WHERE HOLLYWOOD HAS FAILED

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 25

WHERE HOLLYWOOD HAS FAILED

“FILM-EUROPE” IS IN THE MAKING ! ‘ GERMAN ENTERPRISE The history of the German film industry is intimately connected I with the personality of Herr Eric j Pommer, who was responsible for the production of those brilliant | pictures, “Vaudeville,” “Metro- ! polis,” “Faust” and “Waltz Dream,” which have won worldwide approval. The return of Herr Pommer from America, where he went like so many of his compatriots a few years ago, is regarded as a good augury for Germany’s programme in the coming year. His Hollywood experiences, which may have an important bearing on European production, are likely to be of the greatest value to the German UFA company (writes an English correspondent) . “I can see changes In Hollywood. It is not deaf to European criticism, but so sensitive to what is going on over here that anybody with a reputation is invited to cross the Atlantic. European successes, and the reasons for their success, are carefully studied. One surprising result of this is that the stereotyped ‘happy ending’ is no longer compulsory, though Dostoievsky and his school are still taboo, as no doctrine of unadulterated pessimism may be preached. “But somebody not the villain of th« piece is now permitted to die in a popular picture, and feelings at the end may be harrowed providing the happiness of somebody accrues from the harrowing. This is a big step forward where high-class production is concerned. As regards the desire for happy films, I have noticed in Berlin that the Russian films find their most appreciative audience in the West End, and that the

proletariat by no means displays the same enthusiasm for pictures show ing their own misery intensified. “To me there is also something very noteworthy in the fact of Emil Jan nings’s phenomenal success in ‘Vaudeville’ and in ‘The Way of All Flesh.’ Here America accepts as a great

popular star a man no longer young, not handsome, not gifted -svith any o C the accepted attributes of masculine success on the films.