OUR FILM REVIEWS.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 114, 29 August 1941, Page 4

OUR FILM REVIEWS.

SirIf it gives any amusément to Your correspondent, " Gordoti Miratns G.M." to khow that teading his letter in your issué of July 18 gave me the physical feeling of being a pitker-up after the poisoners, he is welcome to that amusement. His flock of quotations is relevant, however, only if one atcepts the, proposition that several blacks make a white. George Moote says that he asked William de Morgan why he always sprinkled his pages with French, and that the ariswer was: "A page of English seems blunt and cheerless without a Frefich word or two. They attract the reader's eye and please him, and they please me .. ." This Américanising tay be in the same case; except that I doubt if it pleases the eyes of mahy readers. When the habit of dropping into French was in vogue, at least the use of italics gave the teader clear warning of what was being perpetrated. Nowadays the linotype operator italicizes with reluctance, or the Atnericanizer doesn’t ask him to, ahd the use of Roman type aggravates the offence,

Nationality is nothing to the point; even such nationality as can be supported by documentary evidence (which is usually nationality by naturalisation ---the stay-at-home native-born commonly has no papers to prove his nationality in his own country). Many people are bilingual. I suppose plenty of English (by tongue) write American fluently, There have been many Americans who write excellently in English or French. And the present President of the United States, as it happens, sounds less like a person speaking American than one speaking English with a strong American accent. What I long for is writers-like the story-teller "G. I, Ford" in your same issue-who will express themselve$ neither in American, not in English, nor in a medley of the two, but in good plain Enzeddic, but I know that is a lot to ask for. May I make it clear that I was not criticising the matter of your reviews? Though I am not qualified to judge them, and should ‘therefore be presurmptious in praising them, I like them enough to read them closely, star-spangled manner notwithstanding.

C'RECT

CARD

(Wellington).

Sir,--Many readers of your excellent publication are puzzled to know why so mu&& space is devoted to film reviews. Strange though it may seem, there are quite a lot of people who seldom or never visit a cinema, for the obvious reason that really worthwhile films are nowadays almost non-existent. If anything Were needed to increase this distaste, your film review page is a sufficient deterrent. Let me quote from "G.M.’s" critique of This Thing Called Love (in The Listener of Atigust 1). He says, inter alia: " . . . On this basis of innuendo is built the not particularly ofiginal plot ... the producer develops one risqué situation after another, in which the dominating theme is that of a husband making strenuous efforts to seduce his wife ... This is bright, farcical entertainment." My Oxford Dictionary, Mr, Editor, defines the word "risqué" as meaning "of doubtful propriety, involving suggestion of indecency. oY What can one say of a reviewer who labels this kind of thing "bright entertainment "? If advertisements and posters, not to mention film reviews, are to be believed, the condition of seteen‘land must be like that of the Augean stables. Why waste a perfectly good journalist on this topic?

L. D.

AUSTIN

(Wellington).