BLINDERS OF THE KINEMA.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 June 1921, Page 1

BLINDERS OF THE KINEMA.

(By “Ivinegoer.”) Many amazing blunders are made in the kinema.

A new game which is growing popular with kinema frequenters is to watch for these blunders and to note them.

Thus, when a monk in a picture of the 12th century switiches on the electric light in his cell you score one point. When a factory girl receives a letter from the hands of a very modishly attired maid or when Louis XIV, say of a lady-in-waiting, that she wants “takng down a peg” you score again. It is only half a point when you observe a man wearing the same hat and coat he had won “twelve years ago.” The same score is notched in the ease of people with specially waterproofed clothes, skins and hair, who swim half a mile, get out of the water, shake themselves, and become quite dry.

This sort of blunder is customary in the marvellous “movie” world and is almost a dramatic convention in a serial picture. For observations which demand a keen scrutiny, such as the vaccination marks oil the left arm of a haremqueen of Baghdad one thousand years ago, two points are allowed. But where an American film shows Englishmen foxhunting in midsummer or a peer signing himself “Duke Ivor” and his butler dusting the library there is no score.

These things are sent to try us, and tho poor American producer knows not what ho does when he meddles with England. During the past month or so T have seen some delightful examples of oversights on the part of even the smartest “producers.” From the man who entered a strip of undergrowth wearing a sailor-knot tie ,walked straight through and emerged with a maide-np bow, to the old miser in “Wuthering Heights,” where the action takes place in Victorinn times, with a safe made in 1915, wo gather what a difficult task it is to produce a film accurately. Some other interesting blunders have been taxicab drivers who received no money and drove away perfectly happy; a woman dressed in a crinoline and knitting a jumper; a penniless author in a poorly furnished attic with a gorgeously carved bed wfth silken hangings ; a duke with a room in America The exact counter-part of the room allotted to him in a Paris hotel, and a London teashop where they provide you with a silver tea-service. (This tea service, on tho identical table, cloth and flowers complete, appears later in someone’s boudoir.) But just try the game for yourself. You will find- that ft is full of fascination.