ANOTHER CRISIS FOR FILMS: AGE OF COLOUR APPROACHING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 172, 7 August 1937, Page 10

ANOTHER CRISIS FOR FILMS: AGE OF COLOUR APPROACHING

The film industry, in Eiirope and Ameriea, is faeing its second big crisis in ten years. The handwriting has already appeared on the wall; the word is colour (writes a film correspondent in the London Observer). Samuel Goldwyn, from Hollywood, has announced that all his future pictures will be colour pictures. This may be a faet, or it may be an optimistic surmise. If Mr. Goldwyn were to make 50 per cent. of his films an colour, it would be a suificiently decisive portent. Mr. Goldwyn is as good a business man as we have in the industry. He has had experience of colour production. He tried it out in his final sequence of "Kid Millions," two years ago. Ilis company, United Artists, have handled all the colour cartoons of Walt Disney. They have handled the colour film "The Garden of Allah," and the first modern story in colour, "A Star is Born," with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, not yet shown in this country. In England. Meanwhile, in England^ an enormous fillip has been given to tne colour business by the production of "Pagliacci" (in CJhemicolour), "Wings of the Mornmg" (in Tcchnieolor), and durinJ the past week, by the colour newsreola of thc Coronation — Technicolour, DufayUhromex, and others. -Next month, Zoltan Korda goes on Ihe floor at Deuliam with a colour fihn, "The Drum," starr.ng young Sabu, the hero of "Elephant Boy. " Ivobert Kane, producer of " Wings of thc Morning," promises another colour picture shortly. Herbert Wilcox? I understand, means to use colour for the final reels of ' ' Victoria the Great." There is nothing new in the uttempt at colour, but everything new m the producers's attitude towards it. We have had colour films, of sorts, for forty years. As far " back ha 1895 a short hand-coloured picture appeared ".n New York. A few years later Robert Paul, of London, went to the enormous labour of hand-tinting the 112,000 tiny frames of the seven reels of "The Miracle. ' ' In 1906, in a small garden in Brighton, a little boy and 'girl, she in white with a pink sash, he in sailor blue carrying a TJnion Jack, were

the subjects of the first picture ever photographed in colour. " Six years later, May 11) 1912, a • film made by the aame colour system was shown at tho Scala, London, in the presence of King George, Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra, the Dowager Empress of Russia, and some thirty other royal personages. This was the celebrated colour record of the Delhi Durbar, During the War« During the war several colour processes were marketed, with varying suceess. The most important of them was l'echnicolour, a new Amencan twocolour process, which began its career with a story called ' ' The Gulf Between," starring Natalie Kalmus, now in England as the chief colour director of the company. While England experimented with a system known as Prizmacolour in two films with Lady Diana Manners? "Tho Glorious Adventure," and "The Virgin Queen," Teehnicolor, of Ameriea, was making "The Toll of the Sea," "Wanderer of the Wasteland," "Tho Black Pirate" and oecasional othor pictures. During the early years of the talkics colour soared for a poriod with "Gold Digger6 of Broadway," "Sally," "King of Jazz," "Follow Througb" and many othors. But the interost passod; at was still a novelty, and not a very attraclive one. During the years 1932, 1933 and 1934 Technicolour, the most successful colour company in the industry^ showed a financial loss. With the change-over of Walt Disney from black and white to colour in his cartoons, tho 6tory took a new turn. From the moment his first coloured Silly Symphony "Flowers and Trees" appeared in the theatres, there was no longer any doubt of the valuo of colour tor this tjpe of film. By this time, laboratory 'work on Tcchnieolor has evolved a new threocolour process, and one by one the Disney Symphonies came out in their blues and mauves and pastcl ycllows. Prosently tho Mickeys followed, and as soon as Disney 's exclusivo arrangemout with Technicolor was iinislied

of definition is anereasing daily. With-Pop-Eye the Sailor and other cinema comic strips went over to Technicolor. To-day dt is hardly possible to see a black and rwhite carton. Mr. Whitneyis Interest, Meanwhile the interest of John Hay Whitney, the young New York millionaire, in Technicolor, had produced "La Cucaracha" and "Becky Sharp" and persuaded Robert Edmund Jones, one of the best brains of the Amencar. theatre, mto the cinema world. "The ordinary black and white films," he says, "had never particularly interested me. Nor had the old two-colour process, with its limited colour range. But here, it seemed to me; was something really new. My interest was caught and held. Something had been brought into the world that was not there before." After that thcngs moved faist. They took tests. John Barrymore played two scenes from "Hamlet," a black-robed figure against a cool green sky on tbe baltlements of Elsinore. Katharine Hepburn was tested in colour as Joan of Arc, wrapped in the flag of France, watching her soldiers from the ramparts and seen fitfully through the drifting smoke and flare of battle. The Technicolor technieians were not wholly satisfied. They decided there were too mauy "h'ot tones," hard reds, sharp green s, picture posteard colours. They worked to elimdnate these, to extend their colour range, increase - flexibility. Within the last few months, they tell me, the job has been done. For years we have .tallced ab'out colour being just around the corncr, but now at last we have turned the corner and faced it. Several factors have worked towards this end. The throat of competition from television is certa'inly one of them. The new improvement in Technicolor and other systems is certainly another. The establishment of a Technicolor laboratory in England is certainly a third. The threat of competition from television is a very serious one. It ds possible already to televise pictures as good as any fairly primitive movies on a theatre-size screen, and clearness

in a very short time black-and-white pictures and black-and-white television would be likely to come into close con flict. But television cannot yet rcproduce colour. The cinema can. New Tints. The film producersf are fortunate^ at a time when circumstances are forcing their hand to experiment, to find the means ready. No pictures have yet been publicly shown in the new Technicolor, but it is these new tints, this new flexibility of colour, I am told, that has suddenly overwhelmed Mr. Goldwyn and his colleagues. At the same time, the establishmebt of a laboratory in England has saved tho time and expense of serving back and forth between London and Hollywood. The new Technicolor laboratory on the Bath' road can handle half a million feet of film per week, and is one of * the modern wonders of the business. Less than a year ago, when "Wings of the Morning" was made at Denham, every foot of film had to be sent back to Hollywood for wrinting. To-day every colour print of British and Afuerican Tcchnieolor films for England, the British Empire, and certain centres on the Continent, is made within a few hours hcre. Tho significant and, from our point of view? the most important angle of this new interest in colour, is tho swinground towards England as an. active centre of production, using any one, or all, of our various colour systems. In this connection the work done by Dul'ay Cromex cannot be too highhly praised in the part it has played in making England colour-eonseious. For years it lias been appreciated by Hollywood that the normal English day. is tbe finest photographic light anywhere— with its brokeu skies, banked clouds, clcar air continually washed by the rain, its soft greens and blues and halftones. Now at last the demand for these things coincides with an economic opportunity of providng them, and tbe English producors, if they act with enterprise, can well start even with, or ; possibly a step ahead of, Hollywood.