Hollywood Robs The Rainbow

Southland Times, Issue 25361, 13 August 1935, Page 5

Hollywood Robs The Rainbow

NEW COLOUR FILMS. (By R. J. Cruickshank in the NewsChronicle.) New York, July 4. When I left Radio City after seeing the first of the new colour films I felt just as I did after seeing the best or the early talking pictures. This was a forward leap as big as the talkies. Seven years ago one felt it would be impossible to go back to the silent pictures. Now one feels it will be impossible to go back to pictures without colour. As a film, “Becky Sharp” has many limitations. It doesn’t do justice to “Vanity Fair.” Hollywood has been less kind to Thackeray than to Dickens. But as a new experiment I found it breath-taking. Colour has swept over the movies in a full tide. As a fresh departure “Becky Sharp” is much more satisfactory than “The Jazz Singer” and the other early experiments in talking pictures. Of course, we have all seen colour pictures before. Hollywood has been experimenting more or less hopefully with sequences in colour in many recent films. But “Becky Sharp” is the first full-length picture to be made entirely in the new medium, and the whole of New York is talking about it. It will certainly change the face of the industry. As happened when sound was introduced, a whole range of new problems in film-making is presented. I forgot all the faults of the story and the acting in the thrill of the new experience. It was rather like hearing a full orchestra for the first time and realizing all the wonderful combinations of tone that could be produced. The technical process employed is a vast improvement over the garish twocolour experiments one used to see. This picture has an astonishing variety of hues ranging from pearly grey to the most gorgeous scarlet. The peak of splendour was reached in the scenes at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball at Brussels on the night before Waterloo, which, thanks to By-

ron, Thackeray and Hardy, is the bestknown ball in history. In this sequence Rueben Mamoulian, the producer, used colour with a cunning hand to build up an emotional climax. Here again, I had the curious sense of following music, of hearing Toscanini build up a Wagnerian climax with all the resources of his great orchestra. To come down to detail. The producer began the ball in very quiet, gentle colours corresponding to an orchestral pianissimo. Then, as the faroff thunder of Napoleon’s artillery was heard, the tints deepened, became sombre, and were designed to suggest the shadow of doom. One couldn’t help smiling as one compared this with the way Wagner uses his double-basses in the “Ring.” Then the colour began to quicken in response to the confusion and dismay that fell upon the dancers. In the same way that the orchestral commentary in Wagner or Strauss is nearly always more supple and eloquent than the human voices, so I felt the pulsing colours conveyed the emotions of the actors in these scenes far more effectively than the snatches of talk, the sharp cries, the sound effects, the gathering storm of cannon. The long crescendo certainly played on the nerves of the audience. It rose to a fine climax. The British officers in their uniforms of scarlet and gold and blue running pellmell from the ballroom, the women in their brilliant gowns, were like the shining pieces in a kaleidoscope that a child is shaking madly. It may be that a childish pleasure in these fluid colours running into one another made me exaggerate to myself the importance of this new development. But it did really seem to have the most wonderful possibilities both in making beautiful patterns and in heightening the emotions of a situation by an artful assault on the senses.

Too Much Colour. “Becky Sharp” showed, however, that there are dangers in this conquest by the film of a new dimension. A number of persons who saw it told me afterwards that it left them with a strange feeling of surfeit. Their eyes were dazzled and their brain wearied by the bombardment of brilliant pigments. If Hollywood runs riot with its palette and brushes, and splashes colour about with no reason except to show its resources, then people will soon grow tired of the novelty. We shall all have to accustom our eyes to these new splendours. A great many filmgoers will not like the change, but their protests will probably be as unavailing as those that were made when the pictures began to talk. The new process will make some heavy demands on the intelligence of the film producers. They will be hard put to it to find stories in which colour is not simply used as a decoration, but can be employed imaginatively. In the wrong hands it could easily become a first-class bore;

It was startling to see Miriam Hopkins on the screen as one has seen her on the New York stage, a blonde beauty, vivid and a little shrill in colouring, and intensely “Southern.” But here Miss Hopkins seemed a good deal larger than life. She over-acted, as she doesn’t on the stage. The flashing brilliance of her colours in the new medium appeared to be too much for her. Perhaps it will be necessary for players to subdue their style. Mr Aldous Huxley suggested that after the talkies might come the “smellies” and the “feelies.” I hear that the. film magnates, in considering what they might do next to keep their vast public entertained, actually experimented with films that would appeal to the sense of smell. But the tests were not encouraging. It is odd, that the technicians haven’t yet been able to master the art of making three-dimen-sional pictures.

For the time being Hollywood intends to rely on the new appeal of colour to fend off the menace of television. It has appropriated the rainbow in the hope that it will find a crock of gold where the rainbow ends.