FAMOUS FILMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 July 1939, Page 4

FAMOUS FILMS

PRESERVED FOR POSTERITY. LONDON, May 30. About 300 films have been added to the National Film Library of the British Film Institute during the past nine months. The library now has in its collection more than 1,000 films, of a total length of more than 2,000,000 feet.

I Recent acquisitions include an interesting group of British films made at the close of the silent period. Two of these, “The Lodger,” produced in 1926, and “Downhill,” produced in 1927, both featuring Ivor Novello, are early works of the famous British director, Alfred Hitchcock. Another film of the group, “Blighty,” was directed in 1927 by Adrian Brunel, with Ellaline Terriss, Lilian HallDavies and Godfrey Winn in the east. It was an attempt to portray British life on the home front during the -war. Of the same period is “When Fleet. Meets Fleet,” also 1927, produced in Germany but made by a mixed English and German cast headed by Bernard Goetzke and Henry Stuart. It is a film of the Battle of Jutland and was commended at the time by Earl Jellicoe. Of foreign films acquired one of the most interesting is an early Rene Clair film made in 1924, “The Phantom of -the Moulin Rouge.” This is important for its use of multiple exposure, which was popular in the French films of that period. The library has also a selection of trick films made by Starevitcb, inventor of the puppet film. It includes his first essay of this kind. “The Beetle’s Deception,” x made in 1912. Involving the use of model insects, which are slowly, moved stage by stage, just as the film cartoonist moves nis drawings, it created a sensation when first issued.

When Walt Disney was working at publicity films for the Kansas Slide Company in 1923 he devoted his spare time .to making “Little Red Riding Hood.” This film, a copy of which has been discovered by the National Film Library in recent weeks, secured Disney his contract to make the Oswald series of cartoon films which first set him on the ladder to fame. The National Film Library has now the finest collection in the world of pre-war films, and on a number of occasions copies have been supplied to other film archives.