We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE FILM IN SOUTH AFRICA
H. R. VAN DER POEL
South Africa has probably had a fair share of the outstanding films of the world. Perhaps it was in the days of the Swedish Biograph and Nordisk films that the public first began to take notice. One remembers seeing Emil Jannings in Anne Boleyn. There are recollections of a number of the audience leaving before the end when The Golem was shown at the then foremost cinema in Cape Town; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari being shown in the City Hall (the trade evidently did not want it) ; Stiller 's Hotel Imperial, Lubitsch's Forbidden Paradise, Dupont's Vaudeville proving box-office successes. So were to a certain extent JVanook and Grass. On the other hand, Chaplin's Woman of Paris, Pabst's Crisis, Jeanne Ney, Flaherty's Moana, Grierson's Drifters, ran almost unnoticed in suburban houses or the cinema tea-rooms. Few recognised The Street of Sorrows as being what was left of Pabst's Freudlose Gasse with Garbo. The only Russian films worth mentioning were Mother and Earth. The silent era ended with the last of the Ufa specials, Homecoming, Hungarian Rhapsody, The Wonderful Lie, and Pitz Palu.
Whereas in the silent days one saw what was probably the pick of the world's films, the trade has made no attempt to introduce the outstanding Continental sound films. In view of the fact that German is almost invariably the foreign language taught at South African schools and universities, this is surprising.
Le Million, probably brought out as an experiment, was fairly successful. A significant feature of the sound era is the rapid headway made by British films as compared with the American product. The films from the Gainsborough studios in particular have proved popular successes. Sunshine Susie was no doubt as big a family success as elsewhere. Among the shorts Ideal Cinemagazine is easily the favourite. With Cobham to Kivu was received with much enthusiasm. We have, however, not seen any of Anthony Asquith's work since A Cottage on Dartmoor.
There is not a single theatre in the Union showing consistently films which have not been made with an eye on the box-office. The Cape Film Society, news of which already has appeared in Cinema Quarterly, has revived some of the outstanding films of the silent era. Their chief difficulty is the supply of suitable films. The outstanding film of the current season has been Maedchen in Uniform. Fragments of Iven's J^uiderzeewerkem, Phillips-Radio, Oscar Fischinger's Filmstudie No. y, and Clair's The Italian Straw Hat have also been shown.
104