MUSICAL CLASSIFICATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 18

MUSICAL CLASSIFICATION

RATING A DETECTIVE STORY $ Every type of motion picture play may bo described in terms of music. Screen comedies are foxtrots. Character dramas are marches. Society dramas are minuets. Pictures of high romantic tone are sonatas. Tragedies are dirges. Mystery stories are concert symphonies. That is the opinion of Frank Tuttle, Paramount director, who in thus classifying pictures, gives a definite and understandable meaning to the abstract term “screen tempo.” Tuttle is directing William Powell in “The Benson Murder Case” for Paramount and gives the following explanation of the mystery type of picture: “A. detective story is a concert symphony because many beats and movements must enter into it if it is to bo successful,” he says. “The climaxes must bo fast and hard-hit. The intervening moments must be either slow and calming or quick steps of humour. There are pianissimo, staeatto, crescendo. allegro and grandiose movements. and all in rhythmic order in the successful mystery play.” -Tho Benson Murder Case” features F.ugeno Pallette. K. H. Calvert, Jean Arthur. Xeil Hamilton. May Beatty and William Boyd in the supporting cast.

At last John Barrymore comes into □is own through the medium of Vitaphone. In his first all-talking production, ‘‘General Crack,” we see a new Barrymore, his voice resonant and nlear, his acting superb. As the romantic General Crack, who was not jmly a gallant soldier but also a stalwart lover. Barrymore gives a performance that is unrivalled on the talking screen today.