CHOICE OF PICTURES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 18 (Supplement)

CHOICE OF PICTURES

RENTERS’ FORCEFUL FEEDING” NEED FOR DISCRIMINATION During the next three months cinemas will have to face a real crisis precipitated by the falling off in quantity and quality of the films imported from Hollywood, says a writer in the (Daily Mail. In silent film days we had from fourteen to sixteen films generally released every week. To-day we have only nine new talking pictures generally released, and of these only four are reasonably good entertainment. This is very serious, ami nothing can cure it except the abandoning of the general system, which is a system of stupidity under present conditions. It. is sheer forcible film feeding. In some measure this forcible feeding of cinemas has been broken down by exceptional talking pictures being shown in advance of their general release date at. j selected cinemas of importance. Evon so, it is quite a common experience for film-goers to find identical programmes in every cinema in their neighbour hood, which is just as fatuous a« if every theatre in Manchester were to present the same stage play on the same day. Since film goers a* a whole are increasingly critical, cinemas must choose their films less mechanically than they have been doing. They must fight the gangster methods of renters whereby they are browbeaten into taking a socalled “group” of pictures to secure the one outstanding picture to which the weaklings of a “group” are attached. At the moment the domination of the film owner is such that the cinema owner is not in control of his business. That is why film-goers find themselves with so little choice of entertainment in their local cinemas, and why, having seen one programme, their filmgoing is finished for a week.

, Olin Howland is, according tv James • Montgomery Flagg, tho finest water- ■ colour artist in the world. I Director Hamilton McFadden is un ' expert violinist, sprinter, tennis player and horseback rider. I ♦ • < * Warren William holds sonic sort of » a championship in Hollywood. Ho has 1 grown and lost, via the razor, five dif -• fcront moustaches in the past two months. The necessity arose through I various sequences in his pictures.