Which Is The Perfect Screen Language?

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7242, 23 August 1933, Page 5

Which Is The Perfect Screen Language?

“MODIFIED AMERICAN BETTER THAN ‘ STANDARD ’ ENGLISH” “I am inclined,” writes Miss C. A. Lejeune in the London Observer, “to think that a modified form of American speech is a better world currency than our so-called ‘standard’ English. It is certainly better than the synthetic speech that we evolve in our English studios and on the London stage. “The American actor at least speaks like a human being,” she continues. “His voice may be crude, harsh, and without euphony, but it is an honest voice. It represents the ordinary people of America, and not the classroom of some dramatic school, or the fads of some theatrical producer with a yearning for the casual and refined. “I can sympathise with the Englishman who wants to hoar his own language spoken in the kinoma. It is natural enough that we should want to have English talkies, or rather, let us say, British talkies, for there is lovely English outside England, that bring the whole colour and warmth and indigenous force of our language to the screen. But we shall notget them by boycotting American pictures. We shall only got them by insisting on sound speech from ou-r own. studios. Until the present woolly cultured style of delivery has been eliminated, wo shall never hope to compete with the American speech for the sympathies of the crowd. “A very wise man once said to me that England and America would get on better if they spoke a totally different language. Then we should make a real effort to understand one another, instead of assuming that a common vocabulary and syntax unite us in one vast English-speaking community. America, is as much a foreign country to England as France, Russia or Germany. The American speech and idiom is actually a foreign language in spite of its similarities of word-formation. Some day, I. feel sure, we shall evolve a screen language that is compounded of the best of both. Until then, any language that seeks to take the place of American, as world currency will have to bo equally cogent, forceful and suited to the needs of the day.