Hollywood on parade

HELEN BROWN NORDEN

THE TEN BEST.—Picking the ten best pictures of the year is a gratuitous and, I suppose, fairly harmless pastime indulged in at this time of the year by all the alleged critics. I can t see that it does any particular good, except it provides a little fun for the picker—like the "Character Books' which were all the go, along with circle combs and slave bracelets, one year far, far back in my happy childhood. In these books, we used to write down our favorite actress, favorite actor, favorite movie, favorite flower, favorite book and favorite dessert. My favorite book was Ben Hur, my favorite actress, Marguerite Clark—I guess that dates me—and my favorite dessert chocolate blanc mange. But that is neither here nor there. Just leave me alone with my memories. What 1 started out to say was that this annual selection of the Ten Best is really a personal matter, as far as 1 m concerned. In the first place, I don't see all of the movies—not by a long shot. I am pretty apt to be choosy and set in my ways. Once 1 have got the idea in my head, for example, that I don't like Dick Powell, wild horses can't drive me to another of his films.

1 just sit right down in my tracks, making piteous noises, and refuse to budge. Whereas, the chances are, that if I just showed a little grit and gumption and forced myself, sort of as a monthly stint, to sit through a Powell picture, he might, in time, as the saying goes, grow on me. After all, Edward Everett Horton grew on me.

In the second place—if you'll pardon my reminiscences—I last year made the mistake of not listing any of the pictures 1 had seen, so that when I sat down to make up my list of the Ten Best for 1934, I tried to put them down from memory and left out one of the indisputably best pictures of the year—The Thin Man. I just forgot it. 1 also forgot Thunder in the East—then known as The Battle.

This year, there is none of that slip-shod business. I have gone about my work as industriously as a little ant, making lists, charts and graphs—which I am sure would come in very handy at this moment if I could only lay my hands on them. One thing, however, has stood out in my mind —and that is that the trend toward purity has had a meretricious effect on the Hollywood output. Certainly, it has been responsible for a great number of dull and shoddy films. We have been deluged with old classics—sinless and soporific—such as Way Down East, Ereckles, and Girl of the Limherlost, and with gaudy spectacles, such as The Crusades, The Last Days of Pompeii, Dante's Inferno—(not Dante's and certainly not mine, thank you)—and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Put them all together and what have you got? An awful lot of money and not much fun. As a child, 1 cried my eyes out over Way Down East. This time, 1 slept through it fitfully, until the big ice scene, when 1 laughed longer and louder than I have at anything since the last Marx Brothers comedy. What's more, everyone else in the theatre joined me, as Rochelle Hudson leapt from ice-cake to ice-cake, and one wag remarked audibly, "My Cod, it's Eliza, and she's got in the wrong picture by mistake!"

I thought A Midsummer Bight's Dream was the most colossal bore 1 had ever seen, with The East Days of Pompeii as runnerup. And so it goes. 1 may be unjust, but I blame a great deal of this on the lust for purity. I do not like the Janet Gaynor, Rochelle Hudson, Jean Parker school. 1 do like the Mae West-Jean Harlow. Of course, it is pretty hard for the censors to put one over on Miss West. They have met their match there, as her last film, Coin to Town, certainly proved. For old-time, unmistakable, burlesque-style dirt, it had one scene which Minsky would be hard put to it to beat. But there are not many of Miss West's calibre in the film industry.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not sponsoring pornographic pictures, and 1 do not stand solidly in line behind any movement to demoralize the youth of the land. What 1 do object to is the stultifying effect of incompetent censorship which takes the attitude that nothing which couldn t be printed in The Modern Priscilla is clean enough for adult American consumption in the theatre. I think that intelligence and humor and art are much more important than morals—because nobody knows what morals are, anyway, and your guess is as good as mine. 1 think that movies should, above all, be entertaining—whether they reduce us to laughter or tears—and any movement which interferes with that business of entertainment ought to be thrown out by the ears, no matter how many leagues, clubs and whatnots may endorse it.

THE TEN BEST PICTURES OF 1935

La Maternelle The Informer

The Man Who Knew Too Much Lives of a Bengal Lancer Ruggles of Red Gap Hands Across the Table Escapade

Mutiny on the Bounty Escape Me Never Her Wedding Night

HONORABLE MENTION

The 39 Steps Crime et Chatiment

FRANCE vs. AMERICA.— And now. having wasted your time and mine, and filled up a lot of space (which is really what I was trying to do), let us revenir a nos moutons (ah ha! ) and get down to the pictures at hand. It seems that for the past month there has been a more or less lively controversy raging at smart dinner tables over the respective merits of the French and American versions of Crime and Punishment. (For these inside glimpses into smart dinner parties I am of course indebted to my secret spies, as at the dinner tables I, myself, frequent, no one ever says anything wittier than "May 1 warm your cup for you, Mr. Lumpkin?" or "Please pass the butter, and be damn quick about it. ) I he American version was produced by Columbia, was directed by Josef Von Sternberg, and co-stars Peter Lorre and Edward Arnold. The French version was produced by something called Lenauer, and directed by Pierre Chcnal. Pierre Blanchar (who says all Frenchmen are called Henri? ) and Harry Baur play the two principal roles.

