NCE again it falls to the lot of ONCE this occasionally grateful reviewer to consider, on the same page, two pictures of unusual worth. They are "Stella Dallas," directed by Henry King, and "The Big Parade," directed by King Vidor. It would be hard to imagine two movies more utterly opposite in type: the first is a simple, ultra-sentimental heart-throb story-the other, a spectacular, harsh, raw-meaty and somewhat sardonic drama of that grim travesty, the Great War. They are both splendid pictures. They are both worth seeing. "STELLA DALLAS" deals with that most popular of all emotions, mother love-the same theme that animated such stalwart box-office successes as "Over the Hill" and "Humoresque." The mother of "Stella Dallas," however, can not by any stretch of the imagination be confused with the graywigged, bespectacled, simpering, holierthan-thou old pest who represents the conventional mother on the screen. Stella Dallas is a coarse, gross woman, painfully devoid of the most ordinary social graces, gaudy but not neat-a ridiculous person and an inexpressibly pitiful one. She had married a lonely young man, an aristocrat by birth, who had rapidly outgrown her and had left her to care for the daughter who resulted from their brief and none too appropriate union. But the father was unwise enough to bequeath to his daughter the sensitiveness and good taste which had been his own heritage, and when the girl grows up, it is evident that she too has soared above her mother's level of drab mediocrity. The mother, of course, sees thisand the latter portions of the story are devoted to her laborious attempts at self-sacrifice. In these two rôles-of mother and daughter-Belle Bennett and Lois Moran give performances of great beauty. Miss Bennett approximates perfection in her portrayal of crude Henry King again demonstrates the There are just two bad elements in the picture. Miss Bennett's costumes are at times so grotesquely exaggerated as to destroy all the fine subtlety of her own performance. The weird regalia that she wears appear to have been gathered from the costume trunks of an old "Zaza" troupe. It is a harsh note in an otherwise harmonious production. Then there is the trite ending, in which the mother stands out in the rain and watches her daughter tremble through the marriage ceremony. This same conclusion has been arrived at dozens of times before. It is stale. the doughboys dash over the top carrying the American flag. This is due primarily to the fact that Laurence Stallings wrote the story, and was allowed to select the director and the most important members of the cast. Mr. Stallings kept his story down to the simplest possible terms, avoiding anything that might remotely resemble a complication of plot, and he displayed remarkable judgment in choosing King Vidor as director, and John Gilbert and Renée Adoree as stars. FOR these reasons "The Big Parade" is a marvelous picture, a picture that can be ranked among the few genuinely great achievements of the screen. The initial credit must go to Mr. Stallings, but the final honors belong to King Vidor, who thus substantially justifies all the loud salutes that, I am happy to say, have been fired in his behalf in this department. He proves here what he indicated in "Wild Oranges": that he is a director of intelligence and imagination. He has made war scenes that possess infinitely more than the usual spectacular thrill; he has made war scenes that actually resemble war. When he advances a raw company of infantry through a forest which is raked by machine gun fire, he makes his soldiers look scared, sick at their stomachs, with no heart for the ghastly business that is ahead. What is infinitely more important, he causes the sleek civilian in the audience to wonder, "Why, in God's name, did they have to do that?" He has shown an American soldier, suddenly wild with the desire to kill, trying to jab his bayonet into the neck of a dying German sniper. He has shown the look on that sniper's face, and the horrible revulsion that overcomes the American boy. I doubt that there is a single irregular soldier, volunteer or conscripted, who did not experience that same awful feeling during his career in France-who did not recognize the impulse to with draw the bayonet and offer the dying Heinie a cigarette. ALTHOUGH the war scenes are naturally predominant in "The Big Parade," the picture itself is essentially a love story-and a supremely stirring one at that. Renée Adoree, who appears for a very short time in the early part of the story, and again at the finish, manages to impress herself so vitally on the audience that her presence, in the dim background, is never for an instant forgotten. Both she and John Gilbert are brilliantly | effective. There is great work by Tom O'Brien and Karl Dane, as two rough and blasphemous but typical crusaders of the A. E. F.; indeed, the entire army that moves forward with "The Big Parade" is recognizable and real. IT T is recorded that when Laurence Stallings went to Hollywood to write "The Big Parade," he failed to endear himself to the denizens of that strange community. In fact, he