Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1940)

MOTION PICTURE HERALD MARTIN QUIGLEY, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Vol. 141, No. 7 November 16, 1940 ADVENTURE IN COSMOS OPENING this week in Broadway, and soon to roadshow the land is the most complete and competent exploration of the capacities of the film-sound art in the more remote ranges of expression. It is "Fantasia", Mr. Walt Disney's magnum opus, builded out of the riches of experience and resources discovered for him by that infinitesimal giant, Mickey Mouse. "Fantasia" is the dream flower of madly artful wishing empowered by the genii of electrons and optics. It is adventure in sound, form, color — all meaning quite as much or as little as the spectator can take to it in capacity in either literacy or sensitivity. The spectator may either think or feel, or both, but if he is not accompanied by himself he will not know he has been to a show. Measures of the enterprise in terms of showmanship and technology, by others, are appearing elsewhere in these pages. This consideration here is farther removed from today's practicalities. In view of the nature of the production and the conditions surrounding its exploitation, its principal significance to the existing motion picture screen, is in influences that it may have on the art of tomorrow. Inescapably, it would appear, "Fantasia", by reason of its special challenges to attention, can widen the angles of motion picture acceptance. It must inevitably contribute to the dignity of the art, to its serious consideration among those who can be entertained by processes related to intellectualization. And that has nothing to do with all the entertainment that may also be had by the less conscious components of the audience. In spite of the modesty of Mr. Disney in presentation of Leopold Stokowski, of Deems Taylor, and of the music of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Moussorgsky and Schubert — and Mickey Mouse — it is dominantly Disney-the-dreamer. FANCY, if you will, an ardent young man a-lolling one mellow afternoon on a sunny hillside, under maybe an apple tree in bloom, a-thinking of this and that and paying no heed save to his wonderings. He might be wondering how high is up, and how did the world begin, and what does purple, pink or blue sound like, and how did snowflakes get that way? Are the little piping notes of the piccolo like sparks in the limpid blue of the sky, and do the woodwinds mean bosky, sprite invaded dells? Suppose that fairy girls, needle slim, should string jewels on spider webs and go to skate on azure lakes! And then for a dash of blood and thunder, too, battling dinosaurs, maelstroms, the same kind Edgar Allan Poe dreamed about, too, in nightmarish splendors, storm, earthquake, cosmic disaster, cosmic synthesis, volcanoes, amoebas — remember that ancient story of "when I was a tadpole and you were a fish"? Consider that pictured with so lavish a store of fancy as that young man a-day-dreaming in the orchard, and then you'll be seeing what that Mr. Disney has done with Hollywood tools. Here is the impingement of a very young man, very much free of fetish of the cinema's slight but hard tradition, saying what he has damned well wanted to say — and painting, in Kiplingesque technique "with brushes of comet's hair". Mr. Disney dreams so — and it will be best for him and his world, and all the motion picture too, if he never wakes up. He has found escape into infinity where yesterday telescopes with tomorrow in a snarl of rainbows. AAA OUR New Orleans correspondent reports on a Kiwanis club speech by Mr. J. Leroy Johnson, advertising manager for Walter Wanger Pictures, finding him saying: "The days of glamour in American motion pictures are gone . . . the trend in pictures is to get down to facts ..." This judgment arrives in curious contrast with the concurrent advent of Mr. Disney's dream-storm adventure in music, form and color. Further, when glamour is gone the theatre is gone. "Down to facts" is the business of laboratories, dissection rooms, courts, text books, banks, adding machines — not the scene or materials of entertainment. Says Mr. Johnson, "Hollywood has sensed that this is the trend of living all over the world and it intends to lead the way." The "trend all over the world," if you will have a look at it, seems to be toward a mess of war and hunger in which no one is having a good time. Hollywood is not addressed at all at any such program. Hollywood intends to make some entertainment to sell seats, and it is not addressed at any program of making the motion picture theatre either a hall of debate or a night school. AAA PERENNIAL ROOSTER ■ THE arrival of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Pathe News brings to mind the fact that it is the oldest surviving product of the screen. It has been through several changes of ownership and many changes of policy, but in three decades it has never missed a release date. It began as Pathe Weekly and evolved into a bi-weekly. Also there was a time, brief and experimental, when Pathe tried issuing a daily release. The difficulty was that the exhibitor was not that much interested. The Gallic Pathe rooster was the first great trade mark. When sound came Pathe News spent $1,200 to make the rooster crow. Close to two million prints of the rooster and the newsreel have gone to the screen in the thirty years. Multiply that by the average number of runs per print and you have an astronomical circulation figure. AAA ANOTHER item to make the war seem closer — over in I \ West Orange, New Jersey, a bomb-proof vault is being / \ built to house the archives of Thomas A. Edison. Happily, in a larger sense, the works of Mr. Edison are so spread around the world that not until there is complete blackout of all the technology of civilization can the memory of his contributions be obscured. — Terry Ramsaye