MAKING A FILM

Hokitika Guardian, 23 January 1929, Page 3

MAKING A FILM

WORLD TAKEN TO PIECES

WHAT THE STUDIO IS LIKE,

(Mr Jeffries in “Daily Mail.”)

Till Friday night last, when I went out to Elstree, to the studios of the British international Pictures company, 1 know nothing of the cinema. True, I had seen, as others have, multitude of completed films upon the screen, and in perhaps rather more countries than most others. I have seen thus a certain number of Spanish, films, which 1 gather are rather rare, and I had the curious experience of beholding my first Charlie Chaplin in Greek, so to say, at an Athens halt, where he was billed as “Sarlo, komiikos amerikanos.

• In the ordinary course I have sat among audiences ejaculating and audiences cheering and audiences reduc.'ed'to silence, all by the depthless shadows which may carry such a deep appeal. No wonder perhaps, that i .thought this final stage the presenta■Ttion of. the film, was all that mattered essentially. The rest was an affair of long artificial rehearsals, very artificial, and rather comic, it would seem, since producers or evolvers or extorters. or whatever the men were to be called who drew the work out of stars and supers, constantly shouted through megaphones at them, “Hold that laughter!” “Let up on that passion! and similar cries. Friday’s experiences have altered m y oUtiook. In those vast granges which they call studios and upon those waste pieces of land which they call lots, the people of the cinema have unwittingly created a land of drama and cchiedy which surpasses the etVfects of the stage itself, - . ELEMENTS IN THE OAST. / It is very strange that their impalpable pictures are declared to be killing that stage, while all the time their own preparations for these pictures, the “shooting,” as they call it. of the scenes and quite ns. much the interludes between taking them, are nothing but the creation of a greater stngt*, more wonderful (apart from displays of individual genius) than anything upon the boards, f takes a perennial part in the playing and the very elements are most often in the cast. . Acting, after all, is only a matter of scale, and when the cinema exchanged backcloths and drop-scenes and flies /a nd wings and “property” accessories % for fields M trees and the heaven and the fWset, and built complete l tre ets and amphitheatres aiid filled them with throngs and started to mingle with its actors doers, those that is to say, who carry out in actual existence the matter of their roles, then the cinema reached a scale where

acting ended and reality began. Whatever the effect of the completed picture, this was what happened in the studio—preposterous name! —and upon the wind-blown lot. I find it even difficult to retail the strength otf the impression this made upon me when I reached Elstree. A commonplace journey to a commonplace suburb (chosen as a location because, however, it is outside the fogbelt, unless there is some exceptionally dastardly hitting below the belt) brought me to the doors of some large sheds," to a covered car-creche and a uniformed commissionaire. The place might have been a starch factory or linoleum laboratory or the outside of football-stands, or anything almost.

The commissionaire pushed a door and instantly, though I w r as only in an entrance-passage, where people walked .back and forth, talked a minute and passed down passages Or up staircases I seemed to be in an antechamber where life was being prepared for all parts of our planet.

EVERY RACE AND CLASS. That peculiar sentiment was strengthened when presently I was taken into the first of the studios, which I shall not attempt to describe for the moment, except to say that the only studios resembling it in London are Waterloo studio and Victoria studio and the artists’ home at King’s Cross. These places might well be its protto types, for there passed incessantly through it, or loitered about it, men and women of every race and class and calling. It was not at all—this is tlvc point I most desire to make—like seeing a number of persons costumed for a perfonnahee or an* event for a larger display, such as a pageant. There was such., a host of real people there: lank Hindus, sailors in jerseys, men armoured in isou’-wedters „in heavy thigh-boots all plastered with mud who called out quickly as they passed and disappeared ''through swinging doors into the gale, lascars clinging to bundles, a Chinese woman with a blank face who flowed silent and sinous as a current through the human tide, men clad for dinners in Mayfair, and women with grimy, spindly hair. Wearing old shawls and bonnets straight from dockside taverns.

There were many more and they were miixed with chauffeurs and messengers and telephonists, and obvious actresses perpetually arranging oddly inflated beads of short hair, and obvious ordinary men-in-the-street, and orchestra players and evident actors.

It was like the World taken to pieces and waiting to be assorted. You felt the chauffeurs would fall presently to place their cars and the lascars to an Indian quay, the actresses to the stage and . the diners to their West End tables.

Meanwhile, I had never seen anything like what was before me, the real and the fictitious worlds mingled so stangely in a groat drama made by the diversity of the dramas of both.