CENSOR AT WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 828, 23 November 1929, Page 28

CENSOR AT WORK

TALKIES DIFFICULT TO CUT SOME SPECIAL PROBLEMS I was seated fu a cinema so utterly exclusive there were only bix beats. It was dark, and the whirr of the machinery close behind filled the ! darkness, with its gentle purring, says K..V A. In tire "Dominion.'' On the miniature screen, perhaps eight feet j away, a man poured out his intangible . ..lie dimensional drama Ills ever ! iin reusing family, thanks is the talkie j portion of the film, poured o-d its tale '•i woe from a spot, judging by tbe .mud, some ten feet or so outside; ihe draped window of forry Kct above j Courtenay Place. Tbe young man, a! budding ‘ ditor. unfolded quite pret- , 11 ! \. the old. old triangular sLory con- , • erning his lack of judgment in tile selection of a »ife. That, however, d ies not matter, for when Tie film is released, you may see it tor yourself • its name —well . . . Anyway, all I • omes beautifully right in the last : hundred feet of film The Censor Takes Notes ii is but one of many filmland ! 'ories unfolded expressly in this j r lieatreette, so that the film censor 1 may censor it. He sits behind me. i U the end of every reel he switches ; on a little shaded light and makes notes. This was unexpected. I had thought censoring was more dramatic. ! When something objectionable crept on to our little screen I imagined he : would jump up all quivering and : -bout. "Halt —cut that out." on the ; "off with his head" primiple of the Duchess—but uo. he takes notes. in spite of the fact that he must see at least four or five screenings daily. now and then he chuckles. "I ndcrstand," says our young man. in beautiful sepulchral "talkie" trues, .o suited to the occasion. “I want my own home." His father-in-law has usked him to board with the family and live on tbe top floor. “Be a mug if he doesn't, get it," the censor chuckles, “lie's a very patient Johnnie. " So he was, but that is iritlevant. At last in the nick of time before the last few feet of talkie uniat els Its plot on the white screen our young man, now, of course, famous. catches the boat to England. Ills wife, a horrible little fool, is left sob- j bing on her mother's shoulders, sob- i bing In case she won't get a big j enough allowance. The reel is spent, the disembodied voices cease, thw lights ttick on. filling our unreal little world with drab realities. Quite Oifferent Work A nice clean little picture," said the censor. It was. 1 quite agreed. He turned to me with a quiet smile. “Quite different from censoring silent stuff,’’ he said. “What with keeping your eye on the action and your ear on ihe sound. I can tell you. you've got to be pretty alert not to miss some i htng in a long film.’’ He explained his problems; problems peculiar to i his new marvel of science. “So." he said, “you can't censor as you go . along. I see the show right through. What. you may consider objectionable at. the beginning may be explained harmlessly away a little later on. 1 lake notes of what I wish to be cut, but. every time l make a note it does not mean necessarily that I am on the warpath. This film—what do 1 think of it? Well, there's nothing to be cut: quite clean. In every single film it would be possible to read into it. all manner of nasty things. One must be reasonable though. Ruthlessness of Censoring As it is, film censoring is far j more ruthless than in the case of i books. It has to be. You don't read books in public to all and sundry. If one were to cut out everything that might be construed nastily, there certainly would be few famous books in the world, and very few films. Why. even in real life, perfectly innocent situations may be. and somerimes are. read the wrong way. But rhe talkies have certainly brought up difficult problems for me. For instance. words which I am told are quite innocent in the States, sometimes have most objectionable meanings, double entendres, or insinua- ' rions here. He quoted some. “These j have to be cut out ruthlessly.’’ The actual cutting is a most com- ( nlicateit job. Roughly there are two systems of talkies in general use. In ' one system the actual talk is imprisoned in a series of varying 'hudows on the edge of the film itself, in this system the spoken word is about nineteen pictures ahead of the corresponding action. The objectionable word or sentence can thus be \ Tracked down after a little practise : ; nil exterminated. An alert audience might notice a certain lack of contin-; uity, but generally these obliterations | Pass unnoticed. When action is cut ) out. tt is necessary, of course, to cut out th • spoken word as well, lu the >■ her system discs similar to gramophone records are interlinked with the action. The film itself does not carry the light and shades from which words can be made. “The disc svstcm." • cplaincd th ■ censor, “is really a rar more difficult problem. Quite s little cutting generally means the whole thing being scrapped. .Vof only is it difficult to track ’ down the offending words, but other problems crop up. For one thing, rhe records wear rapidly. For this reason, there may be as many as 30 ■ opies of cacti disc. It is almost impossible to insure that every single 1 °P.v has been properly expurgated.' Cutting is an Art At present, of course, all the cut- ! ting is done by the importers, who make their own arrangements. When “ get our own official outfit—when ev.-r that may be—we shall both ceil- ’ -or and do the required cutting, as ' ell. But tip- job is an art. You can't ' .iqst deprive the hero of all speech in 'hose parts when the action is all i ;ht. and the spoken words objection- ' bbc" I thought of the poor hero at critical moment, miraculously struck 'i umb by rhe hand of the censor. Yes. he remarked, “we just have! be ruthless al times. It was 1 "ho banned Alibi'—a crook play that' -avo a*ay far too many htnts for : ■ ouid he burglars tt was one of the ; tirT talkies, and there was an outcry ai lie time I see. though.” he said. I :

“it Lias even been banned in many parts of the United States itself.*’ "Some people seem to think that all Yankee-ism should be cut out. They told me that iu ‘Black Watch* there was fai too much of it. As a matter of fact. 1 thought that quite a good him One cannot cut ‘Yankee’ idiosiucrasles of intonation just because o£ the dialect itself without some other good reason. As a matter of tact, the speech is becoming better and better. Only yesterday 1 was censoring a film In which a well-known star was obviously making desperate efforts to speak good English—he thought before every sentence and many words. It is an encouraging sign—and just a little amusing—a distinct improve-, inent on his previous efforts.