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Harold Brighouse, Pictures and the Picturegoer, London, Dec. 1925

„One saw them all“

Editorial content. „The Magic City

      By Harold Brighouse

      In a street parade in San Francisco, which was part of the

celebration of California‘s Diamond Jubilee, I noticed

a covered waggon of the pioneers with the legend on its canvas

,California or Bust.‘ That spirit of the /49 exists to-day:

as a car drove me to Merced along a road inches deep in the

hot and extraordinary penetrating Californian dust,

I saw two youths in knickerbockers, with knapsacks; printed

in large lettering on their knapsacks was ,Pittsburgh

to Los Angeles.‘ Modern pilgrims tramping to the modern

Mecca!“ (...)

      „The studios may be of wood or, like Mr. Chaplin‘s

English Village or the reproductions of Washington‘s house,

they may aim at individuality in their exteriors. Inside

the studios, the American passion for organisation manifests

itself.“ (...)

      „Now, we criticise the movies, but one thing at least

which this director said to me seems especially true.

The theatre audience, he said, learns slowly; very gradually

was it educated away from crude melodrama, while

in ten years the movie audience has passed beyond the

melodrama stage and demands something much

more subtle than did its predecessor of say, the war-period.

      There is, he admitted, what he called a yokel-audience,

whose simple demands have to be met, but the average film of

to-day is on a higher level than that of ten years ago.

      Yes. Then why in Hollywood itself, in the Egyptian kinema

with attendant girls in Egyptian costume and Egyptian

soldiers doing sentry-go on the very roof – why do they find

it necessary to ,present‘ a film with so much

elaboration?

      There was, first, a film showing star after star in the act

of receiving invitations to attend the first performance

of The Gold Rush, Chaplin‘s latest film. One saw them all,

all the famous faces, and I daresay this film lasted

twenty minutes. After it was the ,presentation,‘ one a full-sized

stage, and Mr. De Courville himself could not have

invented a more elaborate, more spectacular forty minutes

than this combination of ballet and cabaret show.

      After that, one reached the film, and a very good film,

too, full of happiest invention. It seems to me that

Mr. Chaplin who always had the wistful pathos of the true

comedian, has increased his pathos without

diminishing his comedy and that, consequently, The Gold Rush

improves upon his classic film Shoulder Arms.“ (...)

Redaktioneller Inhalt

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