Mr. Lubitsch has received so much public praise that to go against the tide here can not help but seem purely the inspiration of a pig-head. But then there is no denying that Mr. Lubitsch is a contradiction of himself. He talks about suggestion and then does the sledge-hammer trick, he talks about cutting his pictures once when such a feat is an impossibility.
He is an artist, potentially very great without a doubt, but not as mature as many of his sponsors would have us believe. His tours of the American studios will doubtless have a marked effect on his future productions made abroad. It is to be fondly hoped that he will absorb only the good points of American technique and combine these with the good points of his own technique, discarding the bad points of each set. When he accomplishes this I will line up and sing his praises lustily along with the others who now hail him as a Moses in the bullrushes of picturedom.
But wait! After all Mr. Lubitsch is great. He discovered Pola Negri. Hoch!
Chapter XXIV
JOE MAY: GERMAN DIRECTOR
In which it is pointed out that in three of Mr. May's pictures he displays more qualifications to be heralded as Germany's best artist than Mr. Lubitsch.—“The Indian Tomb” a superfine blending of popular appealing pictorial elements
Chapter XXIV
From the standpoint of producing pictures with tremendous popular appeal and at the same time investing them with artistic settings, settings that fairly belie description, and from the standpoint of paying close attention to detail of story and acting, from these standpoints which are all important, Joe May, previously mentioned, “has it,” in the vernacular, “all over” Ernst Lubitsch.
Unfortunately, Mr. May had not, at this writing, ventured to American shores. When he does come it is fondly hoped that the same interviewers and critics who scrambled for words from Mr. Lubitsch and considered them as gold will listen to what Mr. May has to say and consider it worth something more than the German mark.
I would have liked to include a first hand interview from Mr. May in this chapter. If I had wirelessed him for his formulae of production he doubtless would have replied in German idiom: “Get a good story and go to it.”
To date I have seen three of his pictures, one superbly imagined and mounted mystical drama, “The Indian Tomb,” one thrilling serial entitled “The Mistress of the World” and one intense modern society drama at present entitled “Lavinia Morland's Confession.” And so I can only form an opinion as to his method of working, of directing his pictures. And this opinion is that he embraces in his technique all that is meritorious in the American director's technique, exactly what Ernst Lubitsch should do to honestly earn the fulsome praise that is his.