The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Iclobcr, ig2^ 391 The Theatrical Field Conducted by Marguerite Orndorff A Dream Comes True Do you remember the African magician in the Arabian Nights, who picked up Aladdin's palace so casually, carried it to Africa, nd dropped it there? The fellow has been at is tricks again, but en a much more ambitious Ian, for this time he has gathered up the whole ity of Bagdad, whisked it through the air, and eposited it in merry England, somewhere beween King Richard's castle and the town of Nottingham. Not the real Bagdad, you understand — that ^ould be too prosy. No, he's gone and got it lUt of the fairy tales, picked it up in pieces — , twisting stairway here, a tower there, a balcony ir a great, sweeping archway somewhere else — nd put it together with his curious magic. Where, in days gone by, proud knights and fair adies used to wander, and plumes and lances and :leaming armor flashed, and the thud of gallopng horses' feet sounded on the green turf, there low sparkle the gilded minarets of the Sultan's [ream city. For if eyer there zvas a dream city, his is surely that very cne. Grey and gold, silver and glistening black, it tands there, mocking the cynics who never beieved in it. Great archways sweep skyward and [own again, to lose themselves in twisting pasr ages. Crooked stairways skulk along walls and eap dizzily into midair to bridge the way to some iny balcony, perched at a reckless angle on a heer wall. Little barred windows, veritable peeploles, wink from the immense heights of the mcoth masonry, hiding — who knows what mishievous faces ! Palm trees flourish in secret gardens near the ky; billowing Oriental draperies flaunt their olor and their romance from far balustrades, ntricately wrought metal lamps lean at odd corlers on their tall standards, as if they drooped f their own weight; and in the depths of the >olished ebony that paves the city, reflections nake little floating pools of color, as its strange itizens scurry on their mysterious errands. And through the fantastic lights and shadows f winding streets and curious dwellings flits a »rown-skinned fellow with an impish smile — the Thief of Bagdad! This same Thief— who, to be strictly accurate, is really Douglas Fairbanks — says that this new picture is essentially for children. That naturally includes all of us who haven't grown up and away from the days when even mealtime could not drag us from the delights of the Arabian fairy tales. He promises us a story of adventure made up of all the most entrancing bits of the fancies of Scheherazade — a truly enchanting prospect. But more than that, he promises us the pictorial background. Beauty of line and composition — and let realism fly to the four winds ! There is gradually becoming settled in the minds of the progressive picture-makers, the conviction The genial thief himself that there is too much realism in the movies. It interferes with the artistic quality. In his endeavor to reproduce exactly a locality or a building, the art director frequently has had to sacrifice beauty and simplicity to accuracy. And in many cases, when he sought to make his background look "real"— he succeeded merely in making it look cluttered. Most of us, no doubt, can count on the fingers of one hand the pictures we have seen whose backgrounds had true pictorial beauty. Many of them are obviously rich, but they are generally very prosaic. Here, then, is an attempt to get away from