Talking movies (1927)

TALKING MOVIES there are other fields Eor the useful combination of picture with voice and music which can admit of no serious dispute. Foremost in this category I would place the educational film. Unquestionably most of the educational films, especially for class room work, could be greatly improved in interest to the audience and in clarity of the lesson conveyed, if their presentation were accompanied by a lucid explanation, delivered in the first place by some authority on the subject who is far more competent to lecture thereon than are the majority of the instructors who are presenting the film to their classes. The proper matter, concise and to the point, will thus always accompany the picture, not too much and not too brief ; and information be thus conveyed which the picture alone is quite inadequate to confer. Similarly in the presentation of scenic films, travelogues, etc. Their interest and beauty can be immeasurably enhanced by virtue of verbal descriptions couched in impressive, and sometimes poetic terms. Consider moreover the appeal of fine pictures of the great Outdoors, the vision of wide horizons, views from some mighty mountain top, — the emotions awakened in the heart of the Artist who gazes out upon some noble forest landscape or over the magnificent vistas of far reaching valleys, the deep sentiments which are aroused when one stands beneath the trees of is»jme lofty cathedral grove! These sentiments, these emotions, can only be adequately expressed by appropriate music, or perchance to the accompaniment of the poem of some great master. All such music and all such poetry can now be interwoven with the picture ; and its beauty and its message thereby elevated to 56