Discounting the fact that I saw the French version first, I still think it is by far the better of tin? two. I here is about it a quality both sad and sinister which is more in fitting with the spirit of the original novel—sort of a prof o u n d unhealthiness which has come to be known in literature and the theatre as "Russian." I he strange and sordid sets, the slightly distorted photography, the grim, exciting and ominous music of Arthur Honegger, all combine to infuse with life this portrait of a tortured soul—to make it squirm and bleed and cry aloud before your eyes. Pierre Blanchar makes of the character of the student Raskolnikov a burning-eyed, half-mad creature, thin, nervous to the point of insanity, desperate and doomed. Lorre's characterization, on the other hand, struck me as comparatively thick and sluggish. He is at no time the brilliant student, honor man of his class, egoistic and arrogant. He is, instead, a brutish man, pop-eyed with fright, stuttering and cowering in the police station like any clumsy oaf. I have the greatest respect for Mr. Lorre as an actor, but this time I think be missed the point of bis role. Perhaps it is not his fault. Physical!). he is miscast, as he certainly doesn't look like any starving student—not to me, lie doesn t. Make no mistake, he gives a compelling performance, but it just isn't Dostoievsky's Raskolnikov, and Pierre Blanch a r's is.

However, excellent as M. Blanchar is, it is really Harry Baur, as the police inspector, who steals the film. He gives a magnificently clever performance. The scenes between him and the student are unforgettable. Never will you have seen mental cruelty enacted with such nicety, such brilliance, such devastating cunning. I hereby nominate Mons. Barn 's performance as one of the best of the year—this year, or any other that you want to name.

ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE.— Practically every company's aim for the last year is to produce another It Happened One Xight. I think they did it with Hands Across the Table. If they didn't, they at least came so close to it that if it had been a bear it would have bitten them. Columbia's She Married Her Boss was an attempt, but it didn't quite jell. Neither does The Bride Comes Home. the newest Paramount venture under the Lubitsch banner. Ibis one has Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray as the blithe lovers. Miss Colbert is the spoiled daughter of an old millionaire who has lost all his money, and Mr. MacMurray is an ex-newspaper reporter who has become a young millionaire's bodyguard. Mr. Robert Young is the young millionaire. It would solve Miss Colbert's problems, and also her indigent father's, if she would marry Mr. Young, but she falls in love with Mr. MacMurray, which gums up the works, because they both are hot-tempered and headstrong, and every time they get together they have words. Eventually, of course, they decide that the only real fun the)'ll ever get out of lile is in slugging each other, so thev decide to chance it. It is all too self-consciously flip and merry and tries so hard to be gay as all get-out that the result is a leaden cream puff. There is nothing worse than charming people straining themselves to be charming and have fun if it kills them. If you've ever been out on New Year's Eve much, you know what I mean.

OLD MAN ARLISS.— The idea of the venerable Mr. Arliss as a tramp is enough to dishearten the best of us, but, honestly, you have got to give the old gentleman credit. His new Gaumont British picture, 1 lister Hobo, is pretty sentimental tosh, but at least he tries. I think I would rather see him re-making history, but this proves that be can play something else, once in a while, and he doesn't do so badly at it, either. Mind, I am not recommending it. but he does give one of those nice, homely, old codger performances that you just can't get nasty about. In Mister Hobo, he is a bona fide tramp, rags and all, and, of course, something of a philosopher—in fact, too much—with quite a lot of whimsy thrown in. By an impossible trick, he becomes involved in high finance, gets mixed up with a crooked banker, who is trying to fleece a w idow and her pretty daughter, and, in the end, outwits the banker at his own game. The best parts of the film are where Mr. Arliss is taken to lunch at an elegant restaurant and has to act as if he d never been in such a place before. He manages to be fairly amusing at it, although you never lose the uneasy feeling that he is apt to whip out his monocle at any time and put all the upstarts in their places.

THE RISE OF MISS ROGERS.— Not very many years ago, Ginger Rogers was a wild-haired little cutie, singing and dancing in vaudeville with her first husband, Jack Pepper. As 1 remember it, her movie break was Young Man oj Manhattan— ("Cigaret me, big boy!")—and after that she went blithely along, shaking her shoulders. tossing her curls and singing hot songs in a succession of pictures which brought her a satisfying if not spectacular popularity. Il was her teaming with Fred Astaire which catapulted her onto the fantastic pedestal which she today occupies in tin hearts of American manhood.

Now, in between Astaire pictures, she has made a solo called In Person, from the novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, who wrote It Happened One Night. This is the tale of a movie star who develops an excessive fear of crowds, necessitating her being put in care of a physician and going around disguised in a wig, false teeth, glasses and a black veil. It is George Brent who finally cures her of her phobia by methods direct and masculine.

The picture is amusing in a spotty, routine way. Il hews to the middle line of Hollywood productions—neither good nor very bad. It does not clarify the mystery of Miss Rogers' amazing popularity. Perhaps I see her with a different eye than the menfolks*. \o doubt there are certain glandular reasons for this difference in point of view, but, at any rate, the ability to consider her as other than a lively, amiable, well-built chorus girl seems denied to me.