A KINEMA SURPRISE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1789, 30 June 1913, Page 3

A KINEMA SURPRISE.

THE LATEST ACHIEVEMENT. A MARVELLOUS ILLUSION. There is a good deal of new building going on in London, and, as in most cities of tho world, much of it is concerned with the kinema theatre, that astonishing development of our own times. Already tn London, writes tho correspondent of the "Sydney Morning Herald," the picture show is everywhere. Often but a fow hundred yards separate one theatre of tho kind from another. Tho amusement boon thoy offer, especially to the populace conventionally 60 described, is at once evident in tno poorer quarters. There the kinema thoafre is.a soundly flourishing institution, and its daily and nightly provision of, entertainment is a constant interest of thousands of mean streets. Then there are kinema theatres of another order, theatres de luxe, in tlio West End, where the accommodation is lavish and tho prico of seats a motter of shillings and half-crowns. A recent one, quite a Binall place, but furnished and adorned, and luxurious in its provision of boxes and other select liooks and corners, cost, I understand, ,£OO,OOO to build. It is always filled by tho highprice audience it alters for, as, also, are the similarly luxurious places of tho kind in Regent Street and Piccadilly. The quality of entertainment offered varies very much. The great bulk of the picture shows groan here, ns in Australia, uv.der the absurdities of American melodrama. But thero is many a' theatre in London at which pictures of absorbing interest and value find plaoe upon tho programmes, a fact which emphasises that the kinema theatre is still fighting through its infantile defects, and* will yet establish itsolf as a great and beneficent provision of scientific..ingenuity. Just now, to that end, rumours aro afloat of an attempt, upon an immense scale, to deliver it from the thraldom of American sensationalism by setting up in England tho headquarters of a forward movement in picture subjects. England teems with interest, both of the picturesque and informing kind. Tho intention now hinted at has that beauty and that interest of real life chiefly in view. But the' most nstonishing development of the kinema is just to hand at the Scala Theatre. The Scala is a palatial place, which somehow was budded in a far-off byway of London—right off the map of theatreland. As a result, it failed ns a theatre for all its splendour of appointment, nnd is now the headquarters of the Urban Company, and their great exploits in kinemacolour. But this week they have advanced beyond colour. Tliey are projecting apparently solid bodies. There is no kinematograph screen and tho lights of the theatre are not turned, off. You look from your stall upon an ordinary stage, with scenery. A figure enters from the wings, and remains standing or sits upon a chair, sings a song, or delivers a recitation. Apparently it is a solid body. Really it is nothing of the kind. It is a picturo projection. The vocal scheme is got, of course, by phonograph, and does not as yet work too well. But tho other illusion ia astonishingly complete. You are quito convinced that tho stage is an open space, and that the figure upon it is a solid body. ,Sometimes it is an exquisitely gowned lady, for example,' and the material of her dress, down to its tiniest detail of elaboration, is tho thing to the vctj- life. Bnt there is nothing really. The new invention is from Vienna. It is presumed that thero is a glass screen concerned in it, but beyond that little is known. It is so strange an effect, this of an inhabited stage, as to bp almost uncanny. At any rate, it looks like a revolutionary development of tho kinema as we have known it hitherto.