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.
of shorts ; and even if there were, even if every foot of celluloid thus used lost hard cash, it would be worth every penny for the ultimate good of cinema, both artistically and commercially.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCENARIO.— Ernest Betts, who introduced the admirable idea of publishing film scenarios in book form, evidently imagines from an editorial in our last issue that Cinema Quarterly underestimates the importance of the scenario. That is not so. A poor script has ruined many a potentially fine film; that in itself is sufficient gauge of the scenario's place in cinema. Triumphantly, Betts flourishes the fact that even Chaplin uses a scenario. Of course he does. His films would be the poorer if he did not. But they are his own scripts. And that is exactly the point we made, and still make — that scenario and direction should not be divorced from each other, but should be undertaken by the same person, or persons.
Undoubtedly, under present conditions, the scenarist is entitled to greater credit than he now receives, and the director probably less. Conversely, much of the criticism delivered against direction should be levelled against the scenario.
We are asked to hazard a guess as to when films will be the single, individual creation of one person, and to consider whether criticism would be "worth a rap which totally ignored present conditions, namely the organized regimentation of many talents." But would criticism which complacently accepted conditions as they are be worth anything at all? The "regimentation of talents" must be organized in the best possible way, and any criticism which matters must be concerned not only with what is but with what should be. To answer one question by asking another, does anyone seriously believe that the exact images, movement, rhythm, light and sounds of a film can be reduced to words and sentences so that "a director can read a script as a musician reads a score"?
NON-FLAM FILM TEST CASE. Some months ago the County Durham Police prosecuted the proprietors of a hall in Boldon for allowing the film Potemkin to be shown, on the grounds that the 1 6 mm. stock used was inflammable and therefore came under the Cinematograph Act, 1909. A Home Office expert was called in to prove that the film used was inflammable. However, the summonses were dismissed by the Jarrow Bench, with costs against the police, who subsequently appealed. W. H. Thompson, the London solicitor defending the case, was recently informed by the solicitor to the County Durham Police that the appeal is not to be proceeded with. It would seem, therefore, that the authorities now accept the fact that the 16 mm. safety film is non-inflammable and therefore can be shown in public without special precautions.
133 Norman Wilson.