Year book of motion pictures (1926)

sott gold; others with their kinks parted and twisted into countless small pigtails, the whole looking as if a giant spider with very stiff legs had perched atop their heads. Some brought babies peacefully sleeping in a sling made of a fold ot their mothers' print robes, and hanging at the back, below t he shoulders. Most of the audience were men, though — Haussas from the north of Nigeria, with red fezzes and huge white turbans, and rigas of blue and white, with enormous flowing sleeves. There were also the Ga men, natives of Accra, dressed in henna reds and dark blues and brilliant oranges of Manchester cotton prints. Some had wrapped them round like a toga; others wore simply a loin cloth and quite often a very British cloth cap such as Sherlock Holmes used to sport, or perhaps a discarded sun helmet, no longer spotlessly white. Many of them were naked to the waist, their black bodies shining in the gleam of the electric lamps. At last the lights went out. No title flashed on the screen, but a funny little man with wide wondering round eyes appeared — a strange wandering walk, a little cane and a derby hat. It was Charlie! My own recognition was no quicker thru that of the wildly transported native audience. Therewas an immediate chorus of shouts, "Charlee! Charlee!" Few of them knew any more English than that, but they did know his funny little hat, his hobbled walk, his amazing shoes. Charlie may be rather a cult nowadays among the highbrows; but no amount of highbrowism can spoil his universal appeal. Here, right at first hand, I had a perfectly gorgeous chance of studying that appeal. These natives like the spme things that children do. I doubt if the modern child in an American town — even a ' child of five years old — is quite as unsophisticated as are these grown-up savages. It was a film from the remote antiquity of filmdom; a film from the utter dark ages of the cinematograph so patched and pieced and repieced that ?1I continuity was gone; a piebald hash chosen from the remains of various comedies and stuck together with no plot. Just slapstick. Rut Charlie had survived even that, and how they did love it! Charlie Chaplin is the matinee idol of Accra. They don't want films of high society. Pictures of love and sacrifice are simply incomprehensible. The man who can buy a good wife for a few goats or seven pounds of good English money; who never dreams of supporting her and can divorce her again for a few shillings, is hardly in terested in pictures of the grand passion. He wants rough stuff. The other thing is booed off the screen. Sometimes they get so excited over a picture that the movie palace is almost torn down. They will demand that a film be run again and again, until finally the audience must be turned out of the building by main force. This happened at Easter time. They like Wild West pictures, too. Many of the Haussa people are themselves excellent horsemen, and cowboys are understood. Pictures with lots of movement are most popular; with something happening every minute; pictures of acrobats, of dogs, a chase. Repetition doesn't dull enchantment. In fact, they like a film all the better after they have seen it a few times and know what is going to happen next. Dampness Ruins the Films The equatorial hot weather, with its damp and stickiness, is very bad for a film. After it has been shown only a few times it begins to blister and break. This is the chief reason why it is almost impossible to take pictures in West Africa, particularly along the steamy lowlands of the coast. No matter how carefully the films are packed in sealed tins they blister and go bad even before they are used. There is a traveling moving picture .show, equipped with films and projector and an old Ford car, which goes all over the west coast of Africa. It has been in the east, too, and right up in the jungle and the bush among savages who have never seen a white man before. In the larger towns the operator sets up boards across oil cans in a cocoa shed and the pictures are shown on a sheet stretched across one end of the shed. In smaller places the theater is simply out of doors. The operator has covered over 30," 000 miles. What tales he must be able to tell! How did the natives first receive this white man's juju? Were they frightened? What did the native witch doctors think of this rival show that seems so much more marvelous than their own? Some dav, when I go back. T am going to get an interview with that man. I want to know, too, what the witch doctors think of Charlie! 15