Page:Screenland October 1923.djvu/53

THREE OF THE SEASON'S LEADERS: ROBIN HOOD, THE PILGRIM AND SAFETY LAST

By Frederick James Smith

The Twelve Best Pictures of the Year

1. "The Covered Wagon"

2. "Blood and Sand"

3. "Driven"

4. "The Pilgrim"

5. "Safety Last"

6. "Nanook of the North

7. "Robin Hood"

8. "When Knighthood Was in Flower"

9. "Peter the Great"

10. "Merry-Go-Round"

11. "Where the Pavement Ends"

12. "Down to the Sea in Ships"

Artificiality of Our Films

While American-made pictures have largely failed to catch the fine skill of Lubitsch in cuting deftly into one episode after another of a story, limning each with quick touches of mental and physical clash, they have unquestionably progressed far further in superficial technicalities. No foreign-made picture can approach our own in lighting, staging or photography. But this very perfection in technicalities has led our producers to worship at the feet of false gods. Each one of the three departments is overdone to the detriment of the story. Our producers seem to confuse the magnitude of their settings with the bigness of their stories. All of which has led our screen into the blind alley of artificiality. We have been over-lighting, over-directing, over-acting and over-producing our silent drama.

This year saw the inevitable reaction. Nanook of the North, a picture made under the auspices of a fur selling firm and designed to tell—simply and directly—the life of an Esquimau family of the Far North, made an amazing success. It was different. In reality, it was far more than that. It was vital—and it wasn't overdone.

Away-from-Studio Hits

Soon after that Down to the Sea in Ships was released. This was a story of the whaling adventures of the '50's, made by a professional director, Elmer Clifton, but actually produced and financed by the very descendants of the old time whalers themselves, families living in and about New Bedford, Mass. The picture wasn't much on story, as it was screened, but it did show the hardy days of young America—and it had an "away-from-the-studio" virility. It succeeded surprisingly.

Charles Brabin took a comparatively unimportant company of players into the Georgia mountains and made Driven, which if made in a studio, would have been just another moonshiner picture. But, shot far from railroads and hotel luxuries in the very cabins of its prototypes, it became a living thing. Besides experimenting with a slow tempo, Brabin made the picture for $35,000 and came back to civilization with a fine contribution to the silent drama. It was another "away-from-the-studio" success.

Barthelmess, Emil Jannings, Theodore Roberts, Myrtle Stedman, Laurette Taylor and Ramon Novarro