HOLLYWOOD AND A MIRACLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18062, 24 January 1927, Page 5

HOLLYWOOD AND A MIRACLE.

MARVELS SEEN IN MAKING UP A PICTURE. (Written by BEVERLEY NICHOLS in the “ Daily Chronicle”) LONDON, November 22. Do not tell me that the world has no more miracles, for 1 have just seen one. The miracle was a beam of light stretching a pale and luminous fingers through a thronging crowd. It is true that the crowd was merely a throng of supers in the film “ Ben Hur,” but that makes no difference. For the finger of light, always pointing to something unseen, was the only way in which the men who made that film had dared to portray the figure of Christ. Throughout the film it was the same. A white hand stretched suddenly into the picture, and then darkness. A swift, soft radiance, glowing in the background, giving a queer sense of something sacred. The arm of a cross, making its slow and uneven way through a jeering mob, its Bearer, as always, invisible. I sat back in that theatre, surrounded by people chewing caramels, listening to the excellent inanities of a welltrained orchestra, and I thought that of all the miracles which Christ accomplished, this must surely be one of the greatest. None of the ancient sinks of iniquity (if we are to judge by the reports of the Americans themselves) can be compared to Hollywood. And yet, after nineteen hundred years, Christ has conquered Holly-wood. Ilis spirit is so alive that it has reached over tho years, over the oceans, into the din and clatter and materialism of a Hollywood film studio, and held in awe the men who are out only to make dollars—-held them in such awe that they dare not look upon His face. If that is not a miracle, tell me what it is. For even the most ardent admirer of Hollywood and its principles cannot maintain that the spirit of reverence has been particularly dominant in the film studies. The heir to the throne of England is considered a fit subject for caricature in those regions. The works of the great masters are seized, mutilated, and rehashed to be sent flickering in fragments across the screen, fragments so distorted that their creators would not know them as their own. As for history . . . well, wc have seen that even the charming Mary Pickford can produce the most nauseating parodies of our island story. Do ; you remember “ Dorothy Vernon of ! Haddon Hall”? 1 do. Painfully. It was the murder of a memory—the memory of Queen Elizabeth. She was made into a vulgar, ranting old hag. She had about as much dignity as a guttersnipe. The only thing her producers had apparently granted her was a remarkable capacity for anticipating the trend of house decoration, for they genei-ously furnished her bedroom with choice examples of Queen Anne lacquer. I could instances indefinitely. I was more than doubtful about the acrobatic romanticist who recently entertained us in the guise of Robin Hood. When one caught the glitter of gold teeth in the smiles of j Robin’s merry men the mediaeval illu- | sion was a little difficult to capture. Nor could I entirely subscribe to the spirit of the Big Parade because I still * had a dim recollection that several other nations were not entirely unconnected with the war. Still, one could forgive those lapses, just as one forgives the incredible Hollywood butlers who begin as butlers, so far as their trousers are concerned, become footmen round about the waist, and end up by being provincial mayors, in the region of the collar. But I shall never be able to forgive the suggestion that a murder trial should be filmed. Ido not know if they are going to film it, but I do know that they are trying to do so. I can imagine no words, in any language, that could begin to describe the sickening of such a proceeding. Compared with it, bullfighting is a gentle and humane sport. So much, then, for reverence. I thought that it was not in the Hollywood dictionaries. I imagined that there was nothing they would not .do. from making a picture in which the Queen of England was made to play the part of a vamp to creating comedy stunts out of the Old Testament. For all I know they may yet choose to adopt such ideas. But there is oac idea which, thank God, they can adopt. That is why I saw that I saw a miracle in that theatre the other night. For when I saw that pale beam of light I felt that it was stretching across two thousand years, into the noisy brilliance of the New World, with a meaning which even the New World could not ignore.