Chaplin Still Defends The Silent Film

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22582, 21 November 1936, Page 16 (Supplement)

Chaplin Still Defends The Silent Film

"POSITIVE AND UNIQUE" Silent pictures are not doomed, and liavo it threat future. That is the opinion of Mr. Charles Chaplin, expressed iu an article in the Windsor Magazine. "Because the silent motion picture was temporarily pushed aside in the confusion attending t.lie introduction of speech to the screen," lie writes, "this by no means indicates that the silent picture is extinct or that tho world has seen tin; last of it. "1 will admit that it lias suffered an cclip.se, but 1 am convinced that it must persist as a disci net art form, simply because there is nothing to take its place. It simply is too positive end uni<|tH! to disappear—though its leappea ranee may bo 111 a mod'find form, or rather a form modified with m urn! '* Pictures with sound e'iects but no dialogue, Mr. Chaplin claims, "will rc( laim that great alienated audience for whom the caiUoig picture has proved too great a strain." Finally, lie reiterates his statement that lie will never make a talking picture in which he himself uses dialogue. "That docs not mean," ho writes, "that I discount the value of synchronous dialogue or sound." Hut it does mean that Chaplin has made such success as be has achieved its a 'dumb-show' mime, and that in self-preservation ho had best continue in that role."