Name: The Wonderful Story
Genre: Drama
Duration: 1 h 14 min
Rating: 6.1
Cast: Lillian Hall-Davis, Herbert Langley, Olaf Hytten

Graham Cutts' first movie is about two brothers who are farmers. Herbert Langley is a big strapping brute of a man. Olaf Hytten is his slightly dreamy brother. Langley wins the heart of Lillian Hall-Davis, but when he falls off a roof and breaks his back, Miss Hall-Davis realizes that the strong man she loved is no more. Instead, she falls in love with Hytten. Angered and bitter, Langley curses them both for their treason.

The movie is slow to get off the mark, with a mildly pompous series of title cards setting up the situation for the first dozen minutes. Thereafter, the me settles down, although Langley's immobility makes this less than a moving picture. It's a series of telling shots: Miss Hall_Davis' tiny hand slipping from Langley's grasp, Hytten playing with a white kitten, and so forth. The editing makes these shots the means of telling its story, which a goo cinematic technique, but their framing is too blatant, too shocking to allow the movie to flow. It stops the story dead in its tracks, making sure the audience has time to contemplate the awfulness of the situation, as if Cutts is afraid that subtlety is wasted.

It's certainly not unheard in British movies of this period. When Cutts' assistant, Alfred Hitchcock, made his first complete movie, THE PLEASURE GARDEN, it made use of its key shots in a like manner. Clearly this was a style of cinema that appealed to the film makers and audience of this era. Yet I prefer a more organic pacing and am mildly annoyed by it. I prefer a movie that forces me to figure things out, that force me to participate in the story-telling.

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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The Wonderful Story

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