NAZIMOVA’S “ SALOME.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16987, 10 March 1923, Page 7 (Supplement)

NAZIMOVA’S “ SALOME.”

A GREAT PRODUCTION. Nazimova has created an exquisite thing in the filming of Oscar Wilde’s decadent tragedy 44 Salome.” The picture perhaps is for the few and not the masses, for it- transfers poetic beauty to the screen and seems to> move in rythmical cadences rather than in the ordinary manner of motion pdcThere is a dignity and beauty—it may be sublimity—in the measured and timed movements of the creatures of Wilde’s fancy who live the brief hour allotted to them on the screen. One is looking on at a- pageant, magnificent, massive, living, of an age that has passed; an age of cruelty, when human lives were valued at nothing and murder was a pastime of the great, along with grosser pleasures. Through tihi-s fietid atmosphere of luxury and lust. Salome, Princess of Judea, goes her virginal way, untouched by love or passion although looked on with libidinous eves by men of the court and even by- Herod himself,

whose desire is inflamed by her singular beauty. Charles Bryant has done a remarkable thing in his direction of the picture in setting this period, before the vision of the modern playgoer. He seems to have done this by making his people move slowly, matching the strength and power of his subject wrtli the gravity with which he invests the creatures who tell his story. For one thing he suggests crowds and splendour by rather economical means ; not niggardly, his scenes having enough people to give the idea of endless service from slaves, but not overcrowded with men and women. Hoj has put drama as it is acted on the spoken stage before his motion picture audiences, and has succeeded in giving the illusion of bigness without actually having mobs or lavish decoration. For instance, one gets the impression of a great banquet in Herod’s ball, and yet, except for three or four people lolling at the board, Herod himself ; his wife, ITerodias: the desired and desirable Salome; Tigellinus, favourite of Herodias, and a shadowy few others, there is no one, but the spectator has the feeling of a great feast with scores of men and women feeding. The setting is o-ne great hall and the terrace without, and at all times you feel you are looking within that single place, spacious, noisy with revelry, rotten with the iniquity of the time and the people. Without on the moonlight terrace there are a few soldiers seon on guard, enough to suggest numbers somewhere out of sight, and there is the well in which Jokanaan is confined, an ornate thing, its Aubrey Beardsley traceries making the cake-like top the background for much of the drama that is c-nacted there. 44 Salome ” gives one hope for motion pictures. It shows the possibilities that have been only faintly suggested in 44 Sentimental Tommy,” 44 Foolish Wives,” 44 Conrad in Search of his Youth ” and a very few other productions that have come from the studios in the last three or four years. Some time there will be a theatre where the fine things that the screen can do will be shown, where intelligent men and women, may enjoy the wonders of the art which must lie in the modern camera. It is a hopeful tiling and one that the understanding should see.