The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

October, 1923 School Department 409 family scene, and considerately disappears again. Truly, a movie solution. Irene Rich is delightful as the woman, and two winsome children make up the rest of the cast. Urashima (Kinema Film Service)— The film shows a group of Japanese children being entertained by a professional story teller, who relates the tale of Urashima, the fisherboy who dozed off in his boat one day, and is wakened by a beautiful maiden who is the daughter of a sea god. As a reward to Urashima, who has been kind to a tortoise he has caught and put it back into the sea, the girl takes the humble fisherlad to her father's dragon palace. The sea god receives them and ultimately gives to Urashima his entire domain and his beautiful daughter as a wife. Three years later, a longing seizes him to visit his native land. He goes — and takes with him a box which, if he opens it, will prevent him from returning. Everything in his own country is strange, and he marvels that it could have changed so much in so short a time. He enquires of an old fisherman if he had known Urashima, and is informed that the latter had been drowned long ago. In u cemetery he finds the graves of his parents and their grandchildren. He opens the box, its contents burn, and he becomes an old man at once — for a day in the Dragon Palace (a part of fairyland) is as long as a year elsewhere. Entertainingly done, and deserving a place on any program. MISCELLANEOUS The Coolie (Prizma) — In overcrowded China, where man-power is cheap, the street coolie is the lowest of all society. Roaming the streets in the search for work, he is distinguished from other classes of coolies by the bamboo pole which he constantly carries. All together, the various classes of coolies are said to make up one-fourth of the entire population of China. To their lot falls the work of the teeming waterfront in the Chinese ports — and there the coolie is seen carrying burdens from ship to dock, heavy loads borne by the seemingly endless stream of bent figures dog-trotting along. The load may be 240 pounds of rice, and in case any stray grains are dropped by the train of burden bearers, they are speedily swept up— too precious to be wasted in a hungry land. Packages of tea are loaded in a two-wheeled wagon drawn by two laboring coolies. Other dock scenes picture the weighing of tubs and barrels, delivered by the human pack animals, who also carry baskets in which may be fruit, poultry, or even swine. The activity of the coolie would be incomplete without something said of the ricksha. Oriental street scenes taken in the foreign section of Hongkong are interesting not only for the coolies drivers of "man-power street cars" but also for their picturesque signs hung outside the numerous shops that line both sides of the narrow passageways. A parade of ricksha men bringing tokens of various sorts in the hope that by so doing, prosperity may attend them in the year to come, is the final scene of the reel — which is not only illuminating as a side light on China, but also as an intensely human document eloquent of the conditions of life in the denselypopulated Orient, Roving Thomas Series (Vitagraph). — A brief review of one of these will give an idea of the character of the series, which belongs to the Urban Popular Classics. "Roving Thomas on the Western Coast" first finds the Urban cat (Roving Thomas) in Alberta, Canada, where he pauses long enough to witness scenes of dipping cattle in what he terms "bovine baths — sanitary chutes." He "hops" a freight train westward bound and there follow some interesting enough views of the Rockies, seen from the moving train, Vancouver is reached — "an ancient town it must be," observes the cat, "since they call it B. C." Bathing beaches, zoo-botanical gardens of Victoria, where trees are trimmed in peculiar shapes to represent birds and animals, horse racing at Vancouver, and scenes at Neptune Beach, California, make up the greater portion of the reel, along with the footage devoted to the antics of the cat (a little animated cartoon figure). The series contains informative material, but in a guise unsuited for any serious use. The reels were built solely for entertainment and are harmless enough, perhaps, if one does not mind the antics and "clever" speeches of the cat