Canadian Film Weekly (Jun 16, 1948)

June 16, 1948 French Color At B&W Neg Rates? (Continued from Page 1) and white to shoot, print or pro ject. Claimed to be far more accurate in recording color on film, Rouxcolor is obtained by installing adapters between the lens and film of regular cameras and projectors and using ordinary film. No other modification or changes are necessary. Representatives of an American movie corporation at the exhibition in the French capital were enthusiastic and stated results were unbelievable. Scenes taken with a hand-held newsreel-type camera equipped with an adapter were projected by Roux and appeared to be views of a number of back yards. Although subjects of the pictures and the camera technique appeared amateurish, colors and details, especially in shadows, were superior to Hollywood color efforts. The quality has been found so good that France’s top producer, Marcel Pagnol, has scrapped his latest movie “La Belle Meuniere’’ to do it over again in Rouxcolor. The process works on the well known principle of color separation which, although widely apPlied in still photography, has never been found practical for moving pictures. Behind a normal lens Roux installs a complicated system of prisms that breaks an image up into four identical smaller images. These four images are then filtered by four separate filters representing primary colors. Instead of one large black and white image on film, the new process has four smaller ones in the same space, one representing red, the others green, blue and yellow; all in terms of black and white. These four simultaneous picture are exposed at the same rate as normal black and white film. The film is processed by the same methods as normal black and white film which as a matter of fact is just what it is. Projection is the same process as exposures in the reverse, four small black and white images are turned back into white light images which, in turn, are ‘dyed’ in their respective colors by filters, mixed by prism attachment and projected onto a screen by normal projection lens. Wrather Casts Star Rod Cameron has been signed by producer Jack Wrather as coStar with Bonita Granville and Don Castle in “Strike It Rich,” his first independent production for release by Allied Artists. Herbert J. Leeds has been signed to direct the film. Canadian FILM WEEKLY ILE. Movie-Goers Get Just What They Want (From the Sault Ste. Marie Star) It has been fashionable for some time to deplore the sort of “intellectual pap,” as one description has it, which is alleged to be Hollywood's conception of the ideal fare for movie-goers. Here in the Sault, however, we've just had an example of what happens when movie makers seek to tempt the public with somewhat more substantial offerings. The reference, of course, is to Sir Laurence Olivier’s attempt, in “Henry V,” to gauge the appeal of Shakespeare to a public whose intelligence is supposed to have been too long insulted by boy-meets-girl variations of about comic strip literary level. But where packed houses and boxoffice queues seem to be the rule rather than the exception these days, Henry played at a local theatre last week to houses in which wide open seating spaces were dismally conspicuous, except in matinees at which student attendance apparently was encouraged by educational authorities. It may be that the price had something to do with this rush to stay away from Shakespeare. More honky-tonkish supercolossals also have suffered at the boxoffice as the result of raised prices. We’re in no position to judge whether such increases are justified, although in the case under discussion it strikes one that in cast and in splendor of costumes and setting the production must have been an expensive one. There was a day, however—and at that, a day when people were not nearly so “fast with a dollar’—when similar prices for the privilege of seeing Shakespeare enacted would have been paid cheerfully by as many as any theatre in a community the Sault’s size could hold. And it would have been paid simply for the privilege of hearing the majestic lines, for there could be no comparison, in talent, in the beauty and spectacular qualities of the setting or in attention to historical detail, between the offering of a road company of the calibre which would play a community of this size and the production just neglected. _ And so it may be, when complaints are raised that movie makers unflatteringly direct their appeal to the juvenile mentality, we should seek in ourselves the answer. Film producers and theatre operators, after all, are not in business for reasons of health, any more than are farmers or grocers. Even if they were, in this day and age none of them could survive more than one ambitious and expensive production, rewarded only by a thin trickle of boxoffice patrons. Two Stars Set For Horizon Starter Horizon Productions, Inc., the newly-formed John Huston-Sam Spiegel organization, announced recently that Jennifer Jones and John Garfield have been signed for the starring roles in a production which will be released through Columbia Pictures. The film will be based on one of the stories in Robert Sylvester’s best seller, “Rough Sketch.” Huston, now writing the screenplay in conjunction with Peter Veirtel, will direct and Spiegel will produce. "Kiss In The Dark’ Joan Crawford and David Niven will star in Warner's ‘Kiss in the Dark,” Masque Productions’ First Film Shooting “Million Dollar Weekend,” first film production of the newlyformed Masque Productions headed by Matty Kemp and Gene Raymond, has gone before the camera. Raymond will act in the dual capacity of star of the picture and director, with the balance of the cast headed by Francis Lederer and Osa Massen. The screenplay by Charles Belden is based on an original story by Kemp and Raymond. Fay Baker Signed Fay Baker, stage actress, has been signed to star with Warner Baxter in Columbia’s “Gentleman From Nowhere.” Page 11 USA Pic Writers Sue Producers (Continued from Page 1) writers and the Screen Writers Guild. As reported in the New York Times, the plaintiffs, who are suing under the anti-trust laws, assert that their civil liberties have been endangered and that the producers threatened the free market for original and creative work. The writers ask an injunction. The complaint was based on a meeting in New York last Nov. 25th. The producers then adopted a resolution declaring that they would not “knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force or any illegal or umconstitutional method.” Referring to the agreement reached at that meeting as a “code,”’ the complaint said: “That code impairs and threatens to destroy the free market for original and creative work and thus irreparably damages and threatens to damage the plaintiffs. It infringes and endangers their civil liberties by setting up vague and _ indefinite standards of social and political affiliation, which are to be enforced by concerted action of all defendants.” The complaint was prepared by Thurman Arnold, former head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and Roy P. Monahan. It declared that the writerplaintiffs never had been members of the Communist party. CONTRACT