Silent Pictures Face Difficulties

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 27

Silent Pictures Face Difficulties

tfgxp Chaplin Scheme Not Taken Seriously TALKIES IN HOLLYWOOD Despite Charlie Chaplin's announcement that he contemplates organising a silent picture-produc-ing company, embracing himself jnd four or five other stars, Hollywood refuses to take the news seriously. The only silent pictures being turned out by the village are the inaudible, versions of the talkies. With t he sound track removed, or with

the sound confined to sound effects and orchestrations, the talkies are prepared for foreign release. The all-silents gave up the ghost long ago, as time is reckoned here, claims a Hollywood writer. "Poverty Row,” consisting of a fewramshackle studios along Sunset Boulevard, was the last to toss in the sponge. They stuck to making "quickies” until sound drowned them out. The high cost of talkie equipment excludes them. When a talking picture has been completed, the studio's “silent” department takes charge of the negative. Sub-titles replace dialogue, and occasionally added scenes are shot to bridge gaps which sub titles cannot cover. It is in this shape that a majority of Hollywood's pictures reach foreign theatres. Some of the studios make foreign (alkie versions for some pictures.

MR. ALFRED HILL

Some remove all dialogue but leave iu any songs a picture may contain. The Laurel and Hardy comedies are made in French, Italian, and Spanish, as veil as in English, and, according to studio officials, Messrs. Laurel and Hardy have no voice doubles. Their foreign language efforts are confined chiefly fo brief expressions, pantomime being used whenever possible. Vilma Banky and Rudolph Schildhraut made one talker in both English and German. Voice-doubling by foreign voices for foreign versions has been found to be largely unsatisfactory. Moreover, it is a long, slow, laborious process, and time is money in Picture-making. A. few of the studios are making Pictures especially for release in Spanish countries. QUEER MOVIE JOBS There are any number of queer jobs w the film colony. For instance, 'here is the man who trains rats to jump in the right direction. Seventeen shots were photographed before the owner of a rat succeeded in gethug his charge to jump off a chair '» the right manner. Imitators of ml sorts of. animals' are leading luxurious lives. Roosters must crow, birds must sing and parrots must .sbber in Spanish for the audible screen.