THE REAL WAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 119, 23 May 1932, Page 2

THE REAL WAY

HOW TO MAKE A FILM LOVE INTEREST FIRST. VVheu a film of Himalayan mountain coring was offered recently to various film companies the producer was informed that the British public were not interested in such films, that it was a pity there was no plot, and ‘.hat the film would have been improved by the addition of love interest. Mr. Anthony Armstrong has adopted this suggestion in an article published in the London Morning Post. Naming no names, you must all have heard a certain amount of talk recently about a certain film made by a certain person dealing with the climbing of a certain mountain, and shown to certain other persons in the trade, who. however would have nothing to do with it because it did not :i«snss a certain love interest, writes Mr. Armstrong. The photography, it was admitted, was wonderful, the record of human endeavour enthralling, the whole achievement laudable in the extreme, but—there was no Heart Throb. And so out it went on its ear. Mind you, 1 don’t blame those film magnates. Poor slaves of the Box Office, they are not in the game to like films, but to know what the film-going public likes—though such knowledge, 1 should say, can ’t be good for any man. They were merely recognising the fact that there are few things less passionate than a peak of the Himalayas 25,000 feet high, and that what really “goes over big” with the ninepenny seats is somebody bumping off somebody else, xA.ll for love of a dizzy blonde with a transatlantic accent. In other words, emotional appeal. No, I fear it is the gentleman who made the film who is really at. fault. He should have foreseen that, to the

habitues of those mighty Neo-Spanish-Gothie-Oriental palaces (complete with three soda-fountains and an organ), which enrich our cities, one mountain is just as good as another mountain, and not nearly as good as a Hollywooden set with china-clay-and-mica snow. As Gus Finklestein. manager of the .All British. Union-Jack Film company, said to me the other day, “Nature by itself, boy, is too artificial! What it wants is sonic fjood natural human emo tion with it.” Still Time. Now it is not too late to alter this film about a mountain; to reduce the proportion of mere nature photography and make it into something really artistic by addition of a human love interest. If the author of the film will listen to me we’ll soon have something really worth while. There are two ways of intreducing

a, love interest (slang for sex) into any film dealing with mere Nature. One is to let the people that are going around photographing this Nature fnd a platinum blonde half-way through the film, the other is to let them take a platinum blonde along with them. Either way you get the platinum blonde interest—as wo experts call it—into the story. In the first method, you should have your party of explorers get up to the top of the mountn ; n and there discover a savage tribe ruled over by a white girl in a permanent wave and such a strong physical constitution that she ca: go about in hardly anything at all at 25,000 feet up. By a strange coincidence she speaks perfect English, and thereafter wanders round with the explorers looking at Nature ("That s Asia, lad, that’s Asia!' 7 ) till she falls in love with the hero. The second method, however, is far better, as it offers an opportunity for a tense drama wherein heart calls to heart across primitive snows, and man strives with man for the pure love of a girl, entitled probably “Passions on th*' Peaks.” Hero it is! The girl’s father, an aged explorer, has fitted out an expedition to climb a Himalaya and bring back real snow to sell to the tt O ]l VW() 1 studios. (“There's snow on them thar hills!’ 1

The girl goes along too, and the hero, who has joined the expedition to work his way through college, and also the villain, a scientist, who is really in the pay of a china-clay corporation which at the moment supplies Los Angeles with its artificial snow. The girl is, of course, dressed in the latest Parisian Himalayan climbing costume —fur-edged, high-heeled shoes, short fur-trimmed skirt, bare knees, and a decolletto jersey. No hat; the spectators have paid to sec the sun through her hair. The Snowfields. Both voung men soon fall in love with her, and as the expedition proceeds (invariably in silhouette along the snow ridges) the hero begins to suspect, tho villain of plan..’.ng to mak the expedition a failure. Omes the. day when they get to the top of somewhere, and the father, gazing out over the Himalayas, cries: “Look! Snow! Beal snow! We are made for Tho villain, however, analyses a sample and pretends that there is a flaw; it is very inferior snow, and will melt if brought back. He may even say it isn’t snow at all. only china-elav-and. mica got up to look like it. Failure at once stares the expedition in the. face; then the villain says he has discovered a mountain full of real snow, but will not tell where unless . . tho girl. . . Tho father storms, the hero threatens, but they can do nothing. They must have snow—-snow, which makes men mad, which turns honesty into grasping greed and all that . . . Tho girl yields—as far as any girl can yield in a film. She is about to bo married to the villain by a wandering minister —who in those wide sweeps of snowbound Nature had found a simplicity that never in the cities of men. . . when suddenly an enormous aval anche is seen approaching. Missing the. hero and heroine by inches it

strikes tho villain between the shoulders, wounding him mortally. He has just enough footage of film left him to analyse with his dying breath the avalanche that has killed him to proclaim it as the best hundred-per-cent. snow, and to ask the girl’s forgiveness. And so death's snowy lingers wiped from hip soul the stain of sin. while in two young hearts life blossomed untrammelled. or some such guff. You can tell just where he lies, because the father takes his hat off and the girl pulls a simple corner of snow over his face, while tho hero says; “Say, he was real white underneath!’* Then the minister can marry her to the right man. and if another ava lancho does not wipe the lot out (which would bo O.K. by me) you have your story. Indeed, it is such a good one it seems a pity to spoil it with a lot of photography of Himalayas and such bunk. Make it a gold mine, set it in Arizona, and I’ 1 ! b«*t the trade lap*