Ronald Colman Talks Of “Beau Geste”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 358, 19 May 1928, Page 23

Ronald Colman Talks Of “Beau Geste”

Film Favourites HOLIDAY IN LONDON ]>ONALD COLMAN, when “ on holiday in London recently, was asked to express his views on films and filmland.

Nowhere do you find keener film- ] goers than among actors. This bus-: man’s enthusiasm I must confess to j sharing, though it was not until 1 first saw “Broken Blossoms” —many years ago—that the unique potentialities o£ the screen really dawned on me. Of old pictures, that is the one 1 recall with the deepest pleasure: and Richard Barthelmess, so exeel--len t, too, in “ Tol’able David,” has no greater admirer. "E a r t hbound,” with its dignified and powerful theme oi life after death was another fav- nv“,e*.w ourite. . , Among the stars Douglas Fairbanks delights me most of all. He was always good, but heimproves with every production. Fairbanks is more than an actor —the very living embodiment of grace and of energy. Without him even such magnificent films as “The Black Pirate” and his newest one, “The Gaucho,” would lose much of their supreme merit: splendid and inspiriting as they are, it is to the star that they owe their genius. Of recent productions, “Underworld” is one of the most arresting. I yield to no one in praise of Clive Brook’s and George Bancroft’s performances in this gripping story of Chicago’s gunmen. It is so much an exposure that 1 wonder it was not severely censored in some parts of the United States. The funniest scene in it shows crooks great and small assembling for a crooks’ ball, which, one gathers, is being given under police protection. Some of the lawless revellers, on this their night off, voluntarily givh up their small arms with their hats and coats. Others, in obedience to a notice “Guns Parked Here,” are searched and relieved of their weapons before joining in the general merriment. “Mechanical Perfection” Though “Sunrise” was criticised unfavourably by many people, to me it seemed a wonderful and an invaluable experiment. If picture making has almost attained perfection as far as mechanics go, nevertheless it is essential for films to break away again and again from fixed conventions and from monotonous and stereotyped treatment. Fresh ideas and an original manner are badly needed. “Sunrise” was something really new. Full of pictorial beauty, it succeeded in introducing an impressionistic rather than the realistic method (common in Hollywood) of telling a story. And films I have appeared in? Naturally, I retain a real partiality for my first, “The White Sister,” in which by amazingly good luck X was given so fine a role in so fine a picture, instead of beginning in smaller and less interesting parts (at which at that time I should have jumped) in inferior stories. The best fun I ever had was while “Her Sister from Paris” was being made. What with a sparkling plot and Constance Talmadge—both would have been a joy to any player—it was sheer delight. As a matter of fact, I cherish a perhaps entirely misplaced aspiration to appear in more comedies one of these days. If I have left mention of “Beau Geste” until last, it is only because, from the moment they gave me the story to read, its spiritual and dramatic value impressed me so deeply, and acting in it was so absorbing—even inspiring—that, to tell the truth, I was so lost in it that, even to this day, unless I had been told I would not know whether it was a good picture or not. It stands alone in my mind, or perhaps X should say in my affections. To me "Beau Geste” was not a film but a tremendous experience.