LUBITSCH SUMS UP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 57, 7 March 1936, Page 12

LUBITSCH SUMS UP.

FILM TRENDS FOR 1936.

(By ERNST LUBITSCH, Managing Director of Paramount Productions, Inc.)

The year 1936, I believe, will see a number of important developments in the cinema, chief among them an increasing use of colour, a "revamping" of stars personalities and a new trend in film musicals. The principal trend, as always, is toward better pictures. Pictures, on the whole, are being made on a larger scale and are being made better. Mere magnitude of production is naturally no guarantee of quality. But it pmst be remembered that the film industry has no precedent to be guided by; it is comparatively new as industries go, and it is sailing uncharted seas. I believe in general, however, that it is succeeding admirably in attaining the goal of world-wide quality entertainment. One thing that has impressed me in my own years in the industry is that stars must keep changing their personalities if they are to remain stars. In my work I am trying to help our stars to present new kinds of personalities in every Picture they make, and I began with Marlene Dietrich. For her new picture with Gary Cooper, "Desire," I plan to present a new .kind of Mflrlene, a. flesli-ancl-blood .Marlene, a believable human being—the kind of woman I have always believed Marlene to be. As to colour, I think its use m a natural way will be advanced considerably by a number of pictures now in production, n&tably Walter Wanger's "Trail of the Lonesome Pine." The film is in colour, but n'o particular emphasis is placed on colour—it is natural and gains its effects from naturalness. Musical' pictures can hardly be called a new trend, but they are being dealt with in a new way. The increasing number of .pictures containing so-called "better" music is a decided trend, as is the growing use of opera stars in leading roles. Jan Kiepura, the Continental film and opera star is making "Give Us This Night." in which he co-stars with the American opera mezzo-soprano Gladys Swarthout. For her one debut on the screen Miss Swarthout made "Rose of the Rancho," with musical score by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin. This music is of the operetta type. Here is another likely trend, because almost all the operettas that have been successful on the stage have already been transferred to films. Grand opera, as such, can never be put on the screen, but excerpts from the better operas can be used effectively as sequences in pictures. Grand opera is an outworn medium and does not provide popular entertainment. I don't believe theatregoers want grand opera any more than they want Shakespeare, but they do want good music, welt presented.

One new and marked improvement is a general abstinence from the use of photographic effects known as "tricks." The day is near at hand when producers will depend entirely upon acting and direction to cnin a desired effect. This occurs in "Peter Ibbetson," the du Maurier classic, in which much of the action takes place in' dreams. I feel I should be pardoned for expressing the belief that production in the futurp must depend more upon the director. Most of my own years in the industry have been spent as a director, and the fact that I am now looking after the whole studio's production has not altered my opinion that the director is a most important factor in guaranteeing the success of a picture. More people are going to the theatre; more and better pictures are being made. The future is exceedingly glowing.