PARIS, 1900
(International Films) HIS skilful montage of old newsreels and other film scraps, covering the period 1900-1914, is a superficially unpretentious screen diversion, but it has a compelling rhythm, it recaptures amazingly well the flavour of an age now long dead-and it is impossible not to be entertained by it. Paris, 1900, is,
of course, French in flavour, but for the ordinary filmgoer it has the advantage of a. brisk English .commentary by Monty Woolley (in his best Sheridan Whiteside after-dinner manner). On the whole I enjoyed Woolley very muchI am prejudiced in favour of his véicethough once or ‘twice I thought his wit a little condescending (or does wit always condescend?), and once at least his joking was in bad taste. It was perhaps an occupational inclination to be dissatisfied with» anything I’m’ offered that led me to wonder if Sir Compton Mackenzie might not have made a much better commentator and interpreter. If a British studio were to make an Edwardian scrapbook he would be hard to Pass over. Paris, 1900, however, is remarkably good. The quality of the photography is perhaps the most astonishing thing about it-though it is also astonishing to notice: how early the newsreel settled into its accustomed form. Here are the mighty in their public appearances, here is the new Métro underground being inaugurated. What hats the women woreand what skirts! French cameramen, forrer at re tern ren ene cman ene orem
tunately, had liberal ideas about who were the mighty. You will see Kaiser Wilhelm and Blériot, but you will also see. Tolstoy in his white smock, Rodin, the divine Sarah, Gide and Valéry, Colette and M. Willy, a young vaudeville entertainer called Chevalier, an old painter called Monet at work by his Bassin aux Nymphées, and scores of others. One’s own taste will determine what one likes best, but it is all absorbing to watch, I remember with delight the shot of Renoir, crippled with arthritis, jabbing briskly at a canvas, then drawing back, screwing his face up, and looking at the result out of one glittering eye.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530522.2.32.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 723, 22 May 1953, Page 16
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348PARIS, 1900 New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 723, 22 May 1953, Page 16
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