The Miracle of the Cinema

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 538, 15 December 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

The Miracle of the Cinema

Living Again.the Beauty and Romance of Youth VVHAT indeed is the reason for the ’ ’ extraordinary power and place which the cinema has won in the hearts and lives of the great mass of the people, so that in their minds and affections it transcends all other arts? The cinema is not only an entertainment; it is a mirror wherein is seen the life and reality of the whole wide world, with the wondrous wealth of its ceaseless action—-its pageantries and its poverties—indeed, its whole gauge and gamut, from its highest mountains to the minuteness of its microscopic marvels—these are held up in vivid spot-light to the absorbing . eye of the beholder. But the cinema is more than this. Life, and all it represents to every ]

— individual, man and woman, is duplex —the wide universe of all things outside one’s own self and the deep wondrous kingdom of one’s own inner individuality.

Within each one of us is an observing conning tower which stands on the mental isthmus between these two worlds—the great open material world outside, and the strange plumbless emotional world of one’s own Inner self.

The i inema depicts and reflects not only this great material outside world, but also the mental side of us, for although we may individually differ, yet in the main there is a common kinship in the minds of humanity. It is the very silence of the moving picture that is the secret of its abouuding popularity. Mime is the highest apex of art on the legitimate stage, and the cinema is mime in perfection.

A French cynic said: “Language was given us to conceal our thoughts.” This may not be the intention of the playwright, but it is true (that the

| spoken word in its very supposed definiteness often misses its aim. It is the very silence of the cinema that makes it plastic and more adaptable to each individual seer—the mime of the photoplay can be, and is, moulded to answer to the varying differences of individual ideals, conceptions and emotions. It satisfies these individual differences more than the spoken word, and the observer becomes, under the subtle influence of the screen, part and parcel of the play, and therein is the secret of the screen's success as an entertainment. To most of us, life is a disappointment. In the springtime of our youth, our optimism paints our coming years with vivid colours. We dream we are all embryo heroes and heroines, Romeos and Juliets; dear adventure and sweet romance are our constant ' companions. But, alas! when we emerge from ' golden youth into the stern realities . of life, the icy winter w-inds of cir- < cumstance blow away our youthful

j fairy castles, we awake from our dreamland to find we are lying on the cold, cold earth, with a multitude of cares for companions. Happy be those men and women who can retain from youth even one blossoming ray of romance, be its light ever so dim. “What though the winter wind The summer garden rifles; Still on the bough is left a leaf of gold.” The cinema is that leaf of gold in our lives. It brings back in some measure the enchantments we have lost, the romance denied us blossoms again upon the screen, the lover we lost, the sweetheart of our golden days, they are there too. Unconsciously, as we sit in the darkened theatre, we leap from our tip-ups Into the glow of the screen—vicariously we live youth again in the happy shadows that come and go; we pass again down the primrose path, dear adventure and sweet romance are our comrades —and even the last long kiss Is ours too. HENRY HAYWARD