FILMS RUN BACKWARDS

Evening Star, Issue 20511, 16 June 1930, Page 2

FILMS RUN BACKWARDS

A CURIOUS EXPERIMENT 11EMINISCENT OP MAD-HOUSE. One hears it said at times that some film or other would look—aud sound—better if it were run off backwards way. In tho private cinema of the ‘Western Electric Company in Bush House one could enjoy—if that is the word—seeing and hearing the experiment actually being tried. The result was something like a film shown in a macl-houso—a mad-house in which everything was going at inconceivable speed, faster than sound can travel or intelligence can understand. One first say two ladies playing with conscientious brilliance a two-piano duct. Then the operator ran the film through the projector the reverse way. Tho immediate effect was that tho two ladies wore seen playing standing, or rather sitting on their heads, a change of attitude which mado no difference to their calm attention to duty. The effect on the music was to convert it from a rather tinny harmony to a strange series of howls, moans, and squeaks,, like the omissions of a tipsy harmonium.

Tho odd thing was that here and there in the midst of tho noise something emerged distantly resembling a tunc. The patter of an upside-down cowboy entertainer came out as a grotesque parody of human speech, as if a man deprived of a tongue was trying to articulate. The images suffered less than-' tho sounds, for 'the people looked as sober as people can do who hang in the air feet uppermost. One does not see any particular point in tho demonstration unless it was intended to prove that “talkies,”, with all their defects, are better after all taken in tho ordinary time sequence than when transported to a wild Eiiisteimsh world.