SILENT SHADOWS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19803, 31 May 1926, Page 8

SILENT SHADOWS.

DISGRUNTLED CRITIC OF THE “ MOVIES.” One who, like myself, obstinately regards the kinema as a cheap substitute for art cannot work up much enthusiasm over the opening of yet another gorgeous palace in the West,” writes "Kappa” in the Nation. “I would rather watch the worst set of amateurs doing something worth doing, however badly if with sincerity and feeling—and doing it in the flesh and in the spirit—than 1 would watch the best of these silent shadows. The film is the expression of the mechanical age, flourishing naturally in time of mass production Its merit is cheapness; and it is useless for the theatres to complain of competition so long as they allow the lent profiteer to strangle them. I used to think the kinema craze would die out lilce other crazes, but the material advantages are too solid; the houses give cheap seats, shelter, and a kind of entertainment to too many poor folk. “Clever people try to create an esthetic for the film, but I question the possibility; it is born and ends in machinery. The illusion of grandeur has commercial value in an age starved of true beauty. So these new picture palaces follow an ascending scale of garishr.ess; and this week we marvelled at ‘a now wonder of lights,’ ‘a cupola gleaming with gold mosaic and alive with a cascade of gqlden water,' old Italian furniture, and columns torn from an Italian Renaissance church HI. A satirist could make a pretty symbol of those ravished marHe columns. There was a comic disparity between the frame and the picture. All that Neronio grandeur to lure us to see American stars murdering* English history. The kinema is already dying of pretentiousness. If we must have the film give me Charlie Chaplin and Felix the Cat.”