Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

20 CELLULOID Only one presentation has been made in England, that of The Bat Whispers, which seemed a singularly illchosen subject to exploit what merit the greater screenarea might possess. Opinions vary, also, as to what proportions the new screen should assume. Its commercial sponsors have been content with retaining approximately the old proportions but extending them at the top and sides. But the prolific pen of Eisenstein has presented an essay in favour of a square screen, producing a wealth of tradition in support of his argument for the necessity of the vertical as well as the horizontal in pictorial composition. Perhaps the most powerful point in his favour is his list of things that have been denied adequate representation on the screen — " the Paramount Building in New York, Primo Camera, or the profound and abysmal canons on Wall Street in all their expressiveness — yet exiled for thirty years from the screen." At all events, it seems as if the wide screen will not arrive on a general scale for some length of time, since the trade has not yet overcome the great expense caused by the dialogue cinema, and the adoption of the wide screen would necessitate drastic alteration in many recently erected cinemas. In all probability the wide screen will be dropped for a while and brought forward again when experiment shall have justified its advantage to the already existing attributes of the medium. I think it likely that more attention will be given to the actual movement of the screen itself rather than to its enlargement to a fixed area. The use of the expanding screen at the same time as a tracking shot is projected on to the screen's surface produced remark