Cinema: The New Pictures Sep. 15, 1930

Three Faces East (Warner). “Three Faces East” is the password of German spies operating in England, who answer when they hear it “Forward and Back.” At the root of it all is the master spy, Erich Von Stroheim, whose allegiance to his Vaterland is not adulterated when the King of the Belgians decorates him for valor. The story is highly theatrical but, in view of what is known of the actualities of international espionage during the War, not excessively romanticized. It is good entertainment, smoothly built and wonderfully acted by Von Stroheim and Constance Bennett who make it convincing in spite of such occasional absurdities of direction as U-boats skirting the Irish coast with deck lights.

In Hollywood in 1914, Erich von Stroheim was the symbolic Hun officer whom people at that time would pay to hate. It was rumored that he came of a noble Austrian family. His knowledge of European military technique and court etiquette seemed to bear out his claim that he had graduated from the Imperial Military Academy. During years of penury in the U. S. he had been a flypaper salesman, riding master, lifeguard, section hand, bundle wrapper, and forest ranger. When Hun villains were no longer in demand he sold Carl Laemmle the idea for a picture—The Pinnacle. Laemmle changed the name to Blind Husbands. “No one vill go to see de pinochle.” Von Stroheim directed and played the lead. He arranged stories for other pictures. His best was Greed, based on McTeague, by Frank Norris. In his eagerness to make every job a masterpiece he consistently refused to conform to the commercial limitation of picture making. His films had to be cut to pieces to reduce them to program time. Producers became wary. His Wedding March, acclaimed by critics, was too expensive to yield profits. After he had spent many hundred thousand dollars directing Gloria Swanson in Queen Kelly he was ousted, the picture never released. A brilliant director, an arrogant, independent personality, he has become an actor again by necessity.

Let’s Go Native (Paramount). In spite of hilarious moments of good slapstick, and the deft spontaneous playing of Jack Oakie, this is the kind of picture that disappoints its makers and audiences because neither can figure out why it isn’t funnier. The trouble really is that it is a comedy built around a comic situation. That is a dramatic fallacy. Only the great geniuses of slapstick—and Oakie’s talent is not for that—can make a funny situation funny. Laughter comes far more easily from a “straight” situation that has been turned comic by some attitude that makes it ridiculous or by the presence of a character who does not belong in it. As a taxidriver, a ship’s steward, and finally a castaway on a desert island, Oakie through the rambling plot has nothing to satirize; the only way that he can satirize the tedious job of being funny all the time is by being inadvertently dull for long stretches. People who find the picture outmoded in its song and chorus numbers may be reminded that Let’s Go Native was made some time ago, before Oakie had officially become a star; for some reason its release was delayed. Typical shots: moving men in a girl’s apartment; passengers on a steamer throwing each other’s hats overboard; hula hula girls on the desert island talking in the manner of East Manhattan.

L’Enigmatique Monsieur Parkes (Paramount). When Adolphe Menjou left Hollywood for France, his somewhat abrupt disappearance from the top flight of film stars was attributed to his inability to make sound pictures. But others said that he had left because his ideas about his salary, temperamentally expressed, had finally tired the Paramount company. Certainly the first rumor is contradicted by what he does here. It is a dialog picture made completely in French for foreign export—an adaptation of the film released in the U. S. as Slightly Scarlet, with Clive Brook and Evelyn Brent. Menjou’s voice is as suave as his pantomime and he uses it deftly, talking his own language. Claudette Colbert is cast with him and they are supported by a French cast recruited in Hollywood, where L’Enigmatique Monsieur Parkes was made.