CINEMA AND THE NOVEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19502, 4 December 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

CINEMA AND THE NOVEL.

A GROWING APPROXIMATION. Is it realised to how great an extent the development oE the novel is being influenced by the cinematograph ? writes a correspondent of the Herald. The object of each is twofold—to portray life —though by a different medium—and to tell a story. The threatened wholesale picturisation of standard novels at one time appeared to indicate that the younger art would follow—though by no means slavishly—its elder sister. But of late the junior seems not only to havti grown up, but to bo imposing several of its essential features upon the notice of fiction and its practitioners. It is now a commonplace of literary criticism that the chief defects of the novel of to-day are tedious soul-searching and introspection, hackneyed plots, and an excessive preoccupation with the sexmotif. An examination of the posters and advertisements of contemporary picture-plays will demonstrate the analogy Two or three visits to the picture-house, following a perusal of a few novelreviews, will put the similarity past questioning. How many novels are dismissed in the reviews by the (intended) disparaging remark that they would make a good film scenario ? How many more are condemned for their morbid and terribly boring introspection, very closely akin to the equally tedious ' close ups" on the screen, with their " registerings" of long drawn art emotions —" sob-stuff" as well as cloying love-passion. As for the hackneyed plots and sexpleoccupation, the parallel is too obvious to need pointing out. We know that there are only a limited number of plots possible in the world, but the novelists and filmwriters seem to have got together in a corner of the available field and to be going in for intensive cultivation, which, whatever its merits here, appears to make for monotony. ** It is, of course, an axiom that love must be the motive in practically every story, of whatever length, whether written or screened, but it is a matter for debate whether it is not dwelt upon too. insistently and made to stand too prominently in the foreground. Although it was present, >t must be admitted that there were many other and desirable constituents in what was once considered to be the best fiction—the standard , novels of Scott and the great Victorians The cinematograph also seems to be telescoping the novel. Quite a large proportion of the novels published to day can be read at one sitting if the same concentration bo applied that is necessary at the picture theatre. Most of these features are (and no doubt can be) accounted for by citing the growth of the "tabloid"' age—the age of short cuts, outlines of history, and so on. The probing of emotions is a part (or a result) of the slogan that advertising pays, and that' publicity is now one of the brightest stars. But, whatever the cause, the effect is undoubted, and it is at least interesting to contemplate the very close approxim ation of two arts which at the inception of the younger did not appear to be destined to such intimate co-operation Cinematography must, of necessity, maintain contact with • its sponsor, pictorial art. but it has followed up, and may partially absorb its other relative, the art of narrative. ;■