PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

The mightiest secondary industry the world has ever seen is the' production of talking pictures. Prosperity smiled on its humble birth. It has leaped from triumph to triumph. The whole world pays tribute to it, and all the five continents gaze on the limelight that envelops the spangled hosts of its stars. Not a city or town in the world—from London to Mosgiel, from New York on the Hudson to Rangoon on the Irrawaddy —but clamours for the goods it sells, and lines up in waiting queues to bo first served. Napoleons crowd the boardrooms of its directors, magicians direct its technical processes, and millionaires fill its coffers with riches beyond the combined dreams of Midas, Croesus and Solomon, Inscribed on its notepaper might be the registered trademark of a galaxy of stars, and the motto Higher, higher will we climb Up the mount o£ glory. But this eighth wonder of the world is doomed. It is hanging precariously on a precipice, without hope of succour. And soon we shall write on the lintels of its portals the words “ finis,” “ closed sine die,” “ Ichabod.” For the glory shall have departed from Israel. Not upon the valueless and unsubstantial opinion of this column is credence to bo given to such a gloomy portent, but on the considered view of a film authority. And what is more, the opinion was expressed not to a man in the street by way of a careless, casual greeting, but to another film authority. Said the first " well-known ” film authority to the second: Nothing can save the film world from an impending financial crash, which I place in about two years' time. It is a material impossibility to produce the requisite number of pictures of a sufficiently interesting and profitable character to keep the over-growing number of kinemas supplied with satisfactory programmes. Picture houses multiply incessantly. The pictures deteriorate in quality proportionately to their quantity. The more demand there is for firstclass features the harder it becomes to meet it. Excess of demand over supply in most industries brings tears of Joy to the eye of shareholder and director. But in the film industry it spells disaster. For very soon —in two short years—picture palaces from China to Peru will resemble idle grocery stores unable to supply clamouring customers, for nothing will be left on their shelves, and their cases and bins will be gaping empty. On this black picture the second film authority thus comments: Is there anything in this outlook? Is my friend correct in foreboding this disaster? Will the immense sums locked up in filmic enterprises all be lost? Many big Hollywood firms are reported to be perilously near to. bankruptcy at this moment. What will happen if the public taste should, as it is always liable to do, suddenly veer into some other form of entertainment, just as surprisingly new and strange as were the movies in their first momentum? It is a hair-raising and even hair-removing prospect for the millions of folk in the business, isn’t it? To this rhetorical question this authority gives his own troubled answer: It is true there are too many kinemas. The building of picture houses should come under control in the same way as public houses. Both kinds of buildings serve the same purpose: that of drugging the public, keeping it safely indoors in bad weather, occupied with a kind of intoxication, either mildly or violently pursued. Both serve as aphrodisiacs or sedatives. Both are cursed with a semi-palatial type of architecture abhorrent to anyone of good taste. But what, really is required in kinemas is a better, a more systematic, and a more intelligent organisation of them. Mass production for the mass mind is responsible for random, reckless film-shooting. The natural endeavour to reach a world public and to make millions of dollars deprives the art of the .pictures of any special artistic appeal. It is impossible to hit so big a target in the bull’s-eye every time, and directors should not be cabled upon to try. Let ns have a safer and smaller policy. His policy? No longer should the picturegoing public be compelled to take pot luck. Every kincma should be graded and specialised. Classification of films should proceed side by side with classification of film houses. In that way films and houses, will develop character and reputation.

