The Cine Technician (1939)

Dec. -Jan., 1937-8 T H E (MX E T E (' H X 1 C I A X 1HH RECENT PUBLICATIONS— [continual from p. t86) MOVIES FOR THE MILLIONS Gilbert Seldes' New Book Meet Mr. Slides. An American who enjoys his movies, having nevertheless "seen inure pictures than most people and therefore suffered more than most from the stupidities and monotony, the uninventiveness and the timidity of American pictures." Making the point that movement— a fundamental of the history of the American people— has dominated and saturated their cinematic medium, he follows with the vital fact which no amount of legislation can replace "... the people who made the movies profoundly believe in them and enjoy them . . . that sincere belief that (the work) is good, added to the instinctive feeling for the essence of the movie as movement, has probably done more for Hollywood than all that good intentions and high purposes and subtle aesthetics could ever do." To which one maj add in passing that in Britain there are just such burning technical enthusiasts languishing in the best tradition of those who starved under the patronised arts of earlier centuries. The majority of their employers, the financiers, neither enjoy nor care for the movies, and the results are the pooi ghosts of Hollywood film making, nearly all the films made in England by all nationalities, which Mr. Seldes rightly deplores. All film stills are at best cadaver-like ; shells of a section of moving composition. But those in this book are as good as one can have them, and there are characterful portraits. Xote the vibrant Cagney opposite page 50. "The moving picture had to be taken awaj from the inventors by aggressive and ignorant men without taste or tradition, but with a highly developed sense of business, before it could be transformed . . . into a medium of the first popular art." The brothers Lumiere, who were probably the first cinema exhibitors — and of their own invention— advised Georges Melies, a movie maker who understood more about his medium in 1900 than many producers in 1937, "that the moving picture might perhaps be exploited for a while as a scientific curiosity, but it had no commercial future." Pointedly the story hurries on to 1907 and D. W. Griffith, whose work the author details with discrimination. . From the vantage of 1937 we are given no slow chronicle of tact plus laet. but refreshingly presented with a tapestry of early flairs woven into later fantasies and back again; silent him personalities — Pickford, Chaplin ; Keaton, Lloyd ("They were inventing situations when Chaplin was creating comedy"); Hart, Tom Mix, the whole "silent" gang; the arrival of a pompous staginess of sound to movie sound films and their stars; all cunningly interwoven with lively facts and portents. Critical shai'p focus points on directors, camera angles, documentaries, intellectual amateurs, and cutting ("an abrupt hail of images") raise issues which if discussed and understood by The Millions will add to their enjoyment of the fare at their local. Mr. Seldes's observation on sound films, "... producers are still trying to make pictures without the camera." illustrated from Capra's last Him as being a typical example, provides an illuminating cameo of the current disease which impairs the very root of the movie medium. A somewhat thin air pervades the extreme end of the book. Mr. Seldes's remarks on colour, stereoscopy, and the possible influences of television on films squeeze into these pages by a hair's breadth only. But he is sensible and sensitive on all three subjects. His zest shapes the many facets of his subject into a trenchant whole which could repel no layman by overtechnicality, while the technician will recognise with relief a writer who has brought a sense of proportion, knowledge, and accuracy, to bear on a subject which changes kaleidoscopically according to the angle from which it is approached. This is a good job of work of approaching the kaleidoscope from the point of view of the movie patron. J.M. TECHNICAL ABSTRACTS— {continued iron, p. 187) The tone most generally used at present is a single solution uranium tone, often in combination with tints. In this connection it should be remembered that a toned image is one in which the silver image itself is coloured while the highlights remain clear, while a tinted image is one in which the silver grains are not coloured but the gelatin support carries an overall colour so that highlights and all appear coloured. John M. Nickolaus Americayi Cinematographcr, September, 1937. (Continued on page 189) AUTO KINE CAMERA NEWMAN-SINCLAIR IS THE MOST MARVELLOUS CLOCKWORK DRIVEN CAMERA IX THE WORLD. It drives 200 feet Standard (35 mm.) Kine Film with one wind of the mechanism. It is reloaded in a few seconds. Price: With F/1.9 Ross Xpress Lens, £130. Other Models and Lenses available. JAMES A. SINCLAIR & CO. LTD. 3, WHITEHALL, LONDON, S.W.I.