BRITISH KINEMA PLAYS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 152, 22 March 1919, Page 8

BRITISH KINEMA PLAYS

AND AMERICAN COMPETITION. Tho threatened planting of this country with American "palatial pictures palaces" should at last put the British film manufacturer fully on his mettle (states a writer in the "Daily Mail"), But he will liavo to fight a good fight for tho home-made picture if he is to win through now. Already the United States has a practical monopoly of the film industry.

No doubt America has had the advantage of the start, and of better methods of organisation and' publicity to make tho best of it. Also she has unrivalled climatic advantages for the best photographic results. Nevertheless, one might imagine that American films, dealing so largely with scenes and incidents in vhicli Ihc British public are not keenly interested, and with which they might by now be expected to be surfeited, should before this liavo been supplanted by British-made pictures in which we could all tako the warmest and most intimate ir.tere.st.' . But the American producers nave lnt onone secret which has conduced largely to their supremacy. And that is that the play with plenty of "heart interest", and "punch" is the thing. Also that, above all. to make tho sort of play that moves and lives, you must have the work of the' author—the trained and skilled maker of plots—on which lo found it. Thus, in tha United States the author has become an important factor ill photoplay production, and of late he has been given more and more recognition. Recently a big American firm announced that (hey would pay from J;200 to ,£SOOO for series to suit their productions, and tlie authors had not even to trouble to put their work into technical scenario form.

Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., on returning from America last autumn, published some very interesting hints to British film manufacturers, in whioli lie said that "the more the manufacturer . • . realises that the story should be Olltnisted to the best brains and the. of real men of letters the better.' A little later a trade paner published a list of British firms and their requirements. and it looked as if all concerned in the making of British films were going to exert every effort, to command, at any rate, the home market.