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Among the Magazines Conducted by N. L. G. The Cinema Novel by Gilbert Seldes in Vanity Fair for June "T-^HIS is an interesting study of the p influence of the cinema on literary "^ form as it manifests itself in ranee. French writers, taking their sug- estion from the scenario seem to be chieving distinctly new effects in fiction. The results may prove to be merely so Inany more literary hybrids—or they may >rove fruitful in the further development >f the story-telling art. The scenario as a nethod of fiction may not only lead to >etter pictures but may become an end in tself. The adaptability of the movie scenario o something other than pictures was evi- lent from the start, but in England and America only burlesque effects have been reached. In France, the cinema influence seems to make for "brevity, hardness, clarity, brilliance"—quite the reverse of the "sloppiness" which American authors ac- knowledge and blame on the movies. Mr. Seldes suggests that "if they would take the trouble of studying the pictures in- stead of trying to make money out of them . . . we might have better novels and we certainly would have a few less bad pic- tures." Outstanding names among French writers of the new genre are Paul Morand, Louis Aragon, Blaise Cendrars, and Jules Romains. Cendrars' La Fin du Monde is a "cosmic cinema-novel in fifty-five swift, concisely told scenes." The same author's La Perle Fievreuse—now running serially in the Belgian magazine, Signauz — is a complete director's script with the cut- backs, visions and close-ups all numbered and marked. The most noteworthy production to date is Donogoo-Tonka by Jules Romains. This author "has pushed the method of the cinema a long and significant step for- ward, and, while using everything it can give, he has produced a first class work of fiction." In plot it is "slightly more intelli- gent" than most movie productions. In the details and in the presentation of an idea, the idea of Scientific Error, "Romains has passed beyond the professional tech- nique of the moving picture without once exceeding its natural limitations." The titles are refreshingly different from the offerings of our so-called "title ex- perts." For instance in the waiting room where Lamendin sits with the other would- be suicides, at the opening of the story: "Absurdity, given off by so many brains, becomes palpable. One begins to distin- guish a sort of very subtle exhalation which disengages itself from the human bodies and little by little charges the atmosphere." The settings for this scene are very much in the manner of Dr. Caligari. "M. Romains has also a complete under- standing of projection. He protests, in a preface, against the monotonous speeding- up of pictures and urges that this one be taken and shown in the rhythm of ordinary life, with a shading toward slow, espe- cially in the scenes where the only events which pass before us are the thoughts of the characters. (Required reading for Mr. Griffith and Mr. DeMille for one year is in those words.) "In the scenes which exploit the shares in Donogoo-Tonka we enter into the minds of individuals, of groups, of crowds; at the end the very framework of a building succumbs to the madness of the idea. And then with a technical mastery not yet put into practice, M. Romains directs that the 219