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Show I r Indignant Protests at the Way Recent Films I 1 Treat the French Revolution and Certain ,4 -, ' " . I Pouring molten lead into the y';-- '' i.J-. ... veins of a peasant one of the scenes in the American film which French royalist sympathizers think a cruel injustice to the nobili of Louis XVI's time SIN'CE America and France fought side by side in the World War many points of disajrrecment have arisen between the two nation?. The latest subject on Which the former for-mer Allies have taken opposite 6i'des is that of motion pictures. Two American-marie American-marie films which are being received in this country with enthusiasm have peeved Paris as few things have since the Germans trained their long-range guns on the city. One of the films which a large section of the French public finds positively unbearable un-bearable is "Orphans of the Storm," a photoplay based on the- thrilling story of the French Revolution, told by Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities." The other is a picture dealing with alleged incidents in the spicy career ca-reer of Cleo de Merode, the celebrated heauty and dancer, who was so long the love pet of old King Ieopold of Belgium. The recent attempt to show "Orphans of the Storm" in Paris was attended by riotous demonstrations in the theater and the streets outside that outdid out-did some of the mob scenes in the picture pic-ture itself. As for the film that deals 60 frankly with the career of Cleo do Merode, she threatens to invoke the law to have it barred from France, To understand why there should be such serious objection to the historical background used in "Orphans of the Storms," one has to understand something some-thing of French history and present-day political conditions. Although France, like the United States, is a republic, it contains a large, rich and influential body of citizens who would like to see the country again governed by a monarchy. These people are called royalists. Many of them still cling to the noble titles which have been handed down in ' their families from the days when France was ruled by a king or emperor, but which have had no legal standing since the country became a republic. They would welcome any crisis in the nation's affairs that would enable them to overthrow the present form of government gov-ernment and set up in its place a monarchy, mon-archy, with a descendant of the old royal family to wear the crown. The French Revolution that kicked old Louis XVI off his throne and into an untimely grave was the first of the popular popu-lar upheavals that put an end to royalty In France. Naturally, therefore, the ' royalist sympathizers do not regard the revolution as anything like the blessing that other people think it. They object particularly to what they consider the mistaken idea that right was all on the side of the revolutionists and that King Louis and the other aristocrats aris-tocrats were a dissolute, extravagant and generally worthless lot who got only what they deserved. This is why they object so seriously to "Orphans of the Storm" because they think it gives an entirely untrue, a wickedly unjust picture of the aristocrats aristo-crats who went down to defeat in the revolution more than a century ago. Although it is now believed that the royalists had received advance reports of the nature of the picture from America Amer-ica and England, they made no public protest against it until the night o? its first showing in France The first outburst of trouble came when the film plot reached the point where a nobleman is revealed as a i 1 -lainous wretch who would find the keenest keen-est delight in ruining Lillian Gish. The fashionably dressed audience was suddenly sud-denly tranjformcd into an angry mob. The air seethed with hisses and from cery part of the auditorium came loud cries of disapproval. The din increased when the wicked nobleman's servants left the blind orphan or-phan (Dorothy Gish) in the street and carried off her sister with a bag over her head. By the time the scene was reached where the captive girl is brought in to add to the nobles' enjoyment of their midnight debaucheries Mi the hostile iicnion: tration a--sumed the proportions of a riot and the theater manager nnxiously telephoned for the police. Their arrival restored some semblance of order for a few minutes, but there was another outburst more violent than before at sight of the peasant being tortured tor-tured with hot lead. Again, when the film showed the nobleman's coach ruthlessly ruth-lessly running down a little girl, the crowd let loose its passions a3 only a French crowd can. The orchestrn had long since given up the attempt to make itself heard above the din 3 and the last reels of the picture pic-ture were hurried through amid the wildest dis order, w hen the ' v angry crowd finally stormed out of the j theater it gathered in - ' the street and con- tinued its riotous f demonstration far in- to the night. , ' Th i)' ;t day ;i number ..f the- I'.in-' .. : ' n v. p a p r r- eminent. em-inent. i I !. ! . : on the film. One of '' "ll v. iw ;, l - X. &l ; lieve Mr. Griffith, the French li'bilit I-.?