TALKING FILMS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 219, 10 June 1919, Page 5

TALKING FILMS

A PRODUCER'S PROTEST. I d'read the day when films will 1m able .to ,6peak—and i:here ure many strong reasons for dread from tho producer's point of view. Tho first trouble is that, in present conditions, a good picture takes quite a respectable number of weeks to produce—tho company has to bo drilled in gesture and every movement lias to bo watched. For instance, when a heroine is wearing a bracelet in a garden sceno shu musk not come straight into, a room without it, although the scenes may actually bo photographed weeks apart. That is a triflo, but add to all mesa trifles tho stupendous task of training a. company in spealdng their parts—and a lot of tlieiii will bo long ones—and, well, tha production will tako a respectable number of years—to my way of thinking It is difficult to imagine how tho play will bo acted' both for film-recording and voice-recording iustrumenta. If tho actors and actresses speak their parts while tho film is being token, tho studio will have to 'bo in dead silence—which is absurd, A studio is never silent; only at present, happily, the camera can hear nothing. Tho producer talks, tho company talk, the place buzzes with noise. Pity the-poor producer if everything has to bo done in silence! The alternative is that speaking should be recorded after the acting and synchronised with the picture. That sounds a possible way, but a fearfully delicate operation, working to exact tune —and a very heavy burden again- for tho producer

Of course there are people who are not quite certain whether speaking films would bo an unmixed blessing. The film has now found a stylo of its own, a way of expressing things both by explanatory scones and ' sub-titles" which has partly done away with tho need for the spoken word. There are so many scenes in a film that an audienco would only be distracted by tho continual chango of dialogue entailed. Thero are somo scenes, too—say, a compauy of horsemen riding quickly along a road—in which dialogue would bo impossible, so thero would have to bo a gap in the spoken words, That also would harass an audience.

There is, furthermore, a type of film which cannot bo translated inte'tlliilsgue, Certain comedy films, buoli ts those of Charlie Chaplin, would, in my opinion, lose a good deal if "helped jjut" with talk. That is one ray of sunshine to me. Tho speaking camera will only 1m fitted for certain kinds of film—(specially the reproduction of stage plays, classical and modern, with few scenes and o, grvat dependence on tho dialogue. If it is to ho used generally tho whole development of films will have to follow a new lino and a inoro expensive cno at that. I dread tho day, and so do some actors and actresses who have forgotten tho special words that fit a situation, but "gag" on the film with the greatest composure and "look all right." ,