THE TALKING FILM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20656, 30 August 1930, Page 10 (Supplement)

THE TALKING FILM.

LOSS OF POPULARITY.

DEPRESSION IN AMERICA. A considerable amount of attention is being paid in America to the pi'esent decline in the popularity of talking-pictures. Throughout the country, states the New York Herald Tribune, thoso interested in the film industry are asking themselves what has caused the sudden and nationwide loss of film patronage. Those who originally held the opinion that the drop in attendance was due solely to temporarily bad financial and employment conditions throughout the country have now cast aside this contention and admit that thero is something else radically wrong with the cinema. All sorts of conferences and meetings are being held in production circles, but no definite decision seems to have been reached as to the cause of the cinema's present illness and nothing important is being done in the way of prescribing a remedy. Like a group of physicians who methodically discuss the probable ailment of a patient who lies on the operating table, slowly passing into a coma while his case is being thoroughly analysed, the film experts are arguing about Broadway, television, prologues and few pictures, while the poor old talking picture grows weaker every hour.

The chief worry of the local studio magnates seems to be in regard to the probablo length of the present depression in box office receipts. The majority feel that the loss in motion picturo patronage is only a temporary condition and after a few months the public will be flocking back to pictures as usual. Others believe that the film patrons have stopped going to the cinema for good and logical reasons and there will be 110 winning them back until considerable improvement has been made in the general appeal of the average evening's entertainment offered by the picture theatres of to-day.

One prominent studio executive has stated that he thinks the talking picture will bring about a new boom in the footlight realm, both on Broadway and throughout the land in general. According to this film observer, there will be a definite return to popularity of the legitimate drama, starting this fall. He bases his assertion on the theory that the public, having developed a taste for dialogue, but grown tired of the unnaturalness and monotony of electrical recordings, will now develop a desire for the real thing in the flesh and blood of the foot light theatre.

Hollywood, as a whole, however, cannot see any chance at all for the legitimate drama to return to its former position. Studio heads are firmly of the belief that the talking picture will continue to hold its supremacy over (he stage, and contend that the low admission prico to the cinema is alone sufficient to ward off serious competition from the footlight thratre.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, the film magnates aro not taking too many chances. They are returning to the old policy of mammoth stage shows and vaudeville acts presented in conjunction with the feature picture. One by one, all of the leading cinema palaces in the Los Angeles district are following suit.