MOVING PICTURES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11003, 25 July 1914, Page 8

MOVING PICTURES.

(To The Editor.) SIR,—As a rule, the first thing-1 look at on opening the Advocate is the leading article, but by some means or other I missed seeing your editorial of last Wednesday on the subject of moving pictures However, I hope it is not too late now to say a word or two by way of reply. With a good deal of what you say 1 am quite in agreement. I realise the immense value of the cinematograph as a means of in. struct ion, and would like to see a much larger proportion of scenic, educational, and industrial subjects and fewer melo dramas of the kind mentioned by you, many of which go quite outside the bounds of probability. But what are picture exhibitors to do. T'hey have people of such widely different tastes to cater for, and many of them are strongly attracted by the very pictures you condemn. On the subject of “fake” battle pic tures there is much in what you say. Personally, 1 regard ail battle pic tures, fake or no fake, as neither edifying nor entertaining, and on more than one occasion X have expressed my disapproval of them to those who supply us with films, but on the subject of “fake” pictures generally I do not quite agree with you. If there were no “faking” on screen or stage, there would be very few pictures and few dramas. The object of both is simply to “hold the mirror up to Nature,” to “simu late” the real thing as far as possi ble, and if faking were entirely barred it would rob the stage of some of the grandest productions ever conceived by the mind of man. Take “Hamlet” as an example. What is the great platform scene, wherein Hamlet discourses with his ghostly

father, if it is not a fake? But what an impressive and magnificent fake it is! Take also “The Tempest” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” What are they but a-suc-cession of fakes from beginning to end? But who that bas read or seen these plays, touched as they are by the magic of Shakespeare’s genius, troubles about the faking of them? Why, all dramatic productions are more or less “fakes” or “makebelieve,” and you surely do not contend that because the “real” destruction of Pompeii cannot be put upon the screen, no presentation of it should be attempted? It ought to be sufficient if the fake is good enough to convey to the minds of spectators an adequate “impression” of the real tiling, and it must. I think, be admitted that the faking in the “Last Days of Pompeii,” like the faking in “Quo Vadis,” is so marvellously well done as to make it quite acceptable to the most fastidious and exacting critic.—l am, etc., J. ROBERTSON. L3 r ceum Pictures, Marton, July 25 th, 1914.