When the Public Applauds a Picture And Critics Condemn It!

Radio Record, 19 June 1936, Page 12

When the Public Applauds a Picture And Critics Condemn It!

NCE upon a time-there was an Australian film called, "On Our Selection." I went to see the picture; didn’t like it-and said so in these columns. Did that keep the public. away? It did not. In fact, "On Our Selection" took more money in New Zealand than any Australian film has taken before or since, and, more than that, the gross takings measured up to those of such outstanding films as "The House of Rothschild" and "The Thin Man." en? . Not so long ago "Smith’s Weekly" gave a gold cup -its highest award-to an Bnglish picture adapted from. the play, "Many Waters." And yet this picture was such a sad failure on its initial release in New Zealand that very few theatres could be persuaded to take it. I men-. tioned last week that Bric Baume, editor of the "Sumday’ Sun," Sydney, had heartily condemned the latest Marx’ Brothers film, "A Night at the. Opera’-at the same time it was being screened to overflow: houses. in Melbourne, Which brings us to the problem:;What’s wrong with film criticism? Looking over the daily papers in New Zealand we would answer: everything. There’s not a daily in New Zealand that gives.anything approaching a genuine criticism of a film; the editors of the Saturday feature pages are, often enough, tnderpaid juniors who, -with scissors and paste, "write" their pages from the weekly publicity sheets supplied by the, film companies. We have remarked before-and we do again-that, while papers are willing to pay large salaries to men writing about football and golf, they seem ‘to think that any hack is good enough to write about films, a form of entertainment that attracts more followers in a single.evening than golf and football

do in a whole month. And, while theatre managers provide "critics" with free seats on the opening night of a film, the "criticism" is often written from the publicity sheet before the reporter has ever seen the picture. ; There seems to be a general idea that theatre managet's are a pack of big, bad wolves waiting to pounce on the first critic who dares to say a word in criticism of a film. This is nonsense. The "Radio Record" has criticised films on many occasions and just how many enemies it has made in the process can be gathered from the follow-. ing paragraph taken from a letter received from a wellknown Dunedin theatre manager: The writing up of pictures in the "Radio Record’ has a distinctiveness, the keynote of which is sincerity, which in turn gives it authority. This makes it more valuable from everyone’s point of view, It’s no use writing film criticisms if the critic merely uses his column to air his literary cleverness. When I reviewed "On Our Selection’ I thought it "smart" to he cutting and uncomplimentary; wasn’t it George Jean Nathan, the famous American writer, who said: "It is only the very young critic who thinks it a sign of weakness to praise anything"? ‘To-day experience has taught me that the genuine criticism-constructive, réproving maybe, generous on some points-commands far more attention (and respect) than the clever flippancies of the critic who tramples on everything or the vapid meanderings of the newspaper critic who can’t see farther than the: publicity sheet under his nose,