Haphazard studies in the English Language -II

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Haphazard studies in the English Language -II
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 8 (Issue No. 6) June 1928
Year: 1928
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Fulltext: June, 1928 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 19 and Earth and its tedious, forced situations, shown last week at the same theatre, La Bo•henie is a distinct relief. It is played for the most part in the whirling festivity of mood of op6ra bouffe, it is this spirit which characterizes the acting of John Gilbert throughout the performance. His emotional exhibitionalism is not offensive. The very theatricality of it lifts it above the prosaic and says to the audience, irresistibly, Let’s play! One is swept into the mood and atmosphere of it all. We understand that La Boheme was rehears ed carefully straight through, like a play, before the final screening; that the players were able to go through it without a hitch. This is an ex cellent though highly improbable innovation. It must have taxed the director to the limits of his ingenuity and patience and the cameraman and actors almost beyond endurance. The ever shifting mise-en-scine, from the heights of Mont martre to the depths of the rue Delambre, out side, inside, upstairs, downdale, must have kept the whole outfit whirling like dervishes. Be all that as it may, King Vidor, the director, ought to be satisfied with the result. There is a swift ness, a fluidity about the continuity of scenes that summons an accompanying excitement and tense interest from the audience. We’re In The Navy Now! Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton at the Lyric, in one of the best farces the Great War has yet bequeathed the movies. Beery as Knockout Hansen, who can’t tell a destroyer from the photograph of one, gives another highly amusing clown characterization. He is always oafish, however with a sense of humor, whether in the role of Henry VIII or Knockout Hansen, so by this time oafishness may have come to be confused with Beeryishness. He will probably be con fined to buffoon roles for a long time, and he was such a gorgeous villain. Crafty, vicious, cowardly to the point of perfection. He is a better villain than a clown. But who wouldn’t get frightfully bored after a while as the world’s black beast. Perhaps the rather monumental role of “the world’s sweetheart” finally drove Mary Pickford into retirement. Coming Attractions. Of the “super re leases” announced for June at the Ideal, Tell It To The Marines and The Merry Widow are especially recommended. Tell It To The Marines may be somewhat of a let-down after Foreign Devils, but it is a much better picture. Most of the action takes place in China, but whether in the Marine bar racks in the United States or the American com pound in the imaginary Chinese city where the drama reaches its climax, it is convincing. The picture was made with the whole-hearted coop eration of the U. S. Marines, which accounts in part for its decided success. Naturally the adult-minded public is interested not in means but in results, and in going to the movie theatre seeks loss of self and humdrum surroundings in an illusory world. That the director has difficulties to overcome, is a technical detail, and that he does not fully overcome them is to be expected. The Merry Widow. Directed by one of the rare personalities in screendom who seem to realize that “genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains”. That the movie is like the musical comedy in name only is of no impor tance, and that the story is not particularly ori ginal is beside the point. If the character in hand is a high-ranking member’of the army of a particular Balkan country, von Stroheim is not content to get from the wardrobe mistress some musical comedy costume that may look foreign to American eyes. In every detail he has sought to reproduce an authentic impression of Balkan life. He has created the atmosphere and the illusion of it. One loses sight of the theme’s banality. One does not seem always to hear the creaking of the camera nor to be re minded by jarring incongruities that The Merry Widow is only a movie after all. Some time ago we were wondering how long it would be before the Cinema theatre would pro duce a group of outstanding characterizations uniquely of the silver screen. We expressed the belief that this could not come about until creative artists began to look with sympathy upon this type of theatre as their chosen medium. JUNE RELEASES AT CINE IDEAL “LA BOHEME” LILLIAN GISH —JOHN GILBERT “TELL IT TO THE MARINES” LON CHANEY “FRONTIERSMAN” TIM McCOY “THE MERRY WIDOW” JOHN GILBERT—MAE MURRAY A few years ago a German film corporation, whose name escapes us at the moment, produced the excellent Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. It contained a characterization and a series of situations peculiarly adapted to film production. The photography was in a way futuristic. The fantastic settings proved the unlimited scope the scenario writer and the movie director have. It was a sign of promise for the achievement of pictures that may become internationally per Haphazard Studies in The English Language—II We continue our study of words, paying honor this month to the greatest English philologist of all time, Peter Mark Roget, the author of Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words, a thesaurus being a treasury or storehouse. A dictionary of a language is indispensable, but not enough to impart to the student a sufficient knowledge of the language to avoid the stinted phrase and inept diction. Words have shades of meaning, precise use of them makes for clarity of expression. Here the dictionary serves less, the thesaurus more. “The purpose of an ordi nary dictionary,” says Roget, “is simply to explain the meaning of words; and the problem of