“CHANG”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 312, 24 March 1928, Page 23

“ CHANG ”

The Jungle Epic C. J. DENNIS'S VIEW /"I J. DENNIS, the author of | • “The Sentimental Bloke” I and other volumes of bright verse, has written what he thinks of “Chang,” the new wonder-picture, to have its premiere at the Regent on April 13.

In a moving picture that has recently come to Australia, a new phase has been revealed in the art of cinematography. It may almost be said that a new page has been written in the history of the film and that the moving picture camera has at last found its true field. “Chang,” a simple and absorbing picture of jungle life in Siam, has in it all the drama, all the tense situations, the glamour, the tragedy and the humour of a laboriously manufactured studio picture. Yet in the whole of it there is little or no conscious acting. Hitherto the art of the moving picture has been more or less interposed upon that of the speaking stage. WORDS SUPERFLUOUS By an elaborate system of pantomime, actors seek to convey what can be much more adequately conveyed upon the stage. But in a picture such as “Chang,” words are superfluous, and it is a cruelly eloquent comment on the “art” of the moving picture actor to say that Bimbo, the monkey comedian in this picture, can, by a piece of effortless acting, evoke gales of laughter. Indeed, Mr. Bimbo may be cited as one of the new stars of the screen. If here and there he overacts a little it is due to natural exuberance and to no conscious effort to win a laugh. Mr. Walter Buffalo, who plays the part of the heavy tragedian, acts with a restraint that might well be copied in Hollywood, and Mr. Tiger, the villain of the piece, registers hate, malice, ferocity and baffled rage without one false note. The few humans in the picture, native Siamese, are, in movement and expression, so perfectly natural that no hint of acting is conveyed. The one woman in the film, in expressing such emotions as fear, contentment, surprise, smoothly and with such little apparent effort might well be the envy and despair of many a Hollywood star. All of which seems to indicate that much effort has been wasted hitherto in attempts to produce the perfect “movie” artist. SPECTACLE AND DRAMA “Chang” as a spectacle and as a drama, lacks nothing that may be found in the most stupendous superfilm. There is one almost tmbelievably vivid “shot” of a tiger drinking; others of bears at play, of pythons gliding through the jungle growth, of leopards seeking prey, and a tremendous spectacle of a huge herd of elephants bent upon ruthless destruction. And behind it all is the ever-present menace of the wild, of man’s grim and never-ceasing with the ( unconquerable jungle, of his cunning and resource pitted against blind ferocity and the will of all wild things to live and to increase. As such, “Chang” is an epic story of man’s struggle with the primitive. Having once been told, it can hardly be repeated; but, knowing the moving picture mind, one may look for an early outcrop of imitations, faked and otherwise.