Frank Comment

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 456, 19 March 1948, Page 30

Frank Comment

ICTURE PARADE, a BBC feature sub-titled "A frank comment on the film world," seems to be one of those unheralded but good things which liven up our usual listening by presenting something just a little different. I have heard only one of these programmes (I hope there will be more), and therefore

cannot’ generalise; but if future instalments are as good as the first, this will be worth the while of any film-going listener. Although it deals with films, it is not the usual thinly-disguised ad-

vertisement which we hear from the commercial stations; nor is it that rather boring and childish fan-session which tells all about the flights and fancies of favourite film-stars (a session which is worse than any straight-out advertise-ment-for the advertisement does tell us, albeit in always glowing terms, what the film is all about). Picture Parade discusses films from an intelligent person’s angle. In the feature which I heard, points under presentation included the music for Henry V., certain scenes from Colonel Blimp, and a rather acid criticism of a certain type of cinema in London. I hope this programme represents the thin edge of a wedge, and that the criticisms will extend finally to the films themselves. The only disadvantage about that would be that criticism of films couldn’t help us if we had already seen them, as we probably would have done by the time the BBC recordings reached us. Intelligent film criticism from our own stations, I suppose, is an innovation unlikely to happen; but we have had book-discussions as a regular radio fegture so long that we are quite used to hearing the written’word analysed for us, and it seems a logical principle to extend such discussions to other arts, as music, painting and films.