intimated in print that the great majority of them were dim-wits. This caused all the local mental giants to pray feverishly that Stallings' maiden effort as a photodramatist would prove to be a flop. It seems that these embittered yearnings are not to be gratified. The movies need some more men who can insult them and, at the same time, produce pictures like "The Big Parade." R. E. Sherwood. (For review next week-"The Eagle," "The New Commandment," "The Beautiful City," and "Stage Struck.") “I Something Must Be Done JUST shaved the cashier of the First, Second and Third National," said H. George Chadwick, No. 5 barber in the Hotel New Trianon, Jonesville. "He said he had just smashed his third wrist-watch against the vault while throwing up his hands, so he's decided to quit wearing one. He says that if it wasn't for keeping Jonesville on the map he'd be against bank holdups; but they give a town lots of publicity. "We don't have near as much crime here in proportion to the population as they do in Terre Haute or Peoria and the Chamber of Commerce is afraid people will think we're not up-to-date. We're ahead on the number of filling stations and auto accidents but the people here seem a little too weak on crime to get anywhere as a town." Rime to Be Carried in a Vanity Case I am still yours very truly. Clip this verse, my lady fair, Of my passion's warm endurance; (On some very busy day) Will be spoken anyway! -S. K., in Spokane Spokesman-Review. The foreign trade supplied from LIFE'S London Office, Rolls House, Breams Buildings, London, E. C. Canadian distributor, The American News Company, Ltd., 386-388 St. James Street, Montreal, Canada. No contributions will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. LIFE does not hold itself responsible for the loss or non-return of unsolicited contributions. Notice of change of address should reach this office two weeks prior to the date of issue to be affected. The Louvain Library Fund As little Belgium has now arranged for funding her debt to the United States, how would it be for us to follow suit by finishing the Louvain Library, just to show our country is not indifferent, especially in this season of peace and good will? America absolutely promised the Belgians we would rebuild their Library, to aid their recovery after the losses of the War, and construction work is now under way, but more money is needed. The new building is to be a memorial to our soldiers who died on foreign soil. Our friends have already sent us $947. Help us to make it $1,000 by Christmas, please, and after that, as much as you can spare, for our national honor is involved in this Library matter. Previously acknowledged....$932.00 5.00 $947.00 Grandfather Ever watch an old man indulge his appetite like a youngster who never heard of indigestion? Watch him when he is finished-perhaps he takes a Stuart's tablet, and that explains it! The gloomiest dyspeptic could be eating butterscotch pie, if he only used Stuart's tablets. Is there 100% relief for dyspepsia-indigestion-sour stomach? Yes! These ailments are not caused by what you eat. Give your digestive system a chance, and it will function with almost any kind of food-even doughnuts; baked beans; dishes cooked with onions. Stuart's dyspepsia tablets give your stomach the alkaline it needs-and that's all there is to it! Men and women of every age, in all walks of life, have sworn by Stuart's-for more than thirty years. Hearty eatershard smokers-high livers-have found Stuart's a boon and blessing! Your First Box FREE! Any druggist in the land has Stuart's dyspepsia tablets. A big box is only 60cthey are less than a penny apiece! So, why suffer? Get a 25c metal box of Stuart's for the pocket-and keep it filled. One box free if you write the F. A. Stuart Company, Dept. 8, Marshall, Mich. STUART'S DYSPEPSIA TABLETS An Account of Stewardship FIFTY years ago Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was busy upon a new invention-the telephone. The first sentence had not been heard; the patent had not been filed; the demonstration of the telephone at the Centennial Exposition had not been made. All these noteworthy events were to occur later in the year 1876. But already, at the beginning of the year, the basic principle of the new art had been discovered and Bell's experiments were approaching a successful issue. The inventor of the telephone lived to see the telephone in daily use by millions all over the world and to see thousands of developments from his original discovery. If he had lived to this semicentennial year, he would have seen over 16,000,000 telephones linked by 40,000,000 miles of wire spanning the American continent and bringing the whole nation within intimate talking distance. He would have seen in the Bell System, which bears his name, perhaps the largest industrial organization in the world with nearly $3,000,000,000 worth of public-serving property, owned chiefly by an army of customers and employees. He would have seen developed from the product of his brain a new art, binding together the thoughts and actions of a nation for the welfare of all the people. |