“ A constant nuisance ” —thus does the usually patient Mr Speaker stigmatise the interjectory methods of his Majesty’s Opposition in New Zealand. And determined is he to nip in the bud the growing confusion between opposition and interjection. A parliamentary Opposition opposes. That has always been its recognised function. "When 1 first came into Parliament,” said Lord Stanley in 1841, “Mr Tierney, a groat Whig authority, used always to say that the duty of an Opposition was very simple—it was to oppose everything and propose nothing.” And Disraeli says m “ Coningsby ” that “ no Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.” We therefore have all the authorities we require for the conclusion that, in theory, and according *o its lights, our Now Zealand Opposition is doing its appointed duty. Its motto is "The Right is always wrong, and the Left is always right.” As this appointed function of an Opposition is recognised in all countries where parliamentary institutions exist, the “ ins ” never take too seriously the sound and fury of the “ outs.” The old parliamentary hand knows a mere political gesture when he sees it, and treats it with amused and tolerant equanimity. Or, as Tennyson puts it, The noblest answer unto such Is kindly silence when they bawl. Rut opposition is not synonymous with ever-flowing interjection. Mr Speaker at last sits up and takes notice. And he makes the interjecting Opposition do likewise—an Opposition which, generally speaking, is, well, generally speaking. He begins tactfully by a dignified warning, as who should say: You may not, It you, could: You should not, if you might; Yet, it you could you would. And colliding, you could quite. The warning having been of no avail, more and more sternly docs his trumpet notes boom across the floor of the House: I must not, yet I may, I cau, and still I must; But ah! I cannot—nay To must I may not, just. So be it understood, If I may, can, shall—still I might, could, would, and should. I shall, —yes, yes, I will. An offending member was asked to leave the Chamber. He left it, and banged the door. Of what age was he? What was wanted was a Speaker’s slipper and a Speaker's knee. There are, of course, interjections and interjections. Of one kind are “ the constant nuisances ” rightly condemned by the Speaker, A thing of beauty and a joy for ever are such as the following old-timers: " You have fool written all over your face,” yelled an elector to a candidate. " Now you are casting personal reflections,” replied the camlidate% *' The sun never sets on the British Empire,” said a Unionist candidate at an old-time Irish election. “ Bcdad,” said an interjcctor, “ that’s because the Lord couldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark.” "What more need I say?” said a candidate after a two hours’ speech. “For heaven’s sake say Amen!” , interjected an elector.

A nice problem is set by a correspondent who forwards for comment a press cutting in which he has underlined the following adaptation from Shakespeare: “One seeks the bubble happiness even in the cannon’s mouth by accepting the love of a married woman.” The problem is that of the sacrosanctity of quotations. Is a writer forbidden to make any alteration whatsoever in what he quotes? The answer is, “It all depends.” An adapted quotation is not necessarily a misquotation. The writer who substituted “ happiness ” for “ reputation ” in the statement in question did so for a particular purpose and to secure a particular effect. He was playfully playing on the obvious substitution. And undeniably ho has secured the effect at which ho was aiming. For such adaptation of quotations we have abundant and satisfactory precedents. And no precedent can be higher or more worthy of imitation than Charles Lamb, who secures his charm of allusiveness by the abundant use of just such means. “Peace hath her victories,” says Milton in his Sonnet to Cromwell. In Lamb this is adapted to “ Prose hath her cadences.” A combination of Swift’s “ My late, my last retreat,” and Pope’s “The temple’s last recess,” is humorously adapted by Lamb to “The last retreat and recess” —with an application to the benches of Surrey Theatre. Wordsworth has: O, cuckoo! shall I call the bird, Or but a wandering voice? Which is adapted by Lamb to “ The note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice.” And so on. Landor says on the subject: There is no reason why a writer should avoid using an idea, or the - form in which a previous writer expressed the idea, if he can make his setting correspond to it. This is the justification of Milton in his adaptation of passages from Greek and Latin writers, and it is the justification of Lamb, who makes perhaps a freer use of quotation than does any other of our modern prose writers. “ Misquotation ” is the unintentional and careless variation made in what purports to be an accurate quotation. Admittedly there is a touch of casuistry in this justification of an action by the uprightness of the intention. But there it is. If you set out to quote Miltoh’a He through the armed flies Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse The whole battalion views. you misquote if you do so inadvertently. Lamb purposely condenses it to “dart through rank and file traverse.” Is he misquoting? No. A query in last week’s Notes as to the author and context of the line “ And the sentinel stars keep their watch in the sky,” was answered by my giving Thomas Campbell as the author and “ The Soldier’s Dream ” as the context. The limitations of the Procrustian bed of this column compelled the truncation of the poem, and only the first three verses were quoted. To meet the desire of a second correspondent, I quote the remainder: I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft, In life’s morning march, when my bosom was young. I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft. And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine cup and •> fondly I swore From my home and my weeping/ friends never to part. My little ones kissed me a thousand times o’er, And my wife sobbed aloud In her fullness of heart. “ Stay, stay with us; rest, thou art weary and worn ! ” And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay. But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, And the voice In my dreaming ear melted away. Givis.