the dog leaps and the paralysed arm comes to lite. in self-defence, of the count's wild .drive back to the castle,flie lashing whip, the rearing horses, the rocketing coach, the strange valley of' rocks with its leaning cross and neglected Christ, the graveyard with its owls and ivy: There is much More historical sense in 'this film than in any of what Miss
Lejeune calls; With curious lack of humOur, the " scholarly " Works of Mr. Korda. A whole literary period comes to life : Wyatt might be raising the huge tower of Fonthill, Monk Lewis writing of the false,' fair Imogine and her ghostly betrothed (another part for Karloff) :
" His vizor was closed, and gigantic his height ; His armour was sable to view : All pleasure and laughter were hush'd at his sight ; • The dogs,, as they eyed him, draw back in affright; The lights in the chamber burnt blue I " Gentle-men of the Navy is another boyish clean-limbed piede of propaganda for America's armed forces. It is all about Rags' and Rotters. It will be enjoyed by those who liked Devil Dogs of the Air. The only redeeming quality of a
deeply sentimental film is to be found in the acting of Sir Guy Standing as an old retired commodore who had fought at
Manila Bay and bored generations of midshipmen at the Academy with his reminiscences. In a climax of quite start-
ling improbability he gets on board his old ship and goes down with her when she is used for target practice. Handkerchiefs pashedlup`through the dark all round me like mushrooms in a Cellar. It was a tribute to Sir Guy Standing, not to the quality of the easy, false, comfortable emotion. GRAIIA.11 GREENE.
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