THE EARLIEST FILMS

Southland Times, Issue 23553, 6 July 1938, Page 8

THE EARLIEST FILMS

Experimental Days In England CHARLES PEACE ON THE SCREEN

It is a pity that the general public do not have more opportunities of seeing the kind of films which the British Film Institute has just shown to the London Press, states The Manchester Gtiardian. Some’ films were shown there that have really made history. There was, for instance, the earliest British film still in existence; a tenminute picture of the life of Charles Peace. It was made for the Sheffield Photo Company in 1903, and the production is so artless, so naive that one can hardly believe that tiffs was the sort of infant out of which the present slick sophisticated films grew. , One would like to see Sam Goldwyn s or Cecil B. de Mille’s reactions to the crude backcloths of the Peace film, the obviously painted moon and a skylight which reveals itself as paper by flapping in the wind after Peace has thrown a policeman through it. Then all the actors are obviously scared, by having to convey their meaning without speech, and overact fantastically to make up for it. They put such verve and vitality and Victorian dramatic force into their actions that Clark Gable by comparison shrinks into a frail, anaemic. spirit. There is no lack of violence in this film, and it ends by showing Peace in the act of being hanged. Then there were the early experiments with trick films —the stopping of the camera, the reversing of the film and the rest—and an amazing little five-minute comedy made in 1909, “The Invisible Thief,” which in. all its essentials anticipates the “Invisible Man.” “Dante’s Inferno,” one of the earliest six-reel films which was made in 1911 and ran in a Strand cinema for a year, showed some of the early uses of models, one of which is a giant devouring human beings who might well have inspired “King Kong.” Perhaps the most exciting film shown was Adolph Zukor’s “The Lady of the Camellias,” produced in 1910. This film really marks the begining of the star system, for Zukor persuaded Sarah Bernhardt to play Marguerite. Lame and fat, handicapped by imperfect photography and bad production, Bernhardt, nevertheless, communicates to the audience some flashes of her warn and unquenchable genius. The show ended with “Skeleton Dance,” the first of Walt Disney’s silly symphonies, made in 1929 —a landmark in cinematic art. This film has not been surpassed by many of its successors.