THE SOUND PICTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SOUND PICTURE

WIDE SCOPE FOR NEW ART

(By

’Senex.”)

Like most other inventions of our age the talking picture has been. developed quickly. It is only two or three years ago that the Americans began to make practicable the idea that had been in the mind of more than one inventor long before, and to perfect the apparatus of •production. It is only a little more than a year since we in Taranaki were first able to enjoy the results. Now the' sound film is a commonplace among a thousand other commonplaces that once roused our wonder.

Things move fast in this age. Public opinion changes very quickly, too, and is much more susceptible to, and receptive of, new ideas than it was 100 years ago. The train that drew the Duke of Wellington just a century ago was a marvel in the eyes of those who beheld it. It gradually lost all its wonder. Other remarkable inventions in methods of travel and of communication followed, and at each new invention or discovery the surprise grew less, until now we are ready to accept calmly whatever science presents to us for our service. And in our hasty, acceptance we do not give everything the thought of which it is worthy. So. it was with the sound picture. A decade ago it was scarcely dreamed of as practical. Yet it is now part and parcel of our complex life. There was indeed a little controversy when it was first widely introduced! Discussion largely centred on the technical side. Reproduction was not very good then, nor is it yet perfect in many of our New Zealand cinemas. But it is foolish to expect perfection in the machinery of an industry so recently developed. Perfection of reproduction and acoustics has been achieved in Great Britain and, one must suppose, in the United States, too. It will in time be achieved in New Zealand as well.

In the early days of the cinema many people considered the film would in time have the better of the legitimate stage. One or the other, it was prophesied., would fail. In England,, the home of the dramatic art, the number of cinemagoers grew from nothing to millions, and still the theatres played to full houses. Obviously the inference was that the same people were continuing to go to theatres and that the vast mass of people who were not theatre-goers had made the cinema audiences.

So far, then, the cinema has not supplanted the theatre in England, where the stage is strong. But that is not to say it will not in more remote places of the earth to which a film can be conveyed much more conveniently than a theatre company. Here in New Zealand we do not hear a play or a musical comedy until long after it has had. its premiere in England. We either have to wait until the piece has completer! its run, and successful pieces run for hundreds of nights, or we see Australian and New Zealand artists when we would'prefer to hear the originals. It is the pieces that are. successful in. England from a box-office point of view that are brought to the Dominion. They, like best-selling novels, are not always the best examples of the art.

Now, however, that good Examples ot English plays are being produced on the sound films we shall, be able to see the best of English acting in the best of drama. Recently a sound picture of one of John Galsworthy’s plays was released in London. The principal role was filled by an actor who has long enjoyed a high reputation for his talent. Some of the scenery, of the picture was better than could have been produced on a stage, and naturally many scenes ' that the limitations of the stage would not allow could be reproduced by the film. It was feared in some quarters that the placing before the public of a film that might be considered “highbrow” would not be a successful venture.. The house was full and. there, were queues every night for many weeks. It was suggested by the newspapers that not only were.regular cinema-goers showing their appreciation of. good drama, but also that their ranks were being swelled by desertions from the numbers of the theatre-patrons. In this way the sound-film can fill a definite place in the life of our community It might even be that a film repertory of all the best of English and American drama, and, with perfection or musical recording and reproduction, of all the great musical works of the world, will gradually bo collected for preservation and use for all time. ... . But there is another and, possibly, by far the most important aspect of the sound ;'?tiire to be considered! There is a growing dissatisfaction felt with the cinema, but not generally very clearly expressed because we are at a loss to know just what it is we are dissatisfied with. We hear much about the progress of the cinema. Technicajly it has progressed, but has it in any other direction? The film, is a new art. It is a new mode of expression for the age and only what springs naturally from the sense o* an age can be sincere. The early American cinema of slapstick farce and Western life was true to its age and con tinent, and the world accepted it. It was strong and vital because it was of the P That generation is passing and the silent film and later the sound film have turned away from the line of their own they were following and become merely imitators. To live, an art cannot imitate, and that is all the cinema has done. Wc are growing tired of Broadway films and murder trials, cheap musical comedy and Edgar Wallace stuff. r It is disappointing to find British producers following the American example and turning out “hundred per cent, talkin"” pictures. The cinema is become a men stage understudy. It was an international art when it was silent but now speech has confined it to its own territories and its own age. There is a marvellously wide scope. for the ai t ot the sound picture, and it is being foolishly limited. , , This will be brought home most forcibly to all who see some of the short pictures that have recently been produced One was “A Southern April, another a lovely little swimming picture “Crystal Champions.” The one tha stands out as a triumph of the art and provides much food for reflection s called “Water and Wave”-a screen alive with water, jets and fountains, surf a d rivers,.cloud-bank and marsh-land, every form of the beauty of water. Tf a producer can take as a subjec a 'single impersonal thing like running water and give '*■ valid expression moving cinema, he has gone to the very root of the cinema, has understood it and known its needs. The two esse tials, material and medium, a mediuthat is new, meet. It is the pure art we are seeking. The drama and the romance belong more properly to tne of the theatre.