Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Motion Picture Appreciation annually, there are huge tanks of developing fluid. In each of these tanks one finds a complicated mechanism of wires and chemicals. The purpose of this device is to keep that developing fluid always within two tenths of the same degree of temperature. Were that device to fail by two tenths of a degree, a love scene on the screen would lose its brilliance; carefully calculated lighting effects would lose their appeal to the visual sen/e. The reason for this is that the creation of the final pictorial image on the finished film is a chemical process. The film, as it enters the camera, is coated with chemicals called an emulsion. This emulsion is sensitive to light, or rather the light causes changes in the chemicals. These changes become permanent when the film is run through a bath of other chemicals called the "developer." In Canada there is a keen critic who for fortv happy years has reviewed stage plays, the opera, paintings, the novel, and motion pictures for an influential newspaper. I quote him because I consider his wise, considered statements applicable to this discussion. "Air. Kiesling," said Augustus Bridle of Toronto, "you will have noticed that for years I have not used, in any of my motion picture reviews, the expression, 'This is a bad motion picture.' Instead I prefer to say 'This is an imperfect motion picture.' "Unlike a book, a painting, or a concert by a great musician, praise or blame cannot be clearly allocated in evaluating a film. "I have seen many a motion picture in which I felt that the leading lady, for example, was miscast. But in [5]