“Passion” and “Deception,” produced under the direction of the man considered Germany's foremost director, Ernst Lubitsch, represent the best in the German art that has yet been extensively shown here in the United States. There is another production, however, “The Indian Tomb,” called so temporarily at least, and directed by a gentleman with the unassuming cognomen of Joe May, that is destined to far overshadow anything that Mr. Lubitsch has yet been responsible for. But of this production more anon.
HERE IS THE SCENE FROM CECIL DE MILLE'S “FORBIDDEN FRUIT” THAT AMAZED ERNST LUBITSCH
ELSIE FERGUSON IN THE GEORGE FITZMAURICE PRODUCTION OF “PETER IBBETSON”
Mr. Lubitsch, as said, has been accorded tremendous praise on this side of the Atlantic. The New York critics swept him up to the plane with D. W. Griffith as soon as “Passion” and “Deception” were publicly shown, and Mr. Lubitsch positively doesn't belong beside Mr. Griffith, despite the fact that he is a great artist. However and notwithstanding the critics have formed such a habit of awarding fulsome praise to everything that bears the Lubitsch name that the situation is becoming funny. A gentleman in the production department of one of the large film companies recently advanced the thought that the company should release a domestic picture, long considered inferior for the American market, with the name Lubitsch upon it and the line “made in Germany” stamped across its face. No matter how bad it was these counterfeits would assure it of good reviews was the contention.
When the work of Mr. Lubitsch is seriously considered and balanced, the good points and the bad points, the conclusion must inevitably be reached that he is an artistic director, but lacking or rather, to give him the benefit of the doubt, slighting details of production and story, that give every great picture its lasting stamp of individualism. In a previous chapter it was contended that the majority of German directors, in the production of spectacular works, overlooked the personal story in an effort to be awe-inspiring with their mob scenes. In a sense this criticism holds true with Mr. Lubitsch. Details of story mean little to him. In fact, on his first visit to the United States, when interviewed, he expressed amazement over the fact that Cecil De Mille in one of his pictures, “Forbidden Fruit,” to be exact, brought out the predicament of the heroine, a social masquerader, by planting in closeups her hesitancy about the selection of the right fork for the various courses of a dinner. Such detail work, which goes a long way toward humanizing a story no matter how melodramatic the structure of the whole thing may be, is unknown to the German directors of which Mr. Lubitsch is, at the moment, the bright and shining example.
Consequently, it may be asked: How can Mr. Lubitsch be placed beside the American, D. W. Griffith, when in such details Mr. Griffith excels? His latest spectacle, “Orphans of the Storm,” is proof again that he is a master of blending the personal story with the spectacular background.
At present, economic situations in Germany permit the production of spectacles there on a scale of lavishness which our American directors could not duplicate without sending their backers into bankruptcy. Labor is so cheap that the most magnificent settings can be erected in the German studios for small sums of money, sums that would be small even if the rate of exchange between Germany and the United States which makes them seem ridiculously small, was more evenly balanced. Thus a new field of effects is open to the German director that is correspondingly being denied the American director by the increasing cost of labor and materials.
Mr. Lubitsch is one of those who has made excellent use of these magnificent settings provided him. He has peopled them with thousands of supernumeraries and he is a born artist when it comes to directing the movements and actions of great groups of people. He manages to get more movement and color into such scenes than the great majority of American directors have managed to achieve in the past.