which it professes to furnish the solution may be stated thus: the word being given, to find its signification, or the idea it is intended to convey. “The object aimed at in the present under taking is exactly the converse of this; namely, the idea being given, to find the word or words by which that idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed.” There you are, and neatly put. But he adds: "The appropriate terms, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, cannot be conjured up at will. Like ‘spirits of the vasty deep,’ they come not at our call; and we are driven to the employment of a set of words and phrases either too general or too limited, too strong or too feeble, which suit not the occasion, which hit not the mark we manent in the repertory of film producers. The camera seemed literally possessed of a fourth dimension. The picture was shown all over Europe and for a time was much talked of. It ran for months in the Boulevard des Italiens, was taken off, brought back again, when its posters became almost as familiar a landmark as the Cafe de la Paix or Paillard’s just across the street. The role of Doctor Caligari was created by Werner Krauss. He is remarkable, and his attitude of mind together with his physical qualifications and his power to “show” what he is thinking, peculiarly fit him for screen drama. The pageant of ideas constantly in motion in the man’s face is marvelous. His body serves him as adroitly as does his mind. He is a powerfully lithe figure, robust and at the same time sprightly. We have seen him move over the ground in long robes with the limp feet of a witch and never seem to touch the earth. And he does this unaided by trick photography. In New York Herr Krauss appeared recently on the legitimate stage, in Professor Max Rinehardt’s production of The Miracle at the Cen tury. Coming and going as a fascinated spec tator during dress rehearsals, we became more and more convinced that this young German actor belongs to, or should be claimed by, the cinema. The Miracle is a gigantic pantomime, based on the theme of Maeterlinck’s Sister Beatrice. Two thousand people took part in the actual presentation in New York, including a magnificent chorus of three hundred voices and the Fokine ballet. There are three leading roles, the Madonna, the Nun and the Spirit of Evil. Werner Krauss assumed the extremely difficult and delicate role of Evil. He played it as a rather young and alluring satyr who played upon a pipe. While he put over his conception admirably, both as to fragmentaty subtleties and to obvious action, too much of his fineness, too much of the detail of his representations were lost. The spotlight is not so sincere as the close-up. This is true of a theatre a tenth the size of the mam moth Century. The suave blur of stage light ing conceals a great deal of the sequence of emotional ideas expressed in the face, even from those seated far forward in the orchestra. After seeing Herr Krauss play Shylock on the screen,—an original but too fantastic conception of the part,—it was a distinct shock to encounter him in the wings of the Century theatre, devoid of make-up, so youthful it is difficult to believe he can yet be out of the Gymnasium. Won’t somebody bring him to Manila in a recent re lease? aim at; and the result of our prolonged exertion is a style at once labored and obscure, vapid and redundant, or vitiated by the still graver faults of affectation or ambiguity.” Our copy of the thesaurus is of the first Amer ican edition, 1854, the one revised and edited by Barnas Sears, D.D., then secretary of the Massachusetts board of education, and our fondness for old books is our excuse for having it. But there are more modern editions, kept up with the pace the language is making. The intelligent study of English, or of any language, is as interesting as any other study, the pursuit of any other science, one might even say; so by all means one should make himself the owner of a thesaurus, giving him words for his ideas rather than compelling him to trim and shape his ideas to suit the word. We shall illustrate Roget’s point by taking up his treatment of a single word, good. Here is a word much overworked in the Philippines: things are good, positively good, never anything less than the extreme. But they aren’t in fact, only in stilted expression; and observe what they may be in fact— Good, benefit, advantage, service, interest, weal, boot, gain, profit, good turn, blessing; behoof, behalf.—Luck, good fortune, piece of luck, windfall, godsend, bonus; prize. And the contrasts: evil, harm, injury, wrong, curse, IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 20 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL June, 1928 detriment, hurt, damage, disservice, ill turn, grievance, prejudice, loss, mischief, disadvantage, drawback, trouble, annoyance, nuisance, moles tation, oppression, persecution, plague, corrupGood, an adverb: aright, well, favorably, in behalf of, in favor of. Suppose you were conjuring up the opposite of good turn, some of these would be apposite: blow, bruise, scratch, wound, mutilation, out rage, spoliation, plunder, pillage, rapine, de struction, dilapidation, havoc, ravage, devasta tion, inroad, sweep, sack, foray, desolation. Next, capability of producing good: goodness, excellence, value, worth, preciousness, estima tion, rareness, exquisiteness, (good qualities), superexcellence, superiority, supereminence, transcendence, perfection.—To be good, etc.; to be superior, etc., to excel, transcend, top, vie, emulate, etc.—To produce good, benefit, etc., to avail, to profit, to benefit, to be beneficial, etc., to confer a benefit, etc., to improve. Now all that should do lots of good, but there is yet more. Goodness, virtue, righteousness, morality, morals, rectitude, correctness, dutifulness, con scientiousness, integrity, probity, uprightness, nobleness.