(3 of 4)
During the sojourn at the summer camp, a tragic event occurs. Bad Judd Barr arrives with an alienist. He has written down the details of his father's idiosyncrasies in a little notebook and he now proposes to have Cabot Barr declared incompetent. It takes Cabot Barr no more than five minutes to prove to the alienist that if anyone is incompetent it must be Judd. Nonetheless, the treachery of his son is more than the old man can bear and he is presently hobbling upstairs toward a sick bed. Up to this point The Last Gentleman seems pointed at a deathbed finish. It contains, instead, a sequence in which the administrator of Cabot Barr's estate runs off a homemade moving picture of the old man taking sentimental leave of his kinsfolk after distributing his property according to their just deserts.
In real life, Cabot Barr would be properly described as a superannuated martinet, tedious, ill-mannered and rotten with conceit. On the screen George Arliss makes him a lovable eccentric, whose crotchets seem more charming than malicious. Cinemaddicts who can enjoy a sentimental caricature even when it pretends to be a portrait should like The Last Gentleman. Although, like most Arliss pictures, it often resembles a monolog, his is not the only virtuous performance in it. Charlotte Henry, in her first role since Alice in Wonderland (TIME, Dec. 25), is fat and natural as little Granddaughter Marjorie Barr. Joseph Cawthorn makes his tiny part produce one of the funniest moments in the picture. He is the minister who, while presiding at the Barr memorial service, tries to maintain his dignity while muffling a bad cold.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The story of Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) who, bedridden for a year and presumably dying, is brought back to life and initiated into romance by vital young Robert Browning (Fredric March), would seem at casual glance to be perfect film material. However, in the play by Rudolf Besier, this story presented difficulties. Besier suggests that the reason Elizabeth Barrett's father opposed her marriage to Browning was incestuous desire. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer solves this difficulty by having Father Barrett played by Charles Laughton, who can always leave the unspeakable unspoken. In the handling of an elaborately literary stage piece the cinema producers are less successful. There are big chunks of dialog which, in spite of all Norma Shearer, Fredric March, and Director Sidney Franklin can do, remain just talk. The adapters, instead of squeezing in the accordion folds of the play, have pulled them out, injected a number of scenes which pad the continuity but add nothing to the plot.
Norma Shearer cannot make her sincerity and intelligence compensate for an incorrigible good health. When she staggers toward her bedroom door the audience will find it hard to believe she is an invalid poetess. But nothing can spoil the best scenes of the play: Father Barrett making Elizabeth drink the tankard of porter; Elizabeth getting out of bed for the first time; Elizabeth making Browning explain his poetry to her.