MORAL AND REFINED
THE HISTORY OF THE* BRITISH. FILM. VOL. 1, 1896-1906. By Rachael Low and Roger Manvell. Allen and Unwin. English price, 21/-. THE USE OF THE FILM. By Basil Wright. The Bodley Head. English price, 3/6. (Our copy from the British Council.) OR anyone who isn’t making a special study of films it may be boring to read Rachael Low’s dry, scholarly account of the early days of the "Kinematograph," but there is romance enough between the lines for a true devotee. It is a history of small firms dominated by showmen of vision and genius, of cameramen like Rosenthal, who filmed the Boer War arid the siege of Port Arthur, and of inventors and artists who often anticipated the Americans in what ‘has_ traditionally been regarded as their own field. Considerable space is devoted to an analysis | of the various types of early moving picture-Marriage by Motor, Rescued -by Rover, Falsely Accused, ate typical titles-and brief synopses of plots are included. There are many amusing sidelights, too, such as the occasionally
needed assurance on advertisements (the commercial cinema’s first home-was the music-hall)’ that the shows were ‘"moral and refined, pleasing to ladies." The material has been gathered from private letters and memoirs, interviews with surviving pioneers, trade catalogues, old prints and posters and so on, through research made possible by the British Film Institute. Basil Wright describes in a thoughtful and stimulating way the technique of film-making — (editing, scripting, camera work, etc.), the commercial setup of the industry, with some interesting comments on Hollywood and J. Arthur Rank, and in his second part the question of films outside the enteftainment world. He is principally concerned with the problems that arise in the use of the cinema by scientists and educationists, and discusses concisely such things as documentaries and cinema clubs, and the importance for international understanding of a world interchange of films that are cultural
in outlook.
P.J.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 16
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322MORAL AND REFINED New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 16
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