"SOME FILMS I LIKE"

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17412, 26 May 1928, Page 17 (Supplement)

"SOME FILMS I LIKE"

—.—♦ RONALD COLMAN ON PICTURES. Nowhere do you find keener filmgoers than among actors. This busman's enthusiasm I must confess to sharing, though it was not until I first saw "Broken Blossoms" —many years ago*— that the unique potentialities of the screen really dawned on me. Of old pictures that is the one I recall with the deepest pleasure; and Richard Barthelmess, so excellent, too, in "Tol'able David," has no greater admirer. "Earthbound," with its dignified and powerful theme of life after death, was another favourite. Among the stars Douglas Fairbanks delighls me most of all. He was always good, but be improves with every production. Fairbanks is more than an actor —the very living embodiment of grace and of energy. Without him even such magnificent films as "The Black Pirate," and his newest one. "The Gaucho," would lose much of their supreme merit, splendid and inspiring as they are, it is to the star that they owe their genius. Of recent productions, "UnderworlcT" is one of the most arresting. I yield to no one in praise of Clive Brook's and deorge Bancroft's performances in this gripping story of Chicago's gunmen. It is so much an exposure that I wonder it was not, severely censored in some parts of the United States. The funniest scene in it shows crooks, great and small, assembling for a crooks' ball, which, one gathers, is being given under police protection. Some, of the lawless revellers, on tills their night off, voluntarily give up their small arms with their hats and coats. Others, in obedience to a notice "Guns Parked Here," are searched and relieved of their weapons before joining in the general merriment. Though "Sunrise" was criticised unfavourably by many people, to me <t seemed a wonderful and an invaluable experiment. If picture making has almost attained perfections as far as mechanics go, nevertheless it is essential for films to break away again and again from fixed conventions and from monotonous and stereotyped treatment. Fresh ideas and an original manner are badly needed. "Sunrise." was something really new. Full of pictorial beauty, it succeeded in introducing an impressionistic rather than the realistic ' method (common in Hollywood) of J telling a story. j • » • • And films I have appeared in ? Naturally i retain a real partiality for my ! flrst, "The White Sister," in which, by ! amazingly good luck, I was given so fine a role in so fine a picture, instead of beginning in smaller and less inter- ; csting parts (at which at that time I j should have jumped) in inferior stories. • The best fun 1 ever had was while ! "Her Sister from Paris" was being ! made. What with a sparkling plot and j Constance Talmadge—both would have been a joy to any player—it was sheer delight. As a matter of fact, I cherisli a perhaps entirely misplaced aspiration to appear in more comedies one of these days. If I have left mention of "Beau Gcste" until last It is only because, from the moment they gave me the story to read, its spiritual and dramatic value impressed me so deeply, and acting in it was so absorbing—even inspiring—that, to tell the truth, I was so lost in it that, even to this day, unless I had been told I should not know whether it was a good picture or not. It stands alone in my mind, or perhaps I should say in my affections. To me "Beau Geste" was not a "film, '*"\it a tremendous ex^erleo&G,