Sound Dialogue, and Romantic Plots Spell Success for Modern Comedies, Says Harold Lloyd, Actor and Producer

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 654, 4 May 1929, Page 25

Sound Dialogue, and Romantic Plots Spell Success for Modern Comedies, Says Harold Lloyd, Actor and Producer

Back in the dark ages of motion pictures, more than a decade ago, the recipe for screen comedies consisted of many pies, and perhaps a little mud, he writes. Gradually, however, the standard began to improve, and I believe the motion picture comedy made quicker progress than any other division of Dicture-making. To-day, answering a question, “What do you think is the heart of a comedy?” I would say it is “romance.” Romance, properly executed, helps to make for rhyme and reason in a comedy, gives it a touch of sincerity, without which few pictures can hit the bull’s-eye of popular response. Almost every person who attends

In the course of a review of modern screen comedy, Harold Lloyd, who produces his own pictures, contends that no form of film entertainment has progressed so rapidly in recent years. He has faith ir. tallies for all fun-making purposes.

motion pictures wants a certain amount o£ romance with his entertainment. That is why we have aiways endeavoured to make our love interest blend unobtrusively with whatever story we were relating. The advent o£ sound and dialogue is going to give another impetus to the art o£ producing laughs. Dialogue should be an important factor in the maintaining of interest in comedies during those stages where the picture slows down to permit of story-telling. Weak gags can be straightened with the aid of dialogue. Sound can build up certain places, especially in pictures similar to that which we arc now producing, where mystery will be an important element. Take a couple of fellows groping around in the dark, in a Chinese den, toss In some sound and perhaps a little dialogue, and you have the foundation for hilarious action.