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33
The Kinematogvaph Year Book.
THE YEAR IN AMERICA.
By PAUL THOMPSON.
Probably no feature of the motion picture history of 1926 is quite so significant as the fact that the year has been marked by an unparalleled striving for finer and more significant things. The phrase " Bigger and Better Pictures " has been a meaningless shibboleth of the industry for ten years — but 1926 has seen it become a very valid expression, backed up by every resource in men, money and materials obtainable. The year's crop of pictures is not nearly so important as the fact that into that group of films has gone more thought, more care and more effort than ever before — which marks a happy augury for the future.
Foremost among developments in motion picture showmanship is the Vitaphone — significant not because it solves some of the problems of synchronising sound and the motion picture but because for the first time such a device has been put in its proper place and given its correct function.
In the past, the goal of inventors has been the " talking picture " — and all such efforts have failed, regardless of technical shortcomings. Speech added to the motion picture is foreign to every characteristic of the art, and nothing less than an atrocity.
The sponsors of the Vitaphone, however, including soma of the best electrical laboratories in the world, have realised this, and the device has been put to two important uses, which are revolutionising the exhibition of films throughout the country. The first is for the musical accompaniment of motion pictures, and the second is for the presentation of noted concert, vaudeville and musical comedy stats in the sort of acts which have made them famous.
Of the 15,000 odd motion picture theatres in the United States, only a handful can afford or obtain really adequate orchestras, which means that the patrons of other houses have had to be content with inferior rendering of the all-important musical accompaniment. Vitaphone changes all this. Scores to films can be recorded by the world's greatest orchestras, under the baton of conductors impossible to obtain for motion picture houses. Once impressed on the wax records of the device, audiences from Terre Haute to Timbuctoo can see and hear the great pictures of the screen to the accompaniment of the identical music.
IF YOU WANT THE BEST FOR YOUR BOX OFFICE-BOOK P.D.C. PICTURES."