SOCIETY AND THE KINEMA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13908, 8 November 1919, Page 4

SOCIETY AND THE KINEMA.

Fashionable English society has discovered the film a/ the moans of ministering to feminine vanity, says a London correspondent. It is not long ago that society ,gir!s herame stage smitten, and competed with girls of bumble social standing for the privilege of "walking oil." As society .girls were able to oiler their services without salary to theatrical producers, some of them were allowed |o mount the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder. Riit the cinema has a inucb wider embrace than the stage, and gives employment to numerous "supers" as part of a background for film dramas. Kroin the point of view of the society actress, the cinema, has a great advantage over the stage, in that .she can sec herself in the film drama when it is produced nt the picture palaces; The manager of a British film-producing company | i'ondly boasts that in a nightclub scene, which his company filmed, twenty men and women of rank took part as guests at the night club. He enthusiastically congratulates himself at having got the real thing for scenes in which luxurious life is displayed. His fashionable "crowds" in film dramas will in fuilire be fashionable. For instance, they will know how to wear evening dress as if they Were used to wearing it, and to dine at a. fashionable restaurant as if they wei" accustomed to serviettes, wine and. waiters.

But if lie thinks These fine points nip going to impress the morale audience nf the picture palace, he has much to Irani regarding hU own business. The picture palace patrons prefer their, own conception of fashionable life, to the real thins;, because the real tiling is not anything like as rich and gaudy as they picture it. The patrons of stage'melodrama would not be impressed hy the presentation of high lile as it really i.s, because it would not be anything like as' attractive as the garish version of it which melodrama presents. The popularity of the cowboy films among a vouthful audience with Oif yearning ambition to "stalk and scalp Indians is due to the wide gulf between the ciue.ua row.boy and the real tiling. Kven a lilm producer ought to possess'cnout'h elementary philosophy in kno\\" (hat be ran t. have it both wa vs.