FOREIGN FILMS IN DOMINIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 October 1920, Page 4

FOREIGN FILMS IN DOMINIONS

(By a New Zealand Editor). AUCKLAND. The Daily Mail had an article recently on the danger of showing lt sex” films east of Suez. But there is another danger to the Empire in the kinema world, and that is the predominance of the American picture. This predominance is well known to people in Britain, who like ourselves in the Dominions, have had to put up with the unchallenged monopoly of the American producer and actor . during the past six abnormal years. But Britain is Britain; the peril I refer to is in thefar-off parts of the Empire. The Briton is surrounded by British things and British influences, but the overseas man’s connection with Britain is distant in time and space and has to stand the strain placed on it by an environment very different from that of the Old Country. The Dominions’ mind is therefore much more susceptible to the weaning influence of the American film. Picture theatres, as they are called out here, are enormously popular, and for some years past the American producer, the American play, and the American actor have had it all their own way in them. The war drove the British industry right off the screen, and any visitor from another world visiting New Zealand might have concluded from the advertisements on the hoardings and the plays themselves that New Zealand was an American possession. This flood of American plays—many of them rubbish—has caused anxiety on the grounds of general debasement of taste and of its possible effect in weakening the British connection. Some educationists are alarmed about the effect of this endless stream of sentimenslataity and sensation oh the young mind, and there 'have been many appeals to the Government to tighten up the censorship. There can bfs no doubt that it is killing appreciation of the spoken play, find particularly the good play. Hard-

ly any of the notable productions of the London stage in comedy and drama are seen here now; it was very different twenty years ago,

But it is the effect of American plays in weakening the innumerable ties that bind us to Britain that should be especially noted, particularly by British film producers, who, to the joy- of many New Zealanders, are hard at work again. •

The American playwright—and this applies to the spoken drama as well as the unspoken—deals with a world that is essentially un-British. Stage Americans have ways of speech ways of thought, ways of life, that are very different from ours.

By “ours” I mean, of course, the British Empire’s. Ido not mean that every Dominion should moflol its life on British life; we must each of us have our own national life. But there arc certain traits of character, methods of expression and ideals, common' to Britain and the Dominions, and tnosc who wish to strengthen the British connection look to their preservation. It is these common ties, these common heritages, that are in danger of being weakened ■ by the ever-flowing stream of American sentiment that runs through the crowded picture theatrs. The American of the American picture is too often crude, flamboyant, unreticent, and over-sentimental. He is a poor representative of a great people. In his own phrase, he “ slops over” badlv.

These plays reek with a crude materialism, an over-sweet and sticky sentimentalism, and a false sensationalism. Yet to thousands' of New Zealanders they represent life. Not only is the taste of patrons corrupted, but also their wider nationality is subtly menaced. It may be said that British films have similar faults. Some of them have, though not in the same degree and not quite of the same kind. But the point is that they are British faults, not American. British producers have important work to do out here, work that is in a very real sense Empire-building. Those who take these things to heart learn with great interest and pleasure that the industry in Great Britain is again in full swing, and they hope it will oust the American from its dangerous monopoly. . ,