“TALKY” FILMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 October 1928, Page 7

“TALKY” FILMS

WILL THEY BE POPULAR? .Australian Press Association.! IBy Cable—Press Assn—Copyright.)

LONDON, October G

One of the big flourishing cinema studios, that built up at Elstree, fifteen miles from London, with a flare of trumpets, is now shocked at the sudden publicity that is being accorded the “Talkie” films. The effect of the dramatic announcement made by prominent playwrights, and notably Mr Lonsdale, that the silent films are dead, has been like a barrage of machine guns. The directors, artists, electricians, carpenters, decorators, musicians, and all the vast inhabitants of the studios are wondering whether Elstree. in which, hundreds of thousands have been sunk, is ready to collapse like a pack of cards. Cosmo Hamilton, the famous dramatist, declares to-day that the most perfect talkies will never kill the silent film. After the first flush of novelty, he says, they will take a second place in the programmes in the cinemas, aiid will be placed among the news reels and the comics. They will only be used, he declares, for the purpose of introducing the brief remarks of some famous person, an operatic solo, a duet or a chorus. “The vast majority of cinema patrons,” says Cosmo Hamilton, “do not want nerve-racking sounds. However perfect they become, their very perfection will render them less acceptable to a public that is eager for a story of movement. The thrills and surprises must then be made subservient to talk, and the elaborate reproduction of sounds.”

Pie could conceive nothing more frightful than being asked to sit for a couple of hours, without music, in order to listen to a play spoken indifferently—and probably with a hideous gramophone accent —by the most famous film stars, who must be used by the talkies, until a new school was turned out. Nothing could be more hideous to a film-lover than being compelled to listen to the tramping of feet, the traffic roar, the jangling of keys, knocks on the door, harsh nasal voices, the shrieks of gunmen, cowboys, blonde vamps and bathing beiles; to ugly voices and illiteracy, and to a roar of curses. He would say, emphatically, that the silent film would never die. The “Talkies” were childish, and were novices that had come home a decade too late. COMING TO AUSTRALIA. OTTAWA, October 6. The talking and sounding cinemas will be installed in twenty-one theatres in the principal Australian cities during the New Year.