NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21983, 14 December 1934, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

BRITISH LIFE IN .FILMS i "You critics do not quite realise what we are up against in making films in this country," said Mr. J. ,13. Priestley, in a recent interview. "It is so much a question of the materials of national life. 1 will give you an illustration of what I mean. In England, when a crime has been committed what happens? Two or three quiet men come and ask a few questions, make discreet notes and go away again. In America the first thing you hear is that crashing, howling roar of the police car, and everything is noisy and dramatic in an instant. That is the difference you have to allow for in film-making, and I feel that the critics have unconsciously got into the habit of making the speed and 'toughness' of American films a standard. You regard an American 'wise-crack' as wit, but an English joke is just dialogue. And American speech is recognisable anywhere here, while our North of England speech, which is the nearest equivalent to that hardness and crispness, is nothing better than 'dialect.' " Mr. Priestley remarked that he could have sold "The Good Companions" to Hollywood a dozen times over, but ho insisted that it be made in Britain. "'Unlike Mr. Noel Coward, who writes a patriotic play and has it made into a film in Hollywood, I want to stay at homo and do my film-writing," he added.