SCREEN TYPES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20252, 10 November 1927, Page 9

SCREEN TYPES

NONE IN AUSTRALIA. FEATURES AND DRESS WRONG. A FILM EDITOR’S OPINION. (Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.) SYDNEY, November 9. Giving evidence before the Film Commission, Mr Robert Dexter, film editor and writer, said that beauty was the merchandise of the motion picture* and Australia was practically barren of beauty. Nature had made a wonderful job of this continent, but as human beings we were an ugly race. H© declared that there were quite a number of people in Sydney who could make a comfortable living in Hollywood if they would only look natural. . ~ c , Referring to the types seen m the Sydney streets, he had seen only one man whom the rest of the world would accept as worth looking at on the screen in a 'leadiifg role, and ho was a newspaper reporter. For screen purposes the features or Australian people wer© all wrong, and careless dress was another handicap. The best-dressed man in Sydney to-day could not hold his own with a five-dollar extra man at Hollywood. . During the past year there had been possibly eight girls in Australia who might have developed as acceptable screen players. Their teeth were naturally poor, and they lacked much in that perfect physical development required for the screen. In tiie matter of fashion, Sydney women were 12 months behind New York styles. Australia was passing through a phase of industrial development, and until that was complete she had neither time nor the money to spar© for the cultivation of the arts, for the motion picture was an art, and not an industry. Mr Dexter denied that the United States had taken advantage of the war to oust England from the Australian film market, and added that if America dropped out of the Australian business to-day, there would be sufficient pictures in England to supply Australia’s requirements for one and a-half weeks only.