A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT.

Shannon News, 25 August 1925, Page 3

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT.

NATURAL COLOUR FILMS.

Practically since the first day when animated pictures were projected on a screen, there has been the desire to represent the characters taking part as well as the settings in which they act in their natural colours. There have been many fairly successful attempts at colouring * films by hand and others which employed mechanical devices. All these were unsatisfactory, however. On Friday next, at the Maoriland Theatre, will be shown for the first time a photoplay in full natural colours, colours which are so perfect that those present feel the importance of the occaslion. "The' Toll of the Sea," the photoplay in. which the people are depicted as they really are, is the highest development of natural colour filming, and it undoubtedly marks a new era in photoplay production. It is impossible to describe the beauty of the shades and tints which the camera lens has caught. Each scene has been selected for its pictorial value, and so artistic were they that they evoke spontaneous outbursts of applause from the audience. Each scene is like a, beautiful painting, and it is hardly believable that the characters can move about like human beings. The photoplay is. admirably acted. Ann May Wong is perfect as Lotus Flower, deceived cruelly by her American husband, whose life she has saved. Kenneth Harlan is the man in the story, portraying his role accurately, and Beatrice Bentley, too, gives a completeness to her depiction of the role of the Chinese girl's American rival for the affections of her husband.