MOVIE NEWSPAPERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18592, 28 June 1922, Page 6

MOVIE NEWSPAPERS

A VISION OF THE FUTURE

INTERVIEW WITH NORTHCLIFFE

Writers nvho are used to charting the daily pulse of the world in cold print get a new thrill when they begin to _ realise the great potential power of the motion-picture camera, according to Ralph Block, associate editor of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, former New York dramatic critic and Washington correspondent. Back of the camera, says Mr Block, they see new processes of communication between the great herds of human beings that inhabit modern cities, an instrument as yet scarcely developed to bind together stratified and divers© elements of modern society. In this connection Mr Block describes a series of interviews with Lord Northcliffe during a recent trip to England. “It was largely a courtesy call, and after the first five minutes of volleying across the net of international relations I could see myself bowing out graciously but fruitlessly at the end of another paragraph in the conversation. _ “My opportunity came when Northclufc, who was then rumoured to have taken a sudden interest in the Kinema News Weekly, said casually that ho had no interest in motion' pictures, except as a phenomenon of the times. I reached out quickly to pluck this glowing ember from the conversation ash heap.” “ ‘That’s rather a reckless statement, isn't it? How can you say you have no interest in so important an instrument?’ “The publisher turned his square English figure a little more attentively toward me, challengingly almost. “‘W r lmt do you mean, young man?’ “I told him briefly. I ripidly sketched out a dream that had been lingering in my mind. I told him I had been reading wistful accounts in The Times and Daily Mail about the shortage of print, paper, until I wept whenever I saw the phrase. ‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘you woke up one morning to find that Lord Beaverbrook or Sir Edward Hulton bad hired a hall in Manchester and another in Liverpool and another in Glasgow and another in London and still another in Birmingham, and that all day long people wore moving through them, reading the day’s news flashed from all the seven thousand corners of the earth to the screen, and illustrated by a new process cl runic photographic transmission.’

“Perhaps my voice became a little dreamy, but he allowed me to go on. I sketched in fantastic details, children dropping in' for h’penny_ rolls, containing condensed pictorial versions of the day’s news for the home projector; busy men who liked to read as they ran, spending sixpence for a print they could study in/the motor, on the way home. Of course, the tube would have its own special service of the day’s events; so would the tram and the ’bn?. “I was still absorbed in the picture when he interrupted: ‘I say,’ looking at what looked like a five-shilling Ingersoll on hie wrist, ‘l’ve a visitor waiting for me. When can you come back?’ 1 was going to see Lucien Guitry in Pasteur that night, and was making for Paris the next evening. Would I come bade to see him at half after 6, it being then 4 o’clock? I would. 1 dressed for the theatre and then spent two dinuerless absorbing hours in ’another one of the 55 publication offices scattered all over London. The next day the conversation was continued at lunch in Carlton Gardens, and ended up through Trafalgar and down Fleet street to the Daily Mali, and an audience at the Daily News conference with the editors. Perhaps he was trying tc prove to me the permanence of print paper, but some day I fully expect London to find The Thunderer is nothing but a relic of an ancient and honourable past, and Northcliffe talking to them visually at every corner from the Elephant and Castle to Windsor.’’