National Board of Review Magazine (Jan 1939 - Jan 1942)

May. 1 9 so 19 travelogues and other films of their countries. Care should be taken about finding the hours at which films will be shown, as there will be few, if any, continuous showings. When you have had your fih of national documentaries try going around to some of the big industrial buildings. You will find many entertaining and instructive 16 and 35mm. films being shown in them, usually in a constructive way, without too much plugging of the particular firm and product to irritate you. In all those I saw the makers had tried hard to build an entertaining frame around their product, and had been fairly successful in doing so. Johns-jManville, for example, has some very good studies on the subjects of heat, insulation and cooling; they explain the facts simply and comprehensively, with special appeal to the householder. Coty is showing a twenty minute short on the way its products are manufactured in ■the United States ; Macf adden Publications haA-e a short feature, with amusing spots in it, built around advertising. I haven't seen the Disney cartoon for the National Biscuit Company, nor the Popeye House, but don't imagine they'll need much boosting. The Petroleum Industry Exhibition has also adopted the cartoon idea with animated oil drops as characters to tell the story of petroleum and its uses. This falls short in many respects of what might have been done — it tells nothing new and explains still less — ^but the idea is a bright and creditable one. Coco-Cola Company is also listed in the animated cartoon field. There are many other industrial and national film showings scheduled, and it is certain that by the time our next issue is ready many more of the films will be ready too. So we hope by then to be able to give you a really detailed summary of what to see. . X.D. A Home for the Motion Picture THE motion picture, the most modern art form, has been given an appropriate home in the superb new Museum of Modern Art in New York Citv. The Museum estab lished a Film Library in 1935, which from that time to the present has been housed in separate quarters, but with the opening this month of the Museum's new six story building the library is now given generous space there. In a beautifully equipped theatre, seating 500, will be shown the various motion picture programs, assembled by the Film Library to compose the "Cycle of Seventy Films," from 1895 to the present decade. At the special pre-opening show attention was divided between admiration of the theatre and amused interest in The Great Train Robbery, of 1903. The Museum on this day was somewhat in the state of the World's Fair, as described above, but in spite of the last sections of a special lighting tube being fitted into place, the final placing of exotic plants against a background of glass walls, and some of the galleries with their pictures in place only on the floor, ready to be hung, we found the motion picture gallery all in order with its display for the opening exhibit "Art in Our Time." This includes the work of Georges Melies, French film pioneer, his various accomplishments in trick photography, in color films, and even in newsreels — covering the coronation of Edward VII, in 1902. And it may surprise you, if you are not a well-informed student of early film days, to learn that ^Melies" film Fairyland, in color, with specially arranged orchestral music, opened simultaneously in Paris, Ncav York and London, in 1903. Melies presided at the second international congress of film distributors in 1909, the date, as you know, when the National Board of Review was formed, making us particularly conscious this year of 30 years of motion picture activity. YJt believe our New York readers and our out-of-town readers coming to the New York Fair will want also to visit the Museum. There will be film showings daily in the theatre and always a film exhibition of some liistorical importance in the gallery, and there is, too, a hall of records, containing all kinds of materials having to do with motion picture art, history and technique. The IMuseum is located at 11 West 53rd Street. Admission is 25 cents.