AMERICANISATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19298, 10 April 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMERICANISATION.

THE PROBLEM OF THE MOVIES

BY KOTARE.

Once we could boast in the pride of our hearts that tho sun never set on the Union Jack. Wo can still boast of it if we will; but modern industry has added to the select list of objects that are never out of tho sunlight, and we aro compelled to share our flag's solar pre-eminence with the cars of Henry Ford and the moving pictures from Hollywood. The American picturo has conquered the world. Go where you please to-day, you will find that the American film has preceded you, unless indeed you are seeking tho South Pole, or Conan Doyle's Lost World in the jungles of the Amazon, or the last unconquered peaks of tho Himalayas. And even then you cannot be sure. Wherever men aro herded together, tho silver screen is set up and the American vamp flaunts her charms, and tho American pie-thrower scores his bull's eye. In tho remotest towns of the East, where news of Chamberlain and Locarno and Mussolini never penetrates, and where even the Prince of Wales is unknown, tho form and features of the picture stars are as familiar as the local chief or medicine man. The pictures have conquered the world. This is just what it should be if the only consideration is tho filling of the pockets of investors and producers and stars. Here is ono of tho greatest successes of modern business; a small group has found what the world wants and has supplied the demand; or what amounts to the same thing, the group has an article to sell and has made tho world want it and willing to pay for it. As a business proposition the pictures are ouo of the wonders of the age. And with tho tremendous growth on tho business side there has been an incredible development on tho actors' and producers' side. The American artists have mastered tho technique of the unspoken drama, have mado its conventions and imposed them upon tho world, and have attained a proficiency in the use of their medium that has left all the rest of the world hopelessly in the rear. It is a great achievement, and I for one am duly thankful for many an evening of interest and delight. A good comedy as the Hollywood peoplo know how to put it on is about the finest tonic in a sophisticated age that seems to be finding less and less in life to laugh at. That is my experience, anyway. The Titles.

But, of course, thero are much wider issues involved than our amusement and tho technical perfection of tho actors and tho satisfaction of investors over thumping dividends. Tho Americanisation of the moving pictures was inevitable, but it raises some serious questions. Bernard Shaw refers pungently to one irritating feature of most modern films—the long list of names that embraces all hands and tho cook on the producer's management staff. The titles, too, are evidently a matter of n-ide; most pictures inform us who is responsible for these pathetic and usually pompous inanities. They are not as a rule anything to boast about, but someone is inordinately proud of them. Softly fall the shadows of eventide,"—you know the style. The author is rolling up his sleeves, in the only phrase that adequately describes it, pulling his socks up, in his grim determination to be poetic, or die in the attempt. I wish they would give us his picture as well as his name But let mo quote Bernard Shaw s objection. He protests against " impertinent lists of everybody employed in a film from the star actress to the press-agent s othceboy. We shall soon have to sit for ten minutes at the beginning of every reel to bo told who developed it, who dried it, who provided tho celluloid, who sold the chemicals and who cut the author's hair. Your film people simply don't know how to behave. They take liberties with tho public at every step on the strength of their reckless enterprise and expenditure. An over-statement, of course, but most of us must have felt something like it. American Standards. But this is a minor matter. A much moro serious aspect, of the swift rise of the film industry is that the Americans havo practically no opposition in tlifc world's markets, they aro in complete control, and the moving pictures are forcing American ideas and American ideals on the rest of the world. In Eng-lish-speaking countries they aro forcing tho American languago as well. You can't blame the Americans for that. Last year some £15,000,000 worth of films were sent abroad, but the greatest demand comes from tho home market. Originally tho American is catoring for tho American. It is tho American standard of tasto that determines subject and treatment. A picturo play is written and producod with only tho American in view. By tho necessity of tho case tho rest of the world has to take a purely American product. It takes no Solomon to sec that what is prepared for a very specialised type of man and woman, perhaps tho most distinctive in the modern world, is not likely to bo suitable for all sorts and conditions of men from China to Peru. One result > is to give us American heroes aiid heroines, and to depict peoples of other nations in the caricature form that flatters American vanity. The noble American conquers tho foreign villain; we don't blame him. But how often do we find the Englishman pictured as a vacuous creature, monoclecl and spatted, with the look and the intelligence of a rabbit. That is fine fun for an American, but it goes against the grain to hear a New Zealand audience applauding an Englishman's discomfiture at, the hands of tho strong, silent horo. And the usual picturo of a Frenchman is a fouler libel still —a gesticulating popinjay, as little like tho true Frenchman as Charlie Chaplin is like tho Archbishop of Canterbury. In tho film version of " Poter Pan," Peter at ono stage, according to Barrie, had to wave triumphantly tho Union Jack. That would never do for Hollywood, and Peter comes forth to wave the Stars and Stripes. If this sort of thing goes on we shall see Julius Caesar folding himself in Old Glory as ho falls at the base of George Washington's statue. The East. But all this is a small matter compared with tho danger of exhibiting American films with the Hollywood standards of taste and conduct to the masses of the awakening PJast. Competont observers have already noted tho effect of the usual triangle films on the thinking natives of India. If they formed a poor conception of Americans only, it would be bad enough. That, is worrying many people in America to-day. They aro claiming that the conventional picture world is not the real America, nor anything like it; and tho pictures are bearing to the end of tho earth false testimony to American lifo and character and business methods. But to the yellow man or tho brown man all white men aro grouped together. They know no distinction between American and French and British. This is how the white man lives. This is his morality in his own land. And one of these absurdly sentimental pictures, or one of these equally absurd problem plays, or one of these graphic delineations of shameless flappers and the highly-coloured lifo of tho idlo rich, will do more to undermine the natives' respect for Great Britain than the mouthings of a thousand Bolshevik agitatorß. Thero lies tho chief danger; and at present we can do nothing to meet it.