BRITISH PICTURE ON AIR DEFENCE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20966, 19 February 1938, Page 16

BRITISH PICTURE ON AIR DEFENCE

The British Minister of War. Mr L. Hore-Belisha, is taking a keen interest in the general release of "The Gap.’’ the Gaumont-British Dominions air defence film made in conjunction with the Army and Air Councils, to show th° public the way in which the Territorial Army will co-operate with the Royal Air Force in the event of an air attack. The success of "Death on the Road,” the road safety propaganda film macle while Mr Hore-Belisha was Minister of Transport, is responsible for the Minister’s interest in “The Gap.” Terri- | torial associations, local police and all i authorities interested in air defence are j being encouraged to assist in the presentation of the film to the public.

TINFOIL SAVED FOR ORPHANAGES Tin foil wrappers from candy, cigarettes and gum packages are being systematically salvaged by players in Hollywood film studios and sold to increase the milk and food fund of orphanages and children’s homes. Leading the campaign at Universal studios, which is typical of the drive going on in other film plants, are Barbara Read and Frances Robinson, young actresses, who recently completed the gathering of more than 300 pounds of tightly rolled foil which will be turned over to local children’# homes. “It costs nothing except a little time,” the girls explained. “But the extra money obtained from sale of the tin foil, which is gathered in card-

board boxes conveniently located about the lots, meets nearly half the expense of running the kitchens in three different children’s homes.”

A London actor, Mr Neil Carr, who had to give up his career through blindness, has regained the sight of one eye after an operation. It is hoped that a second operation will restore the sight of the other eye, and that he will be able to return to the stage. The operation was performed by a Harley Street specialist. Only a local anaesthetic was used. After the operation he was blindfolded for a month.

"Fund for Opera Study” has made possible. The short and reticent score is. indeed, worthy of study. It is, Mr Capell writes, at once experimental and masterly. The very opening bars suggest a mood and a scene of poignant melancholy with quietness but with the strokes of an original master. The music is held, as it were on a leash, to be relaxed only a little when the emotion is intense—but then with prop' i Donate effect. But if the melan choly pastoral style of the music is masterly, the work remains experimental. Not all the composer’s piety towards the text gave the words the speaking value which he seems to have

designed to allow them. At this performance, at all events, the proportion heard was not more than in a more lyrical opera. And his would-be subservience to the poet leaves us at the end with a sense of some meagreness and a feeling that something more expansive and richer was wanted to r ake up for the lack of motivation in Synge’s pathetic fiction.