Mob Scenes In Which Each Extra Has A Part

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 147, 17 March 1939, Page 14

Mob Scenes In Which Each Extra Has A Part

PRANK LLOYD’S newest picture, “If I Were King,” gives him his best opportunity to date to show what he can do with mass-action scenes.

“In the old days,” said Lloyd, “a director could mass a couple of thousand extras in a square, give each of them a torch or flag to wave, and call it a scene! But that’s not enough nowadays. Today every member of a mob scene must do his or her share of the acting or the scene will look stilted and bogus. In ‘lf I Were King’ I selected two thousand players to support my leading characters, Ronald Colman. Frances Dee and Basil Rathbone, and took as many pains coaching the most ordinary extra as I did with the stars themselves?’ Lloyd’s technique in handling mob scenes consists of flashing his camera for a split second at a few members of the crowd, then giving a moment’s glimpse of another, and so on. In this way the scene consists more of a number of short shots, each with its own meaning, than of a mere bird’s-eye view of a thousand people.

The biggest mass scene in “If I Were King” forms the dramatic climax of the picture. It is a battle between the Burgundian army, made up of Europe’s most powerful troops on one side, and battalions formed by Francois Villon out of the Paris populace on the other.