Plan for cinema (1936)

1 6 PLAN FOR CINEMA just as the gushing water is about to enter the hero's mouth ; when a final hiccough announces not the end, strange as it may seem, but another thrilling instalment next week. On again go the lights, a small boyappears clad in a uniform reminiscent of Boots in the annual Cinderella of our youth. But this is no comic actor, for the dignity of a tragedian marks his every feature in the task he is about to perform. He is equipped, this strange boy, with a garden spray, or an implement very like one, and after a preliminary flourish, he solemnly proceeds to walk round the gangways squirting an olfactorily atrocious liquid over the heads of the establishment's patrons. The asthmatic groan of his apparatus can be heard in all parts of the hall, and we realize our fate is sealed, even in the topprice one-and-tuppennies, that we, too, are to be made proof against blight like any other rose in the place irrespective of economic status. He is, indeed, a very democratic soul, this gardener with his anthropomorphic flowers, treating all his cultivations with strict equality. His cue for cessation is when the pianist, having finished her tea, preludes the next film with something by Balfe — yes, it must be, it is so marvellously dull and utterly uninspired — and the amenities of being buried by Messrs. So-and-So, and buying your boots from Messrs. This-and-That are duly displayed on the screen by magic-lantern slides. The number of local tradesmen anxious to draw our attention to their excellence seems incredible, but at long last the lights go out, the title of the film appears,