SHAW AND THE MOVIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 250, 21 October 1924, Page 7

SHAW AND THE MOVIES.

» ■ I -.- AMERICAN FILMS ATTACKED. A VITEIOLig OUTBURST. George Bernard Shaw has been giving vent to his feelings about the American movies. The abusive jeremiad appears in the "Fortnightly Review." "Conceit," he declares, in a spirit characteristic throughout the article, "is rampant among your film makers and good sense about non-existent. We shall soon have to sit ten minutes at the beginning of every reel to be told who developed it, who fixed it, who dried it, who provided the celluloid, who sold the chemicals, and who cut the author's hair. Your lion people simply do not know how to behave themselves. Every American aspirant to film work should be sent to Denmark or Swedou for five years to civnise him before being allowed to enter a Los Angeles studio." Here is his catalogue of American film sins: "Overdone and foolishly repeated strokes of expression; hideous make-up; close-ups that an angel's face could not bear; hundreds of thousands of dollars spent spoiling effects that I or any competent producer could secure quickly and easily for 10 cents; impertinent lists of everybody employed in the film, from the star actresses to the Piess agents and office boys." Filmin- of dramas results in audiences refusing to see them on the legitimate stage, Shaw declared.hence he will never be filmed. Not that Shaw would not write scenarios. "That," he says, "is a new art. 1 be tempted to try my hand at it But after all, if one has the gift of language, asking one to write a dumb show is rather like asking a lit.an to paint portraits in black and white. Still there is one sort of dumb show that is something more than a play with the words left out, and that is a dream. If I ever do a movie show, it will have the quality of a dream. Movie plays should be invented expressly for the by original, imaginative visualisers." . ■ ■ , _ ■; Regarding the subject matter of American films, he says: "The mm* play has supplanted the old-fashioned tract and Sunday „hool Wtfee. It ta reeking with morality, but does not dare touch ° virtue. Ana? virtue which is defiant and contemptuous of morality, even when It _v no practical quarrel with it, is the life Wood of high, drama.