SOMETHING BIGGER AND BETTER.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1734, 9 February 1921, Page 5

SOMETHING BIGGER AND BETTER.

BRITISH AND CONTINENTAL PICTURES. British picture-lovers will look forward with a keen expectation for something better and more wholesome in pictures in 1921. We are all tired of the exaggerated emotionalism of a good proportion of American films and the screening of British films, with British ideas and ideals will be welcomed.* To-night at the Opera House the All-British and Continental Feature Film Co., in combination with the Independent Pictures, will release the first of its films in Palmerston, "Countess Sarah," starring Madame Francisca Bertini, acclaimed as one of the most beautiful picture actresses in the world. Madame Bertini is paid a yearly salary of £IBO,OOO and promises to go down to posterity as perhaps the most graceful and one of the greatest film artistes picture audience's have ever seen. The gowning and setting of this beautiful picture are without parallel and they may be taken as a fitting standard for British and Continental productions. , The company has secured the New Zealand rights for all the leading and most successful British and Continental companies, with power to pick from them the very cream of the pictures for New Zealand audiences. The improved Nordisk, the famous U.C.I. Co., which controls practically the picture output of Italy, the Progress Co., Butcher Co., Hepworth Co., the Harm" Co., and the Swedish Biograph Co., have all signed up for a permanent supply. These companies control all the British and Continental actors and actresses of note. The costuming of every production will be a revelation in richness both in material and style. The leading modistes of Vienna, Paris, London, Copenhagen and other European cities have been retained to attend to this. The author's rights to well-known books have been acquired from Sir Hall Cains, Ethel M. Dell. Marie Corelli, Olive Wadsley. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stanley Weyman, Jeffery Farnol, A. E. W. Mason, Rafael Sabatine, E. Phillips, Oppenheim Edgar Jephson, Edgar Wallace, Maurice Hewlett, H. G. Wells and Sax Rohmer by the companies which the British and Continental service controls. "Fabiola," greater than "Quo Vadis," "Secret of the Monastry" "Snows of Destiny," "Chains, "On With the Motley," and "A Trip, to Mars" will be some of the early releases. In the opinion of a great authority on moving pictures Great Britain is more suitable than any other country in the world for producing pictures. It has a great variety of scenery, the opportunities for picturesque and historical background, the proximity of the Continent of Europe for occassional international effects, and the imaginative talent of British actors and authors. The British producer can be looked in 1921 to excel the Americans in every line of picture production. The British and Continental Film Co. can look forward with confidence to a prosperous year in 1921 and the Independent Pictures and the public of Palmerston North are to be heartily congratulated on the screening of the company's feature films here..*