Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/52

THREE OF THE YEAR'S BEST FILMS: THE COVERED WAGON, DRIVEN AND BLOOD AND SAND

^TheSCREEN YEAR in REVIEW

There are any number of significant features to the screen year which closed on August 1st.

First in importance—superficially, at least—has been the avalanche of costume dramas. And the end is not yet in sight, although there is every indication of an overproduction of the romantic picture.

Of more genuine importance is the vogue of picture successes made away from the maddening studio. This we credit to the artificiality of our motion pictures in over-lighting, over-production, indeed, over-everything.

The third—and highly disastrous—element of the film year was the general slump of our directors. Only two or three came through the gruelling twelve months without at least one cinema disaster to their credit. It certainly was a bad year for the megaphone gentry.

The Best Performances of the Year

1. Florence Vidor in "Main Street"

2. Ernest Torrence in "The Covered Wagon"

3. May Marsh in "The White Rose"

4. Emily Fitzroy in "Driven"

5. Rodolph Valentino in "Blood and Sand"

6. Charles Chaplin in "The Pilgrim"

7. Emil Jannings in "Peter the Great"

8. Charles Ray in "The Girl I Loved"

9. John Sainpolis in "The Hero"

10. Myrtle Stedman in "Famous Mrs. Fair"

An Interesting Year

All in all, it was an interesting year. The silver-sheet came out of its slump and attempted many things. The steady trend of romancism—the production of one costume opus after another—was a curious thing. It dates back, as Mr. Robert E. Sherwood points out on another page, to the first presentation of Pola Negri and Ernest Lubitsch's Passion in this country in 1921. Up to that point there had been a positive belief that audiences did not want to see stories of another day. A curious theory—and yet it completely barred the romantic play from the screen until the German-made Passion proved its fallacy.

Immediately America launched into the costume field. One important element of the successful German costume pictures was overlooked by most of our native producers. That was the fact that Ernest Lubitsch, in making Passion, Deception, and one or two other pictures, had succeeded in making his characters live. They were no mere cardboard folk sporting swords and wigs. Some measure of this ability to re-create the pulsating atmosphere of another day got into Robin Hood and When Knighthood Was in Flower. But there was much more of this fine spirit in Peter the Great, the visualization of the colorful life of the adventurer who founded the Russian empire.

Individual Hits Were Scored by Charlie Chaplin. Mae Marsh, Ernest Torrence, Emily Fitzroy. Dick