LAUGHTER NOT SO LOUD NOWADAYS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 62, 14 March 1931, Page 23 (Supplement)

LAUGHTER NOT SO LOUD NOWADAYS.

TALKING FILMS HAVE PRODUCED RESTRAINT. Si isn’t that motion picture awdiences have lost their sense of humour. Nor can it be said that ptefcnes are failing: in their mirthprodueing qualities—but laughter is less loud these days in the movie , houses. Audiences are learning to restrain their laughter, according to Mr Alfred E« Green, who directed “The Green Goddess,” with George Arliss, and who is directing “Men of the Sky.” forthcoming Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach production for First National. > Effect of Talkies. has been happening is the result of the development of the talkies and change in the mechanics of filming a picture. ‘'During the silent era,” says Mr Green, “audiences could laugh as long or as heartily as they wished without losing any part of the picture. When tho talkies arrived, audiences continued to laugh in a natural manner whenever a scene tickled their risibilities. The result was that the action following each laugh was lost.” Iq order to get a hearing for the subsequent dialogue, producers tried to make allowances for laughs in a picture, much as is done, by the individual players, on the stage. However, “spacing for laughs” had to be abandoned, according to Mr Green. “It slowed up the picture,” he explains. “Furthermore, who can guess 'a laugh in advance? It was sometimes found that what had been regarded as a sure-fire laugh producer in the studio had failed to produce even a ripple of mirth with the audience.” One can -well imagine the effect of a scene practically standing still waiting for a laugh. It simply made the player look foolish. Hilarity Tempered. The solution, this director claims, was furnished by the people themselves. A scene now is made with no regard to the possible effect upon the audience. It is filmed as though not a single laugh were expected, and the patrons have become so accustomed to the talkies and to the realisation that the picture won't wait until they have recovered breath that the person who laughs too loud is apt to be rewarded with low-down looks from his neighbours. The majority have learned to temper their hilarity in order to hear wdiat follows on the screen. Casual People. People in Hollywood are more casual than any she has met anywhere, says Marlene Dietrich, the new German star. It is an atmosphere she enjoys, she admits, now that she knows it is only a mannerism and that, beneath, Hollywood takes itself and its work very seriously.