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So You're Going to the Movies?
What a pity the millions of theatre-goers don't realize how much more enjoyment can be had from a picture when you view it as if you were a professional movie critic. This article shows you how.
DO YOU go to a movie theater, thoroughly enjoy yourself and then, on reading your favorite film critic next day, find out you were all wrong in having fun?
Do you let your best friend persuade you that the picture you didn't like much was really very good?
Exactly how good is your judgment about motion pictures? Do you really know how to pass an intelligent verdict on a film?
Is there any definite mental tape measure you can use to pass upon the merits of a movie?
You'll have to answer the first four questions.
But YES is the answer to the fifth. I put exactly that question to a number of representative newspaper motion pic
for October 1939
ture critics of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I put it to a few of the leading screen trade press editors, too. And here are the findings.
What is the exact measure of a good movie?
Practically every critic said, in one way or another, its merit depends upon its ability to entertain you— and its measure of completeness in amusing you is the final measure of its merit.
"Ask yourself: 'Just how much does it entertain me?' " said Terry Ramsaye, the veteran editor of The Motion Picture Herald, a leading film trade weekly. "The function of the motion picture is to entertain— and only that. Propaganda, messages, philosophies, 'isms, politics, social theories are all something else again and have no real place on the screen.
Then why not be your own critic? Here's how the nation's experts judge a movie
Frederick James Smith
Does the picture entertain you? Then it's a good film. Does it bore you? Then it's a bad one. It's as simple as that."
A number of critics believe that suspense is a vital element in a good picture.
Honesty is another quality.
Freshness of treatment is still another item.
Smooth motivation is essential.
Practically every critic believes that story (in emotional effect, suspense, logical development, and freshness of handling) is more important than the acting or the direction. As Elizabeth Copeland of The Richmond, Va., News Leader says: You "should learn not to consider a picture good simply because it has your favorite stars in the cast."
Kate Cameron, who, as the critic of The New York (Continued on page 78]
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