Judge — November 10, 1923 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Middle Ages, at present, show a promising future. THE SILENT DRAMA SPEAKS “Y I, Yeu?” 1 our third butler to us the other evening as he got us out of our jacket and into it again—we always like to change dinner though our wardrobe may support. our hobby—"Well,” said third butler, “whi hold as to arsk sir, is new in the cinema?” Billows, that being our third butler’s name, always refers to the Movies as the Cine We, have wished to as- sume a classic attitude toward lif important institutions, but our friends are rough diamonds and laugh us to scorn when we pull any high-brow stuff. Bil- lows, on the contrary, keeps better com- pany. He doesn’t have to come in con- tact with editors and screen reviewers. “Have you seen Douglas Barthelmess n The Clanking Sword’? he questioned. “Dick Barthelmess in “The Fighting Blade,” we corrected him, with a slight shrug of the ey “Yes, we ha seen him and we've seen Glenn Hunter and. 2 “T wonder if that would | near Glenndennin, come from, sir “And Tv Sternal Struggle,” I continued, ignoring his question. “And if you care to be enlightened on matters as socially important as these new films I should say cinema plays—I'll tell you of them while you squeeze the last drop of Bacardi from its crystal enclosur And while Billows endeavored to lift our drooping spirits, we sought to acceler- ate his ambition to become a broader and more intelligent third butles With Dick Barthelmess in “1 ing Blade” we qu for not our » anywhere in Surrey, where dl Billows. seer The Fight- ‘not so much with Dick as with the bluntness of the fight- ing blade, which we seemed to think is a rambling artificial story of love and ad- venture in which a fair maid gets into men’s boots and the young man into hot water to win her. story might have be written by anybody after formula 2,623 and played by anybody with a FOR ITSELP by George Mitchell an agile O'Sullivan. can do the intensive Barthelmess did in and “Pury” is snubbing s is given him Fighting Blade.” and admits that he is no better than the of mediocre screeners who could he Fighting Blade” as well. do not mean to infer that the pic- ture is not interesting, nor well made. You'll like it. It contains much pic- turesqueness, devil-may-carelessness, ho- kum and such, and Dorothy Machaill is delightfully charming in what we believe is the best thing we've ever her do. We wonder if we going bl But we somehow couldn't see the n sity to show in such grewsome detail the tortures to which Barthelmess is sub- mitted by his enemies. We seem to feel this in bad taste and lacking in productive inventiveness. The courage of Barthel- mess might have been subtler shown per- haps by shadow or some such medium. John Robinson, whom we consider one of the best directors of the screen, has made a nice picture but has added no new feather to his cap. H has led us to expect something espec vd from his megaphone, but “The Fi ighiting Blade” is only a good picture. supple spine and Anybody who pantomime that “Tol'able David” his talents with such stuff in “The frankly seen W ru Glenn Hunter in “Puritan Pas- as,” on the other hand, we have one of the most interesting surprises it has been our privilege to see in the past year. To begin with the story is unusual and has given Frank Tuttle and Fred Waller, the young Lochinvars of the sercen, that are not in the West, an oppor- tunity to explore along — untrodden shores. “Puritan Passions” loid of Percy Mack s “The Scare- crow,” and ‘disports for hero a young aristocrat supernaturally conceived in the figure of a scarecrow through the witch- s the nom de cellu- 17 craft of none other than his Satanic nil old Nick himself. and whose breath of life is nothing more substantial than: the smoke that is drawn in through a trusty corncob. At frequent stages of the story Mr. Hunter's life hangs by “the makings” and is only brought back from the brink of the grave by Nick handing him the pipe and bidding him to “smoke up,” lest he go out. We would tell you the story in detail but that it would spoil your interest. in the picture. But to generalize we would say that Hunter is different in this picture from anything » he and equally entertaining, equally masterful in pantomime, ‘To us he is one of the young men of the sercen from whom much is yet to come. Mary Astor, has done the best work of her still short career as the young Puritan maid who is lovely to look at and who acts with such simple sincerity More such films, we feel, would make moving pictures less boring, and the Film Guild have ad a naire freshness to direction that compensates for the flood of bravado that is the bone and sinew of the major leaguers. ss | ne Evrernan Srruccie™ is_ the northwest mountain story that direc- enough had. previously We can’t see why. It's as the others we have seen and as well presented. We do not now thrill as much as we did through the first thousand of these Canadian stories. Custom stales. The first seven or eight orange blossoms are the best, but we did find in Renee Adore new star that bids fair to shine as brilliantly as many of the other planets. We don’t remember having seen her before but, insignificant as it is, she has our endorsement. Pat O"Malley, was easy and satisfying and the others in the were good enough at various times to make even the grandeur of the Canadian northwest look shabby. has done too, tors curiously overlooked. too, cast comicbooks.com