PET PHOTOPLAY

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 20 (Supplement)

PET PHOTOPLAY

theorists to be happy. COWARD IN INSOLENT FILM. Whatever its fate may be at the box office of this country—and I suspect there are neighbourhoods in which a certain ribald malevolence will greet its exhibition—l am prepared to insist that the new Hecht-McArthur-Coward production “The Scoundrel” will' provide the more up-and-coming theorists of the cinema with their pet photoplay of the year, writes an English critic of Noel Coward’s first appearance in films. Those who recall that earlier essay in executive independence, “Crime Without Passion,” he continues, will, know what to expect from the Hecht-Mc-Arthur outfit, which prides itself. on Rs escape from Hollywood bondage, its substitution of ideas for idioms, and the professed abandonment of professionalism in all it does. Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur are, as you will remember, playwrights, who authored among other things, “The Front Page. Finding Hollywood more tiresome than efficient, and more absurd than either, these two astute gentlemen put their sign at the old Astoria studios on Long TslanH, and went into production with the modest capital of their own wit and ingenuity just to show Hollywood how. Their first film, “Crime Without Passion,” proved to be no gold mine to the commercial firm which distributed it, but brought its light-hearted directors and its star, Claude Rains, a great deal of international esteem. In America, in England, and on the Continent it was admired soberly by those who knew something about the cinema and immoderately by those who wanted to appear to know. Their second film, “Once in a Blue Moon,” with the comedian, Jimmy Savo, seems to have , been too much of a good thing even for its perpetrators, and was shelved without exhibition. Thei- third film, “The Scoundrel,” has the initial box-office value of Noel Coward’s name in the title role, Mr. Coward, acting on the screen for the first time in. his career, fits-so perfectly into the cynical, cerebral, deliberately unprofessional scheme of: things which distinguishes the Hecht-McArthur menage that the film has all the-look , of. a thing that has not been manufactured, but bom whole.

I doubt very much’ whether. Messrs. Hecht and McArthur would care to know it, but their , latest film has breeding. It is insolent, violent, and occasionally absurd; but there is something pounding on that screen for notice that is not the random outcome of a number of Hollywood cliches .in juxtaposition.