- ' . fore 1789 took pleas- $&r "' i,. ure in crushing children under the wheels of its carriages, car-riages, had peasants' veins opened in order to pour hot lead into them, violated young girls and spent the rest of its time in orgies and debauches, of which he gives us a surfeit of pictures. "It is inadmissible that a foreigner should take upon himself thus to travesty trav-esty an epoch whose faults and qualities we know much better than he, and one must ask what the censors were thinking of to allow a film which denotes so unfriendly un-friendly a spirit toward French history. Fortunately, Parisians will know how to act as their own censors and avoid the picture theaters which make the mistake mis-take of showing this film." D. W. Griffith, who produced "Orphans "Or-phans of the Storm," expressed amazement amaze-ment when he read the cabled descriptions descrip-tions of the indignation the picture ha3 aroused in Taris. He declared that all the scenes to which objection was made-had made-had Charles Dickens and Thomas Car- Spicy Episodes in the Career of&Jk Beautiful Cleo 1 de Merode ifi 1 r 'A ' '-Yf.T It s' MS ' .t. '': ',,"''! ' sA! t'tL' ' I t - "V . V . . A rA . ' ' :'S$ ' S' '''"":- VV. - i.-rtv4' " ; ? -' ' ; . ' v ; Lfllain Gish as she looks in the film that was received in Paris with riotous disapproval t a c i-lothprl Even this charming scene is criticized as giving a wrong impression of the French nobility's fondness for luxury and frivolity lyle for their authority and the version of many of the horrors given by these two authors had been greatly modified in the film. A few days after the exciting first showing of "Orphans of the Storm" another an-other American film had its Pans premiere pre-miere one that pretends to picture the hectic career of Cleo de Merode. This time there was no riot, but Cleo herself, less eager for any kind of publicity than she was in her younger days, denounced it as a cruel libel and promised to take legal steps to prevent its further r' showing in France. "The picture," she says, "la an offense to decent people and a gross misrepresentation misrep-resentation of my life. As a classical classi-cal dancer I was always decently clothed, but no one would ever guess it from seeing this photoplay." Cleo de Merode sprang into fame and accumulated a fortune for herself when she attracted the attention of Leopold, father of the present King of the Belgians. Bel-gians. Sho was the daughter of a coal heaver and was only seventeen years old when her beauty and grace on the stage captivated the amorous old monarch. mon-arch. He insisted on being escorted at once to her dressing room, and the intimacy inti-macy that began that night lasted as long as he lived. Whenever Leopold grew tired of counting count-ing the shameful profits earned by his slnves in the Belgian Congo he would Mnd for Cleo to come to Brussels or go to Paris to see her. They were together so much that the Paris newspapers nicknamed her Cleopold. Leopold placed a higher value on Cleo's beauty than on that of any of the numerous other girls who had charmed him and he was not at all stingy m paying for it. Besides maintaining her like a royal princess, he gave her $250,-OOu $250,-OOu worth of jewels and 25,000 shares in one of his most profitable Congo rubber companies. Cleo is a thrifty soul and is said to have the first penny the King ever gave her as well as all the others. Back in 1897, when her relations with Leopold were the talk of the world, she thought she would cash in on her notoriety notori-ety by making a dancing tour of America. Amer-ica. But she failed to reap the fortune she had counted on. While Americans found her placid, statue-like beauty rather rath-er pleasing, they thought her sadly lacking lack-ing in intelligence and what nowadays we call pep. The cold leception she received on her 1 Cleo de Merode, who declares that she never dressed immodestly im-modestly or did any of the other scandaloui things attributed to her in the film she wants barred from Franco frV' fl 1 kv '.'4 -i v,'-"' S'"' 9 :" ; ' -.:'. . . The late King Leopold of Belgium, long the most enthusiastic admirer of Cleo de Merode's charm one and onlv visit t- America is ssid to have always rankled in Clcc dc Mer- ode's memory. Perhaps this may plain the prodigious h'.w of "tra virtue ?he a making over this America made film story of her life. |