RUMOURS OF THE CINEMA.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 257, 9 March 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

RUMOURS OF THE CINEMA.

AMI'SING OVERSIGHTS. The cynic hath it that the chief deffirenco between the so-called dramas and comedies of tho picture theatre is that the dramas sometimes make you laugh. Certariuly tho occasional failure of the producer and camera-man to visualise a scene exactly as it will he viewed 011 the screen is often responsible for an unconsciously humorous touch, which is far funnier than anything put in by the author. " Effects" of this kind pass unnoticed, of course, in a '' slapstick" farce, where the wildest improbabilities are accepted and, in fact-, looked for. But a- "sedans*' story of the emotions, or a sentimental-sensational melodrama, is now followed by keen critics, quick to detect the slightest anachronism, or " bloomer." (I refer, it need .-varcely be said, to lapses in the technique and " iMisinoss" of the picture, and not to any inanities in its

"moral" which is, indeed, frequently the queerest phenomenon of all.) Very few of such studio misttake-j ever succeed in creeping into the work of the premier 'film companies, which einplov not only artists but archaeologists 011 the spot, to make everything taut and trim; and the producers of which are postmasters in the art of verisimilitude. HhL there are others. And the game of looking cut for the glaring absurdities still indulged in at times by the "old school" is among the most agreeable recreations which the ein-ma provides.

.MANAGING THE CROWD. Tho management of crowds offers one of t'li.i comonest of traps for the inexpert producer. Not all can be a I). W. (■riflith in this respect, but one or two examples cf croud manipulation, seen lately in pictures, seem to prove that there are soma film men who lose their M-Use of fitne-s entirely when it becomes necessary to group more than 111 roe pcoolo at a time. An iietanee o! ibis pervntety at extreme ends of the

scalj will suffice to show what is meant, (ni" lilm depicted its flower-girl heroine si; eking her donkey cart in Covent Garden. It is a fairly usual proceeding for a young woman to be engaged thus i:i this particular spot, lint the master 1 f the cer. ne.nies wi,:.s evidently s,, jmI iv-.-ed by the magnitude and importance of the operation that he had posed about a hundred other flower-girls, fruit porters and carmen, in tho roadMay and on boxes, all standing motionless, and .- vuiingly awestru"k at the

An a photograph of the ('event (ia.'dcn en-cmh'e, on its hest heiiaviour r uas adiniiable; hut it. rather d-e----iraeled from the point ol the plot, whicli w.':s ihat t!:<» heroine (really i i ieli ladv) had taken cp with her new I loir- Moll I realise she deleted oMelitat'oi' and adverti:-: in- nt. That. \va-.- an e\anij>!.* of the croud curious in the wrong place. The oilier gave us the cro'.wl indifferent in the v. r.-.ng pi, re. A number of j;eople a.re p i -in;; and rf-pa>-.ing in the street. A

/ aic: ef navvies are inendili'z the ro.olVi.iv hard by; \\ i i en, suthhlilv, op > tuna the \ iil-iiii- in •< motor-:';:r, ami deliberately smash the huge p'ai i-«;l.i-.s window of a it v. tiler's shop'. Hoes th" cr< wd displa v eitlier or alarni? ■Nor. a hit ol it . The pcde-lrians e'Uitintai In !'o b,- as though iioilnng were bappcii'tiK. .thile the li.'i vrie ; do no' -o t'liicb as icok i:n Iroin their 'AOi'k. Tt i; "bv'om to anvliody ulo wiLnes'-e, tin* :'i"' it "i• t' at tilis is no natural teane. but Ihat ."11 the performers arc lilclallv "m . plot, "and I.now v.liat is L'o'ii"; to O'cur. The first pr du.er

thickened in and underlined the normal ; tho second allowed big company to take even the abnorni"! for granted —and all through iyior.:uce of what to do with a crowd.

INSIDE AND OUT. Tho disparity between the interior and exterior ot a house is not seldom a sourco of merriment in the picture palate. Palatial entrances open into peasants' kitchens, and beautiful draw-ing-rooms are approached up backalleys. One of the quaintest " reverses" of this description ocurred in a film called "The Devil's Night Out." The first scene showed a spacious apartment with long French windows; and the hero, wholi ad been engaged writing a note, went towards the windows, opened them and prepared to throiv the note out tcs someone who was waiting immediately this "interior" was flashed off, and 'the external proportions of tho house wore seen. There was tho drawing-room and the long French windows right enough, but tho hero himself had now skipped off to the top of tlie house, where he was observed tin listing the note out through . little* lattice window in the roof.

In an'.tiier production (a drama o r tho Indian Mutiny) an English officer and his family are being sorely pressed by members of a rebel tribe, who surround the house (shown originally as built by the side of a river) and fire shots into the room whore they are hiding. A happy thought strikes the officer, and, snatching up a lantern, ho lead's the way down a steep ladder whith descends into an underground cellar. They are safe for a time, but soon tho mutineers break into the upper room and are aliout to discover tho lac'Jbr, ;wh'fn tho resourceful soldier bethinks himself of a secret door in tho cellar which he finds and unlocks. Then he pushes his family through one by 0110 011 to what turns out to bo the top of a high mountain. SAVING THE "PROPS."

A desire to save on the "props" sometimes leads to mirth-provoking eontretenipts in the staging of a film play. Not long ago a rustic comedy was presented by an amateur company, tho scone of which alternated, for the most part, between the village alehouse and tho bedrcom of the village !>elie. Diverse as such are as a rule, there was one feature common to both of these. Each had the same door —the door of the "pub," on which were scrawled the "scores" of the various customers. A discrepancy of this nature is almost sure to he "spotted," when such anachronisms as a Jacoliean fireplace is in a tale of the Tudors, electric light in a -loan of Arc picture, or the spectacle of a sergeant of infantry wearing spurs, pass by unmarked.

Heroic and hair-raising "rescues" which rightly, should quicken our pulses in tho cinema are. owing to the too-too-elailwrato meclianism employed, often the occasion of irreverent mirth. In p. "drama of the sea," put out by an American company a few months back, a, woman is shown making her wav down to the beach for the purpose of committing suicid:\ Her journey thither is a:-rcss an absolutely level stretch of country, with 110 cliffy visible anywhere. But when the appointed "rescuer" (who lives in tho «: me house from which the woman has just emerged) is apprised of what is going to happen, nothing will do but that he must go miles out of his way, and presently be seen balancing himself 011 the edge of a huge promontory overlooking the sea, into which he is laboriously lowered by the aid of a rope. He swims ior about a couple of hundred feet of film, and finally lifts the woman out of tlio water at tho identical spot where had jumped in. 'I he possession of a " property" cliff in the studio had practically resulted l in turning bravery into burlesque. H.is anvlnxly noticed, too, that when a pathetic melodrama is "run" at top spent! hv the operator, it will invariably look like a knockabout "comic"? Tempo, as a matter of fact, lies very near the root of the difference between th-.-> mournful and the mirthful in many tonus of both art and emot'on. Sin or tho tune of a comic song slowly, and 't n ten to one if, will sound like a hymn. " Speed up" the hymn and you hive "liirlit" nius : e at once. So with the (Wms. Tlio operator, by the simplest adjustment of the projector, is offf>n able to supply the "comic relief" which the .write- and producer have wisely, c unwisely, omitted.