TOO MANY SPORTING FILMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 March 1924, Page 4

TOO MANY SPORTING FILMS.

(Film-Goer in “Daily Mail.”) The British film weeks arc before us. From February onwards British films arc to be given pride of place in the kinemns for at least one week in different parts ot the country. The picture-goer looks forward hopefully. Rut lie has just one fear. Will those who order his evening’s entertainment insist that the good British film must be full of horse-racing and boxing i There is an idea, lie knows, that ihe typical British film must tell a sporting story. If the British film has fallen short of the best, it lias been because of this too groat insistence that it must he full of sport. Nothing is really duller than the racing store, because there is no surprise" in it. It was standardised years ago; every character is cut to pattern, and every action is purely conventional. And the racing itself, wlmn it is shown, is so impossibly fast that wc cannot follow it. If is the same with boxing. Beal

boxing may be exciting enough to watch" but film boxing is annoying, because it. is at such a furious pace that we miss all the points. Often we do not know which tighter is uliicli.

Yet put in a racing scene or a boxing scene, and the kiiiema owenrs hail Ihe film as a rattling good British film typical of a sporting race. Owe upon a time the American film had to he full of cowboys. To-day it must always give us the scene of the millionaire’s dinner-party, which, with its fancy costumes and its diving girls, suggests more than, anything else that a musical comedy has tumbled into a swimming-bath. Still, with these things in, the story is regarded as typical of the nation, and therefore good American stuff. We grew very tired of the cowboy. We are perhaps even more tired of the aquatic dinner-party. And we do not believe that either is the whole truth about America; there must be other and quite as interesting tilings to show us. And we certainly do not insist that the British film, to he true and national, must have a spoiling story. £!o we pray that the British film weeks will not give us too much boxing ;ui:l racing. We do not ask for that, but we do long for films showing us British people and British scenes in anv story that is human and gripping. ff only our producers and exhibitors will remember that the sporting film is overdone, then we shall get plenty of good British films.