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the microphone mobile, selective and modulative. Again, no film author can remind the cinema worker too often that the inventor of the Two Minutes' Silence was a genius. When it comes, though, to bringing up the old actors-and-types business one is reminded that a newspaper with a million circulation repeats the same story a million times.
The stills, mostly from British films, are weak. A page of Harry Lachman's sketches for compositions as he desires them to appear on the screen is the most illuminating of the pictorial features.
O. B.
Rejorme du Cinema. Ch. Dekeukeleire, W. Rombauts, P. Werrie (Ed. de
La Nouvelle Equippe), Rene Henriquez, 41, Rue du Loxum Brussels.
The authors of this brochure deplore the exploitation of the cinema as vulgar merchandise, by people without culture. They make the statement that the film executives have no end in view but to satisfy constantly the two hundred and fifty million spectators who, once weekly, flock to the fifty thousand theatres of the world. A great, transcendental business, certainly, which demands above all a mass-production for popular taste. Art — the personal idea — can find no place in this standardised product.
Those who would succeed attach themselves to the big firms and renounce in so doing their individual qualities. Those already disgusted with studio methods, including the beginners, are met by a thousand difficulties. Money is needed, especially with sound-films, and lack of financial means makes itself sensibly felt in the technical quality. Supposing this care is lacking, a new one arises, for, once the film is made, how are they to place it outside the big combines?
Whether cinema is art or not, as a means of expression it is, unlike the habitual instruments of the artist, not available to all who feel inspired to use it. Hence, to a great extent, the incapacity of renewal, the lamentable stagnation.
These authors are in favour of censorship and say so definitely. But a censorship not of officialdom and policemen ; one rather of physicians of the soul, people competent to judge true values.
Generally speaking, the Press fails in its duties; neither guiding nor educating, for the Press too must earn its living. It is the cinema firms which nourish the papers and their representatives, corrupting with wine and banquets. Similarly one sees newspaper directors or administrative councils who do not withhold cinema criticism from the control of publicity agents, irresponsible critics, press secretaries of cinema firms. Thus, certain critics, either from necessity or love of money, do not hesitate to pair criticism and publicity together. The press could, however, do much for the public.
The role of the cinema is to translate in a perceptible manner, the drama and joy of our epoch. The deplorable star-system is but a slick speculation of business-men.