Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

l6 CELLULOID which saw in the introduction of speech into the silent cinema a novelty that might relieve the stagnant situation resulting from mass-production. Simply because a variety artist appealed to millions of filmgoers all over the world when his sobbing voice was heard in conjunction with his equally sobbing photograph on the screen, there has followed film after film of banal talking, crude acting, and situations that for bathos have never been equalled. Probably there are many producers in the industry to-day who look back with regret to the last days of the silent cinema, when making films was a comparatively simple matter as compared with the innumerable problems of the dialogue screen. Some of them are still befuddled by the revolution that took place after Warner Brothers met with success when they produced their first big talking film. But if we recollect, in the year preceding the onrush of the onehundred-per-cent. speech movies, the silent cinema was labouring under bad storms and was rapidly losing its carefully collected public. The monotony of the starsystem, the shortage of stories and the standardization of product had greatly wearied the filmgoing public, and the appeal of the cinema had to be bolstered up with variety turns and orchestral interludes, as well as by the erection of vast palaces of luxury and atrocious vulgarity. In the winter of 1928 there were few films that stood alone on their merits as films. The vast majority succeeded only after extensive publicity and expensive premiere presentations. However much we may deplore the coming of the dialogue cinema, with its hampering speeches and