Judge, 1921-11-26 · page 13 of 36
Judge — November 26, 1921 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# What This Page Means This is a film criticism piece from Judge magazine about the movie "Two Minutes To Go," starring actor Charlie Ray. The author argues that football is uniquely unsuitable for cinema adaptation. The satire's point: while films can convincingly portray crime, violence, and drama, they fundamentally fail at capturing football because the sport's genuine passion and chaos cannot be faked. The author notes that the extras playing Yale players were so obviously following director's orders—literally slapping Ray "lightly above the knee" before falling down—that it destroyed any authenticity. The piece includes a jab at Yale University, sarcastically praising their supposed monopoly on "treacherous and beetle-browed humanity," suggesting Yale rooters were naturally better villains than hired extras. The accompanying photos show scenes from the film and Ray as "a despondent artist." The broader critique is about cinema's limitations when adapting inherently visceral, passionate human experiences.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Charlie, as a despondent artist. few weeks later that he was al- ways going to look back on the season with pleasure because he thought that he and the rest of the players had had good fun, even though they had lost to Yale. Naturally he was never allowed to return to Cambridge after his graduation. His unfortunate re- mark came a few years before the passage of the sedition law, but there was a militant public opinion in the college fully capable of taking care of such cases. EELING, then, as I do, that there is no such poignant or- deal possible to man as sitting through a tight MHarvard-Yale game, any screen story of football seems not only piffling but sacri- legious. In the Charlie Ray picture, the two contending teams were Stanley and Baker. There were views of the rival cheering sections and closer ones of Charlie Ray running the length of the gridiron for a touchdown. This feat was made somewhat easy for him by the fact that all the extra people engaged for the pic- “No one who is hired for money can possibly make the same joyful ass of himself as a collegian under strictly amateur momentum.” ture seemed to have been instructed to slap him lightly above the knee with the little finger of the right hand and then fall upon their faces so that he might step aver them. It was not this palpable arti- ficiality which was the most potent factor in bringing me into an extreme state of calm. A long Harvard run made possible by the entire Yale team’s being struck by lightning would seem to me thor- oughly satisfactory. The trouble with “Two Minutes To Go” was that I never forgot for a moment that Charlie Ray was a motion picture star instead of a halfback. Vitagraph presents Carmel Myers in “Breaking Through.” i Of course, you might object that I should properly have the same feeling when seeing Ray in pic- tures where he is engaged in alter- cations with holdup men and other scoundrels, That is different. In such situations the stratagems of the films are amply convincing, but in football nobody can pos- sibly play the villain so effectively as a Yaleman. We have often wondered how one_ university could possibly corner the entire supply of treacherous and beetle- browed humanity. The foemen lined up against Charlie Ray didn’t begin to be fierce enough. Nor did the rival groups of rooters serve any bet- ter to convince me of their au- thenticity. It was quite evident that they were swayed by no emo- tion other than that of a willing- ness to obey the orders of the director. Football is too warm and passionate a thing to be reduced to the flat dimen- sions of the screen. Battle, murder, sudden death and many other things are done amply well in films. Football is different. Though it in- jure the heart, increase the blood pressure and shorten life, only the reality will do. comicbooks.com