FRENCH WAR FILMS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2860, 26 August 1916, Page 2

FRENCH WAR FILMS

AT THE TOWN HALL. ___! u !lhe-French Government believe in a)lowing, its public to know a good deal of what is going on in Hie war zone betwerjn the Sonime and the Swiss border, not anything that, may be of strategic value to Hie over alert enemy spies, but rent pictures illustrative of the tough tusk their armies have in holding bacK the encmv, and the prodigious amount 0[ hardship Iter loyal eons ate enduring lit the greatest fight the French have ever fought. The pictures shown at the Town Hall last ovening, and announced as Jiavinj; been taken by special permission of tho French Government;, are no. so thrilling as they are informative., TJiey help one tft realise the enormous amount of work, involved in thsrapparently simple task of freeing an observation balloon. They show,.too; the man. ner in which-the-landscapes .behind..the enemy's trenches arc photographed by mean's of aerial kites, with an electrical attachment that exposes the plate at the right moment. The eiposure oyer, the kite is brought to earth, and in the rear of a specially-constructed wagon is a dark-room to enable the operator velop the image there and then lhere are 110 actual pictures of the lighting, but a machine-gun section is Bhown at work,- and the effect of the hail peril of bullets those- deadly weapons vomit « Bhown by the clouds of dust that aro thrown up from a distant hillside. Aa interesting as any of the pictures aro a series of ,countrysido views taieii pet kineiria from an aeroplane. At 6ne moment the 'plane sweeps Over What looks like a chess-board into a -white tape drawn across it. This is one of 'those intensely cultivated patches of country, divided into paddocks, and scored by a toad. Then one hioves over forest lands, smokilv remote, in the far below, and thou nwceping earthward the airship skimi a hundred feet or so above a shat. tered town, which- resembles more than anything a stock saleyard, with the side* of the pens represented by the walls of buildings which have been destroyed, by shell fire and the. flames that followedmemorials of France's great agony in this war of exhaustion. Bnt if the • French heart is wrung by the sight of such ruin, what must have been thought of those wonderful winter scenes, evidently taken in the mountainous VosgeS district, where the snow lies ten or twenty feet deep and tiie'general aspect Is that Of Northern Siberia of Canada only a solitary hut or building here and there among the snow-laden pines to re< liee the deadly whiteness. Yet among eucli' scenery the war drags its weafy course. To bring the wounded down.ftoni the mountain tronc'hes sledges .drawn by Alaskan dogs have been -requisitioned, and horse-drawn sledges are useil to convey supplies up to the men i*stb are, "carrying on."' Some of these winter scenes are gorgeously beautiful—a frozen paradise—that would serve as an ideal setting for the home of Santa Claus, but a grimmer significance is lent the seemby a procession of muffled men moving heavy-looted through' the snow, each 0:10 carrying an enormous shell to feed a big gun that is belching dentil at sowo dis. taut enemy away across some ice-lined ravine, Another (food picture, a little more .heartening, is that of a gang ol German prisoners, some hundreds strong, being escorted down from the mountains into a picturesque French town.. How a field searchlight works is also shown in analytical detail. Pictures other than those appertaining to France and the war .were His Fatal Shot," "The Smuggler's Da-fighter," and some views of the stately homes of Italy, During the evening, Mr. Charles Blake recited the speech before Harfleur from "Henry V." The pictures, which attracted a.large audience, will be shown again this eveniug.