FILMS AND THE PLAYERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 25

FILMS AND THE PLAYERS

CELLULOID VOGUES-

In their never-ending race to keep just a little ahead of the market, motion picture producers find that public taste is changing constantly. There are fashions in films, and they change with clearcut rapidity. The big success of HRB may be the box-office white elephant of 1020.

Whenever a new type of film has ‘•taken on,” it has been followed almost immediately by dozens of other films of the same kind. These continue to cater for the existing vogue until the fickle public acclaims a new production on entirely different lines.

An outline review of past screen programmes emphasises the radical nature of these changes. About twelve years ago no programme was complete unless it included a cowboy and Red Indian picture. plus a rapid-fire, pie-throwing comedy. . I few years later came the “ serial ” vogue, when every up-to-date entertainment offered one of those exciting, continued-in-ou r-next sort of pictures.

During the war, propaganda entered largely into picturemaking, and public taste was led rather than followed; but after the war all successful screen plays had battlefield settings. The first, of the “ super ” productions then caught popular fancy, and for a time producers like D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. de Mi lie vied with each other in making mammoth pictures, with casts ivhich included thousands of mob extras. It teas found, however, that “super” productions did not always pay, ivhich meant that the public ivas not appreciating their greatness. “Intolerance,” perhaps the greatest picture of all time, was a financial failure, and its fall from grace teas the signal for another change. The modern and more successful offspring of the “super” production appears to be the type of picture that has a spectacular prologue, followed by a simple story, or •perhaps a series of modest scenes embellished by one or tico sequences of giant proportions. A tycar or two back the vogue for feature-length comedies arrived This still exists, although its position has been, and still is, threatened seriously by the vogue for thrillers. To-day these two types of production are enjoying the popularity that teas lavished on cowboy and Red Indian “Westerns" 1/f years ago. What will the next vogue be? It is difficult to foretell at this juncture, for the coming of the movietone may revive past syccesses with ne to embellishments, but on the silent screen there seems every likelihood that tragic drama will come to the front, at least for a time. Stories that do not necessarily end on the conventionally happy note have been successfully exploited of late, especially by German producers, and the fact that American studios are following suit hints that the vogue for tragedy is at hand.