ACROSS THE FOOTLIGHTS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1935, Page 8 (Supplement)

ACROSS THE FOOTLIGHTS

FILMS FOR THE KING’S JUBILEE

STUDIOS SHOULD POOL THEIR RESOURCES

The announcement that Eric Maschwitz and Vai Gielgud have written a special Jubilee film for British International brings the number of celebration films in England for the first week in May up to a round half-dozen. With Korda’s retirement from the field,, the firms participating now include British International, Fox, Gaumont-British, Paramount, and Pathe. All these firms will provide film mementoes in some shape or other of the King’s 25 years of government. In addition there will be a timely release from Associated British Film Distributors of “The Soul of a Nation,” a patriotic panorama of file chief events in English history during King George’s reign.

There is no doubt that the British International picture will be in' every way the most ambitious of the batch, writes one famous critic. The script has been handed over to the. Elstree studios by Messrs. Gielgud and Maschwitz, who are modestly enthusiastic over the material contained therein. Opening, it is understood, with a scene outside Scott’s tent in the Antarctic, with Frank Vosper playing the part of the great explorer, the film goes on to show just what sort of a country England is, that men have laboured and fought and died to serve it. ;

The main events of the past 25 years will be told by two commentators, whose voices will explain every incident in detail. Three directors have been assigned to the picture. With the single exception of the Maschwitz-Gielgud picture, the film trade’s special offerings for Jubilee week are based on newsreels —celebrated and historic newsreels, it is true, but definitely newsreels. The Fox Movietone’s contribution was largely compiled some ■time ago from recorded events in His Majesty’s life and has been re-edited and brought up to date with more current material. Certain original scenes of the Delhi Durbar are promised for this production, along with various “still” photographs of the King hitherto unpublished. on the screen.

These topical films selected for public edification will no doubt prove an admirable selection, rich in photographic rareties and unique in record. But with the possible exception of the 8.1. P. picture, the list seems to be a little pedestrian. There does not seem to be much promise in it of imaginative tribute to the most stirring quarter-century of history since the days of the Roman Empire, nor much understanding of the man whose Christmas broadcasts from Sandringham have won him the regard and warm fellowship of English-speak-ing peoples all over the world. Speaking, of course, wholly before the event, the critic submits that America would have done this thing in better style than England. I cannot believe, he says, that the Silver Jubilee of a Washington or a Roosevelt, if such a thing were possible, would pass uncelebrated by the film industry except for a handful of collected newsreels. I fancy that such an event would draw Hollywood together more closely than sound, or colour, or the purity drive, or any other conditional crisis, and that with the backing of the State and the Government services the motion picture companies would advance in mass formation to salute their authority in the eyes of the world.

I am not necessarily advocating American, methods in our presentation of the King’s Jubilee on the screen. Our ways of showing patriotism are not, on tlie whole, America’s ways, and we should only be dishonest if we tried to adopt them. What I do admire and covet for our film industry is America’s intense enthusiasm for an idea. The King’s Silver Jubilee is an idea, and a symbol, that touches untold millions of people of all classes and all nationalities. It is a universal idea, but it is solely a British opportunity. In May the eyes of five continents will be turned on England, and I should like to see the British film industry for once getting together, pooling their resources, settling their differences, and making one grand, imaginative picture of an empire that a king has given all his life to serve.