Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

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STORY SHORTAGE CRISIS 31 material that exists beyond the studio floors, and they have even yet to be persuaded that the public is clamouring to see it. Never has the demand for out-of-doors films been so strong as it is to-day, but still producers will not recognize that the artificiality of their expensive studios has lost its grip on the public's purse. In Hollywood there is some return to the old Western manifested in such films as Billie the Kid, Cimarron and Fighting Caravans, but there is still too much trust placed in studio settings intermingled with real material. Paramount have made a determined attempt to break away into plein-air pictures, but they have still retained their studio-mind. They made a good picture of The Virginian, but that they do not fully comprehend the potentialities of the Western is apparent from such repetitions as Gun Smoke, The Conquering Horde and Light of the Western Stars. These Westerns of Paramount manufacture depend too greatly on the appeal of Gary Cooper, Richard Arlen, Fay Wray or Lili Damita, and refuse to allow the desert and the horses and the trees to become the centre of interest. These are out-of-doors pictures made with the artificiality of a studio-mind. Sooner or later the production-executives must come to realize that the gallery of stars and the sets from the property-rooms will have to be left behind, because the artificial and the real will not mix. The Americans have yet to learn how to represent cinematically their enormous wealth of natural resources. In England, we are terrified to leave our precious Elstree palaces and get to grips with the real heart of England. No