Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

en Age of the Pictures Arabian Nights, whence came Haroun al Rashid and Sinbad in brilliant light and shado^v the new American Nights, with ful adventures of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. TODAY this state of affairs has been reversed. More than two years ago, American exporters entered the South American field in earnest and gave the Latin-Americans their first taste of up-to-date motion pictures. The effect was magical. Almost overnight the far-sighted business men became convinced that the Americans were not so awfully busy chasing dollars that they were not able to keep abreast of the times insofar as fashions and other matters were concerned. And from that time on, the American photoplay has reigned supreme in the South American field. When the war ended, the European producers found themselves at the bottom of the ladder, in exactly the same position occupied by the Americans for so many years. And although months ' have passed they have failed to make any inroads upon American prestige, for the South American is no longer satisfied with the exotic brand of film produced in France and Italy. Instead of murderous rage, buckets of emotion and tragedy, he had come to demand the delightful intrigues and graceful romance of the so-called high society picture, with its happy ending. Swiftly moving, clean comedy, he discoverecl, was much preferable to highly colored, stodgy Old World stories. The result is that the South American exhibitor is no more willing to return to the old business ties than he was willing to hearken to the American missionaries. Prominent exhibitors have de ; dared they could not return to the oK days without losing their patrons. The vampire and over-sexed type of American picture, which was among the first to be shown in South America, has long since waned in popularity. To satisfy and please the exacting LatinAmerican in the larger cities, photoplays must have a preponderance o f cleanliness, and they must be up-to-date. The fans quickly detect an out-of-date picture and manifest their displeasure by leaving the theater. THE old type of exhibitor has not surrendered to the new order without a struggle. Shortly after the war closed, a former exhibitor of prominence in Buenos Aires opened a new house in which he advertised that he would show European pictures exclusively. He made a great fuss in the papers (Continued on page iij) The American photoplay has established itself firmly among the minaretted mosques of the Broad^vay of Bagdad. 49