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24
THE BIOSCOPE
September 30, 1931
Moving Forward !
FOR many years Bioscope Film Reviews have been the acknowledged booking guide of a large proportion of British exhibitors : the weekly Service, augmented by our vest-pocket Rapid Reviews issued monthly, has brought us over a long period thousands of appreciations and expressions of confidence.
There have also been criticisms— constructive and winged on very high intentions — with innumerable suggestions for the improvement of this particular and highly specialised Bioscope feature.
Many of these have been quite impracticable ; others have appealed to us as expressing the needs of exhibitor-readers for honest, impartial and concise analyses of all films offered to the trade.
Since the screen acquired a voice the functions of film criticism have become more complex : points of local appeal in films have assumed more weight ; dialogue and production technique has called for more precise and analytical terms in comment.
Exhibitors have realised these facts and have spoken.
Our answer is a change in the form of Bioscope Film Reviews starting with this issue.
For the past three months various views and suggestions laid before us by exhibitor-readers have been considered, together with those evolved by The Bioscope Reviewing and Editorial Staff, and the result of our efforts is now before the whole trade for judgment. It is our hope that no helpful criticism will be spared : we welcome every suggestion because we recognise that our most valuable critic is the exhibitor who places his reliance in our Film Critiques.
In order more effectively to indicate the relative values of each of the main selling factors in each film reviewed, we have evolved a code of percentage awards.
In addition to offering general comment upon each picture, our critics will, for the purpose of analysis, view each film as divided into the following five principal factors : —
Story.
Direction.
Acting.
Dialogue and Recording and
Photography.
For each factor the maximum award will be 20 per cent., so that the perfect critic-proof picture, for which the world is still waiting, would achieve a total 100 per cent, award.
Each reviewer will observe certain well-defined principles and will arrive at the percentage awards according to points of criticism which he will outline broadly in his comment.
We anticipate it will be a long time before the 100 per cent, picture arrives, because its advent will mean the ultimate in film progress ; the reaching of that elusive goal, to penetrate which some of the best human material has been spent in glorious (and inglorious) effort.
The justification of real film criticism — which The Bioscope was the first British film journal to undertake — is that it aims towards a greater moral end than the mere purpose — vitally important as it is — of serving the commercial needs of the film buyer.
It strives— like the stage producer, the football manager, the film director — to brace up to something nearer perfection those who from time to time bask in the more roseate limelight of film fame. It seeks to contribute a real quota of help to those who have determined to endure the struggle towards the making of the perfect picture.
The Editor.