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Motion Picture Reviews
Three
MOTION • PICTURE • REVIEWS
Published monthly by
THE WOMEN’S UNIVERSITY CLUB
LOS ANGELES BRANCH
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN
Mrs. Chester Ommaney, Preview Chairman Mrs. Madison J. Keeney, Bus. Manager Mrs. Thomas B. Williamson Mrs. Bruce A. Findlay, Asst. Business Manager
Mrs. John Vruwink Co-Chairmen Mrs. Palmer Cook
EDITORS
Mrs. Margaret Argo Mrs. Palmer Cook Mrs. J. Allen Davis Mrs. Arthur Jones Mrs. George Ryall Mrs. Walter Van Dyke Mrs. John Vruwink
Address all communications to The Women’s University Club, 943 South Hoover St., Los Angeles, Calif.
1 Oe Per Copy $1.00 Per Year
Vol. IV MARCH, 1933 No. 3
The Essentials of a Good Picture
♦
By LeRoy E. Bowman
With the permission of the National Board of Review Magazine we are reprinting the following article because we feel that it contributes helpful suggestions to the various standards of judgment which have been formulated by previewing groups. — Editors.
It is a wholesome thing that the youth have joined the review groups and are going to help decide what is best, and therefore to be encouraged, in motion pictures. They have a point of view of their own and their critical capacities are probably as keenly alert as those of more mature persons. It may be interesting to them however, and certainly is challenging to those who have reviewed films for years, for one of the latter groups to attempt to formulate a few of the fundamentals that should determine the judgment of any motion picture.
First and foremost is the fact that the movies reach nearly all, or at least a very large proportion of the people. The entertainment film is not for the rich, the poor, the highbrow, the pure, the contaminated, nor for the youth or aged, but for all of us. Therefore it must be simple, and told in the language both of speech and action that is common to all. It still can be meaningful and carefully produced. In fact almost all of the apparently learned, technical or abstruse subjects can be put in simple, everyday language if the effort is made. It takes more brains and more social sympathy than the ordinary tabloid reporter or hack scenario writer commands but it can be done, and sometimes is done on the screen. Simplicity that is in accord with science and history is a vastly different thing from superficiality. Furthermore simple synthesis of the world’s many specialties is what is needed more than any other one thing. The screen is the greatest medium for it.
Secondly, the movies should be informative one would think. More than the printed page they can give in brief time the happenings, the descriptions, the impressions of personalities that serve to keep ordinary people acquainted with a world bigger than that in which they live. We all move in restricted spheres, but the significant things of business, politics and large social matters take place on a vast scale. The eye of the camera sees far and can project us in thought beyond our petty environments. If the movies do perform this function, or rather to the extent they do, there will be less need for and less interest in the silly