Talkies are Killing Old Love Scenes

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 24

Talkies are Killing Old Love Scenes

Styles Must Change says Ronald Col man SHEIK FILMS ARE DE-AD Ronald Colman, whose Jirst talking picture success. "Bulldog | Drummond:' has been followed bn \ the Devil's Island drama '‘Condemned,’' believes that the advent of sound and speech in films is , killing extravagant love scenes. “I believe the sheik sort of thing j is definitely dead.” he said in the j course of a recent interview. !n silent pictures a love scene was, of , course, without anything but an j occasional title. It was straight pan- j tomime. Everyone in the audience supplied his or her own words, and I to each one the words were different, j “Now, with dialogue, it is difficult j to supply conversation in a love scene | that will satisfy everybody. The result is that some of the screen’s great lovers have been greeted by guffaws :u their talking love scenes. audience laughs “This is because of two reasons; some folk laugh from embarrassment,: others because the love words are so contrary to what they would have supplied themselves that they seem unnatural and arti ficial. “I try to cut dialogue to a minimum in love scenes. Then the introduction of a little light humour helps. If the audience laughs, very well, you are laughing with them. I do not mean to make the love scenes less sincere; many dramatists of years gone by have written love scenes full of humour that were so sincere they would bring a lump in your throat. It has to he handled lightly, of course. - “A whole new craft will have to be evolved to write successful dialogue for talking pictures. Stage dialogue will not do. People demand such realisms in pictures that stage lines are not in conformity with it. On he stage the audience accepts a hack drop with a castle painted on it. In films you must liiive the castle. The stage has the frankly artificial frame of the footlights and the scenery. A certain amount of artificiality is part of the theatrical effect. But in films you must have realism, and writing dialogue that sounds real is something of a task. TAKING OF CLOSE-UPS “The taking of close-ups is part of the realism of the screen. There must be some improvement made for talkies, on the way close-ups are to be handled.' It becomes tiresome after the second verse and the third chorus to have to continue looking at the same face all the time. “On the stage the eye can wander to the scenery, the chorus, the orchestra, and come hack to the singer or the speaker of a very long speech. Films must supply some of this visual relief. After all, talkie or not, it is still a motion picture, and the eye must he considered. Dialogue properly handled should be a substitute for the titles of the silent picture; action should still tell the story.” Colman expressed a desire to play at least one good comedy role a year. He likes a good drama or a power, romantic role, but he hopes he is through with the melo-dramatic love roles in which he first gained fame on the screen.