Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

206 CELLULOID of the film, demanding a different treatment from that part in which dialogue is employed. This is admirably illustrated in The Blue Angel. The first shot on the screen is of Ufa's famous trade-mark, which is followed by the mixing credit titles, until again the trade-mark appears. The whole selfcontained sequence is accompanied by its own music, which concludes as the Ufa mark fades from the screen, leaving a silent pause before the film begins with the cackling of geese and the fade into the opening shot. To continue with Trader Horn, the first shots of the picture itself are well selected : a sunset landscape with the sound of a twittering bird suggests vastness and loneliness, a bird flying and skimming over calm water, a plunging hippopotamus, a great crocodile grunting ominously, aad at length a long shot up the river of a canoe, accompanied by the faint singing of the native paddlers; in fact, a solemn procession of shots which at once drags us into the atmosphere. But, alas, we proceed to a long duologue, totally unnecessary and tediously dull, between Horn and the boy Peru, irretrievably destroying that very atmosphere which has just been so well built up. I have insisted on detailing the arrangement of these shots because they typify the inconsistency of most American productions. Constantly we see a brilliant beginning quickly shattered by dialogue in an attempt to explain the story. The Benson Murder Case, The Easiest Way, and Anna Christie are all cases in point, where the attention of the audience has at once been gripped only for that hold to be relaxed as soon as explanatory