FILM TRADITION.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 115, 7 January 1926, Page 3

FILM TRADITION.

BRITISH EFFORT. Britain is awake at last to the importance cf the kinema. Not only the British industry but the nation itself is determined that it shall bring all its energies to - the making of really English merit in the kinema, Jis in representative films. For there is more in moving pictures than mere entertainment. They are the subtlest bagmen of their country of origin. They exalt its fame in every corner of the globe. We cannot, lacking America’s long experience, lacking her vast producing organisations, hope to compete with her yet in numbers. The' trade, must be quality (writes Iris Barry in the Daily Mail). Of course the British industry has been under a cloud; it has been poor, ill-equipped. It has found it hard to get its pictures on to even English screens, choked as they are by a flood of some superb and many atrocious American pictures. But this very difficulty puts U 9 on our mettle. Sweden is a poorer country than England, but its films are world-famous. Germany had no good place in the kinema sun, but has won new respect by her best pictures. We must do the same, and yet avoid .imitating either America, Sweden, or Germany. Our new films must be really English and evolve a British film tradition. The way should not be hard. Looking back, I think the best English films have been the most English ones. I mean, of course, the Betty Balfour series, which—given a shade more realism—could easily re-establish a Dickensian tradition of mingled melodrama and low comedy in our kinema. If the Americans can glorify their own industrial activity in films of sentiment, as they do, why should we not make a picture of our sea-folk, for which one of the great fish-selling combines could grant facilities, and one of our literary men, Mr Masefield, write an impressive theme? Why not love or character studies set in big industrial towns? Why not delicately satrical social satire in the Jane Austen spirit of our bazaar opening dowagers and farmer-like squires? Why not village idylls? And a film from Wales, followed by a picture of our Highland peasants and their dramatic. lives? The basic plots for these films must naturally be constructed by such writers as can hit the popular imagination by giving it a little more than it asks. With the present good will of everyone in and out of the industry, a desire to create both exceptionally beautiful and emotionally truthful pictures cannot fail to lift our British films to a level really worthy of this country, for which they will be such powerful ambassadors.