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36 CELLULOID
THE AMERICAN FILM
True to its tradition, Hollywood is as undecided in its outlook to-day as it was during the zenith of the silent cinema. A brief inspection of the American films showing in London within the last two years reveals with startling clarity how great a state of chaos prevails in the minds of American producers. It is quite true to say that the American cinema is heading in a dozen different directions at the same time and is getting nowhere because of it. Such stupendous spectacles as The King of Jazz, Hell's Angels, The Big Trail and Trader Horn demonstrate the unbalanced conditions that govern production and show that tendencies towards both subject-matter and technique are one thing one day and another the next.
The magnitude of such films as I have just mentioned hardly suggests surety of purpose. On the contrary, lavish spectacle and extravagant production are being used to gloss over technical and aesthetic uncertainty. With reckless abandon, eight hundred thousand pounds are spent on Hell's Angels, a film which at the maximum contained one thousand feet of exciting aeroplane acrobatics; whereas the same producer finances Milestone to make The Front Page at the cost of approximately forty thousand pounds, or about one-twentieth of the cost of Hell's Angels, and produces an exceptionally brilliant film. This instance of relative expenditure and merit is to me typical of the capitalist attitude of Hollywood towards film making.
Yet despite their absurd inconsistencies which make