John Grierson, SEA GULLS and CCs

More excerpts from John Grierson's comment on SEA GULLS, courtesy of Herman G Weinberg, 'Josef von Sternberg: a critical study of the great film director.'

'Even a masterful intuition cannot take a man everywhere, and Chaplin has, though I hate to say this, his blind spots. It is my guess that he is completely blind to the visual beauties of A WOMAN OF THE SEA [SEA GULLS]....von Sternberg needs a great deal of what Chaplin has: Chaplin needs something of what von Sternberg has.'

These two sentences begin and end Grierson's comments. We have seen the rest of it quoted here already. The film lacked what Chaplin perceived to be essential in a film. But not just because his judgment was so astute, also because his judgment had a blind spot

Pretty pictures do not make a film worth watching.

Connie K.

Richard Carnahan quoting John Grierson:

Sorry, I don't think that a film which is 'beautiful' and ''good to look at' should have been squelched, whatever it's dramatic shortcomings. Chaplin produced at least one movie that had dramatic shortcomings AND wasn't good to look at: A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG.

By your standards, it should have been incinerated immediately.

But I enjoyed it. Why? Because it was by Chaplin, a true genius of the cinema.

I don't understand why it is so hard to acknowledge that CC may have been a bit hasty in totally suppressing this film, given Sternberg's later reputation, which started to gather steam the next year with the box office and critical success of UNDERWORLD (1927).

Chaplin shelved the film because he thought it was lousy and didn't have a chance of returning the costs of prints and advertising. It had nothing to do with whether the images were 'beautiful' or not. BTW, there are (or were) plenty of films on Hollywood's shelves that were never released for the same reasons. I've never stated what my 'standards' are. A fact you'd never learn from most of your posts. Why are you always judging Chaplin by hindsight? Hindsight has, as they say, 20-20 vision. CC made what seened a wise decision at the time. And he didn't