SHAW AND HIS PHONOFILM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3806, 22 February 1927, Page 15

SHAW AND HIS PHONOFILM.

SCENE FROM “SAINT JOAN.” LONDON, December 30. Mr. George Bernard Shaw has agreed to a three-reel extract—equal to a screen performance of about forty minutes—from his play “Saint Joan,” being produced in the British “Phonofilm” process, which reproduces movement and sound. He further agrees to the exhibition of the film, if the result appears to him to be satisfactory. Miss Sybil Thorndike will be invited to play her stage part, and it is probable that a spoken prologue, on “Shanna” lines, will be delivered by Mr. Shaw, provided, as lie remarked, that the piccess “fails to resurrect the deep, Irish brogue which distinguishes bis gramophone voice.” Mr. W. H. Newman, the producer concerned, stated that’ the dramatist was unwilling to have any considerable portion of any of his existing plays filmed, lest that should interfere with their stage appeal, but Mr. Shaw volunteered the opinion that talking-films, which he had heard in Italy, would eventually render the stage obsolete. , “In every rehearsal,” said Mr. Shaw, “there is at least one perfect piece of acting and elocution, of which the stageproducer can retain only a mental impres sion, but the phono-film producer, it seems to me, can secure and preserve this bit of perfection. That is wny 1 regard the invitation as dangerous to the interests of the stage.” ...