THE CINEMA
"North West Mounted Police." At the Cariton.—" The Gay Mrs. Trexel." At the Empire.
CECIL B. DE MILLE'S reputation stretches right back to the palmy days of twenty years ago, when his name and that of D. W. Griffiths blazed above all others. Griffiths has gone, but de Mille, concentrating on what he himself has described as hokum, and justifying lavish expenditure on sensational scenes by unfailing box-office profits, has remained solidly at the top. He is, of course, a gifted film-maker, particularly in dealing with big crowds, spectacular settings, and scenes of luxury or violence. His direction of individuals, on the other hand, has always tended to be naive and sometimes downright clumsy. In North West Mounted Police the naivete unfortunately predominates. For much of the film we have to be content with pep talks on loyalty, and love-scenes of the utmost banality which are by no means balanced by the fighting and the horsemanship.
The North West Mounted are indeed presented as rather dull dogs, in spite of their red coats, which look so pretty in Techni- color, and their red blood, which one might well prefer to see in black and white, so gruesome and plummy it looks as it stains the virgin shirt or drips into the metal basin. The story is con- cerned with the revolt of a tribe of half-breeds, led by a collection of bad men of the deepest villainy. The Mounties succeed in getting their men in the end, in spite of the intrusion of Gary Cooper, as a gauche Texas Ranger claiming the worst of the villains for himself. There is also a little half-breed girl (played with horrid vivacity by Paulette Goddard), who seduces one of the Mounties ; as he is the brother of a hospital nurse (Madeleine Carroll) who interferes constantly with the progress of the film, the seduction becomes almost more important than the battles with the rebels. And poor Gary Cooper, wandering uneasily through the film like a cowboy Mr. Chips, ends up with the doubtful tragedy of giving up the nurse to her moustachioed true-love, and riding off to wider, and we hope, more interesting horizons.
The Technicolor photography of North West Mounted Police is, of course, splendid, and the battle scenes, when they do come, are duly exciting. But on the whole the film is too long and rather boring, despite the unconscious humour of some of the dialogue. (" The Big Trapper's got me by the throat " gasps the expiring Akim Tamiroff.) As for The Gay Mrs. Trexel, there is nothing to say except that it is competently acted and competently directed ; that Joan Crawford presents an imposing parade of fashions ; and that the story concerns a set of numb-skulls in whose activities it is
impossible to feel the slightest interest. BASIL WRIGHT.
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