New-York tribune., 1919-05-04
Ben
A1exandm'
Razto

nine out Of hundred. 1t is simply
that the star part will hold acting.
When the worst has been said of
melodrama, it deals with vital emo
tlons. 1t offers q situation, conceived
perhaps with about the literary effect
OF wicked woman sends innocent man
prison ten years." bat when a woman,
wicked or virtuous, sends an innocent
man or any other kind of a man to
prison for ten years there is, dra-
matlcally, something doing; we have
the emotional crisis by which an actor
may reveal to us what he can of our
unplumbed, unchartcd nature, and some
J OF the strange conditionings of our
fate. Up to the point whore it stoops
to coincidence in order to get it's happv
ending melodrama is of the same stuff
as ragcdy-Hamlet's feeling at sight
OF his fathers ghost would b. Of no
different quality, however, it might
turn out afterward thai he na u
misinformed about fathers demise
and up to that point there is no reason
why melodrama will not hold as much
acting of the very highest quality as
the actor likes to thrust into it.
John Barrymore's Owen Wingrave
IS not Everywhere, but is reminted in
to an Individual whom we know first
as a romantic boy, at once formal and
unworldly, horribly bewildered; we see
'he frenzylng torture Of prison monot-
ony turn him into ruined and ruin
Gus ghost, we go with him up to the very
heart of pain, of irony and exhaustion
and watch him emerge through phases
OF lmplsh and diabolic wildness into
that sardonic artist in triumph who
touches the silly story with flashes of
mallgn light like the curses of the
Hebrew prophets; and every step of
the way he is identified, defined, in
tensely energized as the same human
creature. 1t is this unbroken enerpv
OF imagination which Is really stagger-
ing. Here Is some one who seems IN
have no capacity whatever for loafing,
tor lying back on his oars, for even
an instant of the standarized tha Sec
ond-hand conception; there is not the
emptlest pause, the most unsignifvinc
inch Of flm-take the moment bc-
fore the pigeon shooting, for instance.
or the beginning of the morning ride
which escapes outside the Individuality
OF the character; which gets by him
without that characters brand. If
there is going on anywhere, outside
The Jest" Itself, anything more dis
slnguished, Of a higher mettle,
sharper passion, an execution more
exact we should. Of course, be greatly
obliged for the address. But what we
really want to ask the cult members
is why they earn the right to sniff at
us simply by being unable to see what
is going on in the movies?
Perhaps we shall form q cult Of our
own, barring only people who do not
recognize acting whenever and where.
ever they see it and pay it prompt allie
glance, instead Of being unable to rec
ognlze it except In the company of fa
nous authors. In such people we should
like to leave sticking our porcupine
quill that acting does not become
sacredly and exclusively theirs because
they salute 1t among all the eloquence
and color, plot and pageantry that
authors and painters can weave round
1t; that in the last analysis 1t is in
dependent of pageantry and color and
eioquence, practically of plot itself,
and needs only a white space on which
to throw Its shadow.