Filming War Scenes

Southland Times, Issue 22730, 5 November 1935, Page 5

Filming War Scenes

NEWSREELS FROM ABYSSINIA. New York, September 7. The story behind the pictures of Ethiopia now showing on the newsreel screens is almost as dramatic as the episodes themselves. For the fact that persons dwelling on the other side of the globe can be as familiar with the actual preparations' of war as those in the warring nations is a new note in the progress of civilization .. . that intangible thing Mr Mussolini claims to be the reason for Italy’s attack on Ethiopia. One morning last week, Wednesday to be exact, 1000 feet of film arrived at the Paramount newsreel laboratories in West Forty-third Street by messenger from an incoming steamer. These pictures were sent from Addis Ababa, where they had been photographed on July 29. To get them by plane from the Ethiopian capital to Paris took approximately three days and cost 5000 dollars. In Paris the films were . developed and shipped to New York. Today, less than a month from the time the newsmen first turned their cameras in that distant African city, Americans are looking at the results. Barefooted Boys Drill. The shots include a volunteer army of 3000 “irregulars,” barefooted youths and spindly old men, each carrying an old-fashioned rifle, part of their training being a hike of forty miles a day. And the women’s meeting at the palace is shown. Led by the daughter of Dedjazmatch (General) Haptemikael, they demanded of Emperor Haile Selassie that they be allowed to bear arms and fight against Italy. Among the weirdest sights is an exhibition of manoeuvres under the supervision of a Swedish officer in which Ethiopia’s “cadets” are observed at artillery practice. The manipulation of these “cannon,” belonging to the vintage of our Civil War, by thin, black men, pathetically eager, is as cruel an etching of human futility as may be seen anywhere to-day. Particularly so, as shown in juxtaposition to the shots of

thousands of natty Italian troops leaving for the African border on a battleship, the last word in modern warfare. “It took a caravan, planes and an ocean liner to get these pictures to the public in record time,” said W. P. Montague, assignment editor for Paramount, “but we work on deadlines, just as your paper does, and speed is the most important factor in the business. We’ve had four men in Ethiopia for the last month or two, and our pictures are the first to reach local screens. One of our men is the Emperor’s private photographer—he took pictures of the opening of Parliament a while ago, making special prints for his Majesty, and the other is a staff man we sent down froth Vienna. He covers all the wars for us, was in the thick of things during the Russian revolution and recently filmed the fracas in Austria. In Jibouti, coast town in French Somaliland, we have two sound men waiting to get started on September 28, when hostilities are supposed to begin, but also to attend to shipments of film when necessary. How a Film is “Edited.”

On a floor below Mr Montague’s office the film received that morning was being edited and cut. In a dark little projection room, at the rear of which stood a narrow desk with shaded lights, a dozen persons were watching the new batch of pictures flash across the screen. At the centre of the desk was William Park, makeup editor. Beside him were two young women cutters taking notes on his comments and suggestions for arrangement of the sequences. In the chairs in front of the screen a young man was getting material for the “off-stage” talk to accompany the picture, and another was working up captions for it. A running stream of talk went on in the group, informal, yet crisp, and it all had to count, for by evening the newsreel would be smoothed and polished and ready for distribution in local theatres.

>As shown it was a raw film, black coming out white on the screen, and white black, as all negatives do. It had no continuity and was silent, but even then there was an appeal in the picture of these dark figures hurled suddenly into war preparations.

Raymond Massey, who portrayed Chavelin in “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” has been chosen to take the role of John Cabal in the H. G. Wells film “The Shape of Things to Come.” In the latter part of the picture, which happens in the year 2054 A.D., he plays his own grandson. There are 46 speaking parts in the film, among them being Ralph Richardson and Edward Chapman, both of whom are in the other Wells film, “The Man Who Worked Miracles.”