Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

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80 CELLULOID also, that there remains much to be achieved with the movement, colour, and contraction and expansion of titles, faintly suggested in the best of the American " trailers." The big field which exists in the relationship between titles and images offers great scope for a creative artist, and may result in some new form of title that will be of exceptional interest to the sound medium. But it will not be easy or quick to make such films. In the first place, it will call for the special writing of thematic stories, and more care than at present will have to be expended on production details. I foresee that the quantity of films produced will decrease and that each film will be given a longer run at its particular cinema, being sufficiently entertaining to sustain being seen twice or even three times. This will be in accord with my belief stated earlier, that cinemas will become more specialist in their programmes and more limited in their appeal but infinitely more valuable from an entertainment, cultural and aesthetic point of view. Moreover, it is possible that the era of the cinema as a vast entertainment, notorious for its flamboyance and extravagance, famous as a showman's clap-trap spectacle, is rapidly on the wane, and that the next few years may see the film assuming its proper level of commercialism and its right scale of values. It is not unlikely that when television reaches a practical stage and is introduced into the homes of millions of individuals, the super-cinema and the super-film will cease to have mass appeal and will thus make way for the more serious aspects of the medium.