Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

24 CELLULOID Slovakia are all producing speech films in their respective languages, thus gradually diminishing the American influence which was so strong in predialogue days. Britain has also been well to the fore in multilingual production and a feature of British International's policy is films in three languages. The result of this competition should be of great interest. On the one side, America has years of production-experience on a highly commercial basis and vast resources at its command, whilst Europe has imagination for its principal asset, as such films as Zwei Herzen im \ — Ta\t and Train de Suicides more than evidence. Yet again there are such films as Clair's Sous les toils de Paris which has run very successfully in Berlin, Paris, London and New York in its original French version, thus proving that it is the treatment and theme which must be universal and that the language in which the film is recorded is of little consequence. Why, then, pursue the policy of speech when it is sound that is of primary importance ? Indeed there is every indication that even if speech is not disappearing entirely from the theatrical film, at any rate its use in the future will be greatly curbed in comparison with the babel of voices heard during last year. Hollywood, I understand, is now working to a schedule of twenty-five per cent, speech and seventyfive per cent, pictorial value for its more sophisticated films, and what Hollywood does this year Elstree will do next. The recent presentation in London and New York of Rene Clair's films, in which speech has been reduced to a minimum and continuity music is used