"WESTERN" FILMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 10 (Supplement)

"WESTERN" FILMS.

DISTINCT PUBLIC DEMAND. NEED FOR MORE ATTENTION. A plea for the old " Western " film is made by Mr. Herbert Thompson, writing in the English journal, " Film Weekly." " The more I see of drawing-room dramas the more I yearn for "an occasional glimpse of those wide open spaces across which Tom Mix and " Tony" used to career at about forty miles-an-hour, pursued either by a sheriff's posse or a bunch of bad men," he says. " It is a great shame that the common or cowboy Western, for long the mainstay of the cinema, should have been relegated to the rank of a programme fill-np and a stand-by for children's matinees. The filmgoer is not to blame. The few good-class Westerns shown in the last two or three years, such as " The Virginian," " The Light of Western Stars," and the Cisco Kid series, have all made money proving that there is a big and appreciative audience for them. The film critic, for his part, has spilled gallons of ink in impressing upon Hollywood the value of open-air pictures. " What has really reduced the Western to its present status is the off-hand way in which it has been treated. The ordinary cowboy film, or ' horse opera,' (I am not talking about ' supers ' like ' Cimarron '), is made in a lew days by a director with no imagination or ideas and players with no perceptible acting ability. Save in exceptional cases, scant attention is paid to technical details that are taken for granted in any up-to-date film worth looking at, and become dreadfully conspicuous by their absence.' Still worse, the story of the average Western is concocted according to a hackneyed formula by which wishy-washy virtue triumphs over double-dyed viliian" after a

desperate struggle. The characters are types rather than real, people. " Little hope of an immediate improvement is to be found in the cowboy films so far announced for production in 1932. Fox, having made a hit with the excellent ' Riders of tho Purple Sage,' appear to be the only company who are taking the Western more or less seriously at the moment-. They intend to star George O'Brien in moro Zane Grey stories, and to give Warner Baxter another opportunity to shine as the Cisco Kid. Universal's plans have been delayed for the time being by the serious illness of Tom Mix on tho eve of his return* to the screen. Tiffany will continue the Ken May hard series and Columbia -will star Tim McCoy, who made a number of fine action pictures for Metro three or four years age, in eight ' dare-devil dramas ' of the West. So far so good—but it is not nearly good enough. " The Western is full of undeveloped possibilities. It has failed to progress with the times because it has been starved of talent. Tt nseds better writers, better directors, and better players to draw upon its tremendous natural resources for the production of films which will be intelligent as well as full of action. I should like to see Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in a well-written, well-produced story of the West directed by King Vidor, whose ' Billy tho Kid ' gave an indication of what he might do with such an opportunity. I call upon the film kings to treat the Western not as aij .insignificant, sideline, but as a subject at least equal in importance to the ' civilised dramas . and melodramas which have temporarily taken more than their fair share of.the screen."