Judge — May 21, 1927 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGING, ‘he MOVIES* tT was a decidedly ticklish thing to do, to make a movie melodrama of the Gospel story of Jesus, but on the whole Cecil De Mille has acquitted him- self remarkably well in “The King of Kings.” His first bold and eminently wise decision was to make Jesus in person the central figure of his picture. The ultra-refinement of reverence that in “Ben-Hur” refuses to indicate His presence except by means of a beam of light or the hem of a garment or a glimpse of the Cross seemed to me tiresome and a little ridiculous, In the days of robust faith our for fathers, with their mystery plays, were not so squeamish. Has our religion become so anemic and precious that we should shrink from the direct impersonation? Incidentally, H. B. Warner takes the part of Christ with a sim- plicity and restraint that should render his performance unob- jectionable to the most devout. De Mille’s second decision, equally wise, was to use verses from the New Testament for his subtitles. You’d be surprised what eloquent and arresting sub- titles those verses make, and not a wisecrack among them! And still another demonstration of his good taste was the adoption of a dull sepia tone for his pho- tography. This softens and en- outlines and texture of it harmonizes with the acter of the story and the reverence due the subj Most of the photography is beautiful, and in certain scenes, notably that of the Last Supper, patterned after Rem- brandt’s painting, it rises to heights rarely scaled with the movie camera. The best the Germans have done in this direc- tion does not surpass it. But this makes it all the more difficult to account for the lapse in the matter of the colored scenes that usher in the first ter. These, with their chromo tints and their doves and lilies, look as if they had been torn from the colored sup- plement of the Sunday World. As for the action, it was in- evitable, of course, that Mr. De Mille should stress those episodes in the story of Jesus that fit in most readily with the movies’ melodramatic tradition. The pic- ture begins with a miracle and ends with the Ascension, and in between there are more miracles Evance.ist—Are you two living in sin? “No—Flatbush.” comicbooks.com