Latest Film Cycle

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7064, 25 January 1933, Page 5

Latest Film Cycle

LIFE IN THE STUDIOS. JUNGLE PICTURES SUPERSEDED. Horror in films is slumping. Gangster stuff is “out” and after a burst of animal and jungle pictures, there is to be the wholesale return of a very old notion—drama and fun about the film studios themselves. We had plenty of these in the old silent days: “So This is Hollywood?” “The Last Command,” “Shooting Stars,” were tho best; and latterly', “Show People,” and “The Cohens and Kelly's in Hollywood, ’ ’ In principal I think it a cardinal mistake to embark on a policy which must, by taking the public behind the camera, destroy much of that sense of illusion which is even more necessary to the cinema than it is to the theatre, says an English writer. I find my appreciation of an emotional scene much reduced by the suspicion that the heroine’s tears may be glycerine. Perhaps it is an economy' move'-to save the cost of “sets,” using the plain studios for scenery. In these days, too, when the film business wants all the public support it can get, the time for giving away all its tricks and exposing its own weaknesses seems singularly inopportune. But that is the studios-’ business, not mine. (Or, isn’t it?) At the same time, many of these pictures have been very entertaining, and I looked forward to some good laughs from the new ones, which included Constance Bennett in “What Price Hollywood?” Genevieve Tobin iiri “Hollywood Speaks,” “Harold Lloyd in “Movie Crazy,” and Jack Oakie in “Make Me a Star.”

Also, with a sublime recklessness, Hollywood was busy on the play, “Once in a Lifetime,” and the book, “Queer People.” Both these stories are such damaging indictments of the prodigal ignorance, the egregious vanity, and the vicious corruption of film people as a whole that I cannot imagine how any screen versions of them can fail to discredit the industry. It may be that they are whitewashed out of recognition—in which case, why waste thousands of pounds in buying them?