SCREEN KEEPS GOING

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3133, 19 June 1942, Page 3

SCREEN KEEPS GOING

HOW BRITAIN DOES IT SWISS TRANSPORT MYSTERY Swiss movie fans have just seen “London Can Take It,” the picture of Londoners defying the Nazi raiders. How it got to Switzerland will be told when the war is over. Britain has developed a highly efficient secret film service. To-day, by bombing plane, air mail and surface craft she is sending out a regular stream of films at the rate of 300 a week. In one week, 309 reels went off to 59 territories ranging from Arabia and Australia to Russia and the Netherlands East Indies.

Many were ordinary comedies like Ginger Rogers in “Tom, Dick and Harry,” or the Technicolour “Down Argentine Way,” with Carmen Miranda. These are given special facilities by Britain’s Ministry of Information out of sympathy for audiences who might otherwise be compelled in certain territories to look at something sent by Dr. Goebbels.

Commentary or dialogue is added in Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish. Turkish, Persian and Dutch, and foi dialogue the Films Division of the Ministry of Information has adopted the special technique of the British film industry for fitting the sounds ir these different languages to the lip movements of British or American players.