—Merit, worth, worthiness, desert, excellence, credit, self-control, self-conquest, self-government.—Well doing, good actions, good behavior, the discharge (of obligations), fulfillment, or performance of duty; a wellspent life. Roget does not necessarily group synonyms together, indeed he hardly recognizes the syno nym, which may be said hardly to exist in the language. He proffers a thesaurus, a language treasury, and therefore groups words suggesting related ideas. His aim is to display the soughtfor idea in all its colors and shadings, allowing the customer to choose the particular word or phrase precisely matching the thought he has in mind. Roget’s thesaurus,—others which may be equally helpful are essentially copies,—was the work of fifty years, during most of which time he was secretary of the Royal Society. By 1805, he had the work in definite outline; from then until 1852, the date of the first edition in England, it was a mere matter of accretions. But see the application of the scientific mind, for instance in the following luminous statement: "Disrespect is net merely the absence of respect; its signification trenches on the oppo site idea, namely, contempt. In like manner, untruth is not merely the negative of truth; it involves a degree of falsehood. Irreligion, which is properly the want of religion, is understood as being nearly synonymous with impiety." Yes, have a thesaurus; spend occasional half-hours with it. There is a written language and a spoken one. In speaking, fashion decrees such utter unpretentiousness as verges upon the colloquial. But in writing, sense demands lucidity: a command of a language implies reserves which may be instantly called upon. Eschew oratory, one finds no reserves there; it is all blurted out, in a thousand repetitious platitudes and trite phrases. Pursue, rather, descriptive writing, and sometimes practice it; and have at hand a dictionary and a thesaurus— not for vain or pompous style, but for clarity and simplicity. —W. R. LEADERS Men and Women of Taste and Discrimination Choose Hike Shoes when Buying Footwear Bakuko’s Life Was All Wet: Auspices Always Wrong Hike Shoe Factory 286 - San Marcelino - 286 Bakuko was a Sulu Moro who had simply an awful time with life because the auspices were hardly ever right: more often they were right for bad fortune than for good. Take the time when he was courting, for instance, that pretty Boholana. It is true that she was from another island, even that she was a Christian, and old Moro wives mumbled when they met to chew betel-nut and discuss the neighbors that no good would come of Bakuko’s love for Bohol ana; but then she was so je ne sais quoi that Bakuko couldn’t help loving her. And had he not, for her, the evil eye? Had he not dared look boldly at her as she bathed one well-remembered morning in the river? And had she not smiled, and dived into the stream with the yellow patadion flapping around her lissom ankles, and come up smiling again— sure proof that his evil eye had made her his? Why, certainly. All that must be admitted. But what did her willful parents do? They appealed to the auspices and forces of evil, that’s what. They put their opposition into writing, tied the writing around a stone, and threw the stone as far as they could throw it from the stoop of their house. They even made another writing, like the one around the stone, and hid it in a crotch of a balete tree. The natural result was that these writings freed Boholana from the spell of Bakuko’s evil eye, she didn’t love him any more. But he was equal to this. He performed palkasy to win' Boholana back again. He wrote favorite verses from the Koran, burned them and sprinkled the ashes in Boholana’s rice pot, so that it mingled with the rice she boiled and ate. And he got a lock of her hair, and recited verses over it, morning, noon, and night, always ending the holy incantation with the exclamation palkasy, palkasy! That should have been enough to bring her to him in spite of parental opposition. And it would have been, only the old woman sent to clip a lock of Boholana’s hair had been afraid to go up into the house and snip it off, so she had brought back some carabao’s hair instead—grossly and wickedly deceiving Bakuko. Therefore, when the palkasy worked, Boholana did not come stealthily tripping to Bakuko’s house under the forest shade, but a carabao lumbered up and poked its ugly face through Bakuko’s bedroom window! Bakuko would have taken revenge for this, but the faithless auspices were not right. The old woman who brought him the hair lived a little way down the-coast, and when Bakuko put out in his vinta to go there and thresh her within an inch of her miserable life, lo a half rainbow, bangao pokol, shown athwart the prow, and the punitive expedition had forthwith to be abandoned. If it had been a whole rain bow, or if even the half-rainbow had been at the stern of the vinta, this would have meant that Allah approved of a good whipping for deceitful crones, and Bakuko could have gone ahead. Now he had to turn back, because behind the menacing bangao pokol was storm enough to sink a dozen vintas. “Red Line” ___ “Aristo” Motor Oils Best All Ways A Quality Oil For Every Purpose Manufactured by the Union Oil Co. of California and distributed through the Oil Department of PARSONS HARDWARE CO., Inc. I 517 Ongpin SOLE AGENTS Manila, P. I. MANILA, P. I. They had even turned Allah against him, these evil auspices. Anyway, from Boholana’s parents he would have the dowry back. Since there would be no wedding, was he not justly entitled to the return of the dowry? They might keep the pair of goats and the sack of Saigon rice if they wanted them; he would be generous still on account of Boholana. But he should have back the fifteen silver pesos and the bolts of silk for bright new dresses. He certainly should, and he finally did even better, but he had a hard time doing it. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL