Behind The Cameras

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

Behind The Cameras

Now that “Gone With the Wind” has been launched on its film career we may prepare ourselves tor those people who will say that “the film is nothing like the book,” or that it is inferior to the book, or that it is like the cheek of the movies to try to make a film from the book. There are always those critics. Outside the theatre at which “Pygmalion” was screening there was a “snooty" young woman who denounced roundly that it was an impertinence on the part of the films to attempt Shaw and Mr Shaw himself shared the view when he was awarded the prize for the best film of the year. In this instance, this department is bound to echo Mr Shaw’s views on the subject. There was no reason to award him the prize. He did not deserve the prize. It should have gone to the gentleman who took “Pygmalion” and made a vastly better job of it. Pruned of its repetitions, infused with action where Shaw could ' only give dialogue , (the incident of the mirror in the bathroom for example), with a superfluous swearword removed (for you must not imagine that Shaw could abandon such a tempting theme as that opened up by Wendy Hiller’s remark about not walking homo), “Pygmalion” became something appreciably better.

That is not to say the film, ways are above reproach. But it does seem to us that a lot of hard things are said without reason. When “Kidnapped” was filmed, plenty of them were heard