Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

34 CELLULOID dramatic pictures. Lapland, the Indies and the Amazon, these are but names to the average audience of Europe and America. But I do not suggest that such films should be made in the jocular style of Trader Horn or Africa Spea\s. They must be produced by directors who have dramatic as well as cinematic instinct, who possess a thorough knowledge of their subject, and treated as deeply-rooted themes and expressed in terms of fluid images and overtones of sound. Their style has already been foreshadowed in the work of Robert Flaherty and such films as Finis Terrce and Storm Over Asia. It would be the sanest thing in the sordid history of the cinema if every studio were to close down for the period of a year, if all the stars were given a vacation, and if production units (complete with cameras and recording apparatus) were to be sent to every part of the world. The resulting films would be the most thrilling entertainment that has ever been produced. There is just a possibility, remote but not improbable, that the present scarcity of stories for theatrical films may force the producers to recognize the many other available aspects of the cinema, resulting in an increased production of documentary, non-fictional films. With the exception of a few isolated examples, such as the beautiful Moana and the memorable Nanoo\ of the North, the late Fred Murnau's Tabu, and such semiinterest films as The Iron Horse, White Shadows in the South Seas and Trader Horn, the American cinema has not to any great extent entered the field of nontheatrical production. But with the success, it is hoped, of Rango and the past successes of The White