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Rex Ingram
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Unimpressed with sound, Rex Ingram made only one talkie, Baroud, filmed for Gaumont British Pictures in Morocco. The film was a not a commercial success and Ingram left the film business, returning to Los Angeles to work as a sculptor and writer.
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In his autobiography, Million Dollar Movie, Michael Powell recalled his days as a young apprentice under Ingram at Victorine. "He knew how to flatter the audience by assuming that they were as cultivated and appreciative as he was. They responded. In this film (Zenda) the director resembled the conductor of an orchestra, with the added advantage that he was invisible, while the conductor is not."
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Visually exquisite, with richly toned photography and beautifully tinted film stock, Ingram's features were artistic successes but box-office disappointments. Seen today, such Ingram films as Mare Nostrum (1926) and The Magician (1927) are feasts for the eye, but rather stodgy and slow; ... though he fancied himself a writer, Ingram's screenplays are often confusing and disorganized.
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Ingram met with brilliant success on screen. He gained an early and enduring fame with his portrayal of De Lawd in the 1936 film The Green Pastures, which became a box office hit and remained Hollywood's most successful film with an all-black cast for many years. Bogle... criticized the film as a "fraud" in its claims to represent genuine black folk culture. The film depicts an all-black heaven that, Bogle wrote, "ultimately becomes a perpetual Negro holiday, a church picnic, one everlasting weekend fish fry." The critic added that the religion represented in the film amounts to a caricature of the religion of people of color. Furthermore, the humor of the film depends on the assumption that early twentieth-century blacks--with their "lowly language and folkways"--were out of place in the high, classical, biblical world before the flood.
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The convoluted story for this Chinatown drama was written by Rex Ingram, who ... directed -- and it's surprisingly shoddy material from this renowned filmmaker. Even though he is innocent, Charley Sing (Frank Tokonaga) is arrested for the murder of a rival Tong. He is released when political intrigue intervenes, and journalist Harvey Pearson (M.K. Wilson) writes a sob story about the situation. Harvey is romancing Neva Sacon, a cabaret dancer (Gypsy Hart), and he takes her down to Chinatown. He has given her a silver poppy which he obtained during his research, and it just happens to be the symbol of Sing's Tong.
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Adding substantial integrity to the production, Ingram used Belgian Fencing Champion and USC coach Henry Uyttenhove as a trainer and consultant for the spectacular swordfight at the end of the picture. Uyttenhove ... worked on several Douglas Fairbanks films, including Robin Hood (1922), and again with Ingram on Scaramouche (1923).
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Rex Ingram