World Film and Television Progress (1938)

MOVIES IN BOOK REVIEWS M US WELL HILL "Muswell Hill," said one cinema manager, " divides its leisure between the Church, the Cinema and the Green Man. "Overlooking the great expanse of North London, elevated physically by its position, culturally by its snobbery, Muswell Hill was once a stronghold of middle-class respectability. Lately it has lost much of its exclusiveness. Flats have increased the population at the expense of the exclusiveness. It is still predominantly "better middle-class," and nowhere is this more reflected than in its cinemas. Until three years ago Muswell Hill was poorly equipped. Two new supers put an end to the mediocre entertainment of their oldfashioned predecessors, and made the cinema much more a part of the life of every day. Each of the two large houses attracts a slightly different type of patron; there are few regulars in either case and all show considerable care in their choice of film. A picture which does not gain the approval of Monday night's audience might as well be written up as a failure right away. At the cheaper cinema the greatest attractions are spectacle and action, rather than atmosphere and sentiment. The pace must be fairly fast, either swift and dramatic, or slick and funny — something refreshing after the humdrum of suburban life. Educated Evans was a great success here. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were popular for a time, but enthusiasm waned as the novelty wore off. Perhaps their films were not "meaty" enough for these filmgoers — they certainly like something to exercise their mental molars on. Newsreels, in moderation, get by with credit, and the March of Time is considered by the manager to have a definite box-office value, though he says that to show more than one 20 minutes' documentary in a programme would be bad policy. Similarly any form of moralising meets with a chilly reception. At the dearer house, tastes are a little different. Here we have the Mecca of the aged, who form a fair proportion of the inhabitants of Muswell Hill. A telling commentary on the nature of the audience is the enormous demand for the deaf-aids which are installed. It has even been known for an old lady to request a cushion for her sciatica and accommodation for her Pekingese! Retired gentlefolk, a considerable element in the neighbourhood, make the cinema a genteel form of recreation, and choose their films with care, boycotting anything with a doubtful title. They have no use for anything farfetched or exotic. They like a good, sensible plot of medium pace. They like films about ordinary people like themselves, or historically familiar characters — Britishers like Clive and Rhodes, whose motives they can understand and admire. A tale with a true British flavour, though not necessarily of British production, goes down as well as anything. (Continued at foot of next column) D'Annunzio By Tom D'Antongini (Heinemann, 15.?.) Iwas at that time", writes Antongini in the course of a chapter on D'Annunzio and the Cinema, "the Editor of a fashion paper which had brought me a little money, and a good deal of trouble, and, as a compensation which I considered by no means despicable, the acquaintance of numerous 'mannequins' whom D'Annunzio, for once (a rare case in the course of our friendship) was forced to sample at second-hand". It will not only be readers of "Cockalorum" who will recognise this as a suitable prelude to a deal in filmmaking; nor will it be much of a surprise to learn that the famous D'Annunzio film Cabiria was shot before he had anything to do with it, and that his part in the cause was the supplying of sub-titles, the main title, and such modifications to the story which could be managed with the rushes already in existence. For this he was paid 50,000 lire (prewar). He never saw the film. There is little more to be recorded of his relations with the film world, save that late in his life he saw a large number of films in private shows at his home, and thereafter delivered himself of the following remark — "I have been unable to take stock of the limits which this art of velocity has reached, but I know that it is only at the beginning of its career." However, the chapter on cinema is only a small part of this hefty volume, in which Antongini, who knew D'Annunzio as intimately as any male could know him, and over a very long period of years (having been both his private secretary and his publisher), details, with a frankness only justified by his unshakable hero-worship, the behaviour and methods of life adopted by the poet. Inevitably, much of the book is devoted to a study of fornication, which, apart from the writing of a not inconsiderable number of books, seems to have been the chef d\ru\re of this extraordinary man. I, for one, cannot find any more interest in the beast with two backs The most astonishing success was Victoria the Great. It attracted not only keen filmgoers, but many for whom its appeal was a personal or patriotic one. And a vast number had never, judging by their disconcerted manner, been inside a cinema before; but they remembered Victoria, and overcame their prejudices against "new-fangled amusements" in order to revive memories of times which had been their own. They hobbled forth, pushing each other in bathchairs, of which a considerable number were in evidence, and turning aside from the very brink of the grave to take a last look at the Grand Old Lady. Never had the cinema seen so large an audience, and certainly never had so great a proportion been over eighty years of age. Daphne Hudson because it is domiciled among 500 damask cushions, erotic scents, and rose petals in a dwelling place tastelessly crammed with finde-siecle bijouterie. Sometimes it was Eleanora Duse, sometimes just a "stray cat" (charming description). By multiplication of examples there lies no great value; and perhaps Antongini would have done both his readers and the poet a service had he realised this. What was D'Annunzio anyway? Hewrote some good novels, some good poetry, and was, in his early days at any rate, a really superb journalist. An individualist almost toa pathological degree, he lived a "naughty nineties" type of existence mingled with the now out-of-date extravagance of a Medici. He could fire people's enthusiasm, and he enjoyed the sport of war with an enthusiasm worthy of Mussolini Junior, that intrepid bomber of defenceless Abyssinians. And he bugled, in the Fiume episode, a fantastic and not ignoble gesture of patriotism. Had he been a man of administration and strategicability (which the fizzle out at Fiume shows he was not) he might well have occupied the seat which is now Mussolini's, and he can certainly be said to have been one of the prime founders of Fascism. All this Antongini's book emphasises with surprising fervour; for those who do not find D'Annunzio, for all his sensationalism, a "personnage peu interessant" it will make admirable reading. For others, it will at least raise the old, old argument — was this man worth his poetry — in the most acute and vicious form. Myself, I think he lived at least 300 years too late. Have we any use nowadays for someone whose favourite motto is "Me ne freco" "I don't care." B. W. A Bibliography on the Cinema Issued by Bristol Public Libraries WE who review books periodically in these columns ought perhaps to have realised the amazingly large number of books on the cinema which have been published. We should probably have agreed that there are about 50 books on films, but the Bristol public libraries have just issued a bibliography on the cinema which has over 200 entries. It is a very thorough job of work including sections on Law, Censorship, Theatre Design, Writing for the Films, Photography. Projection, Sound, Colour and Documentary. Sections on the Cinema in Education, and Children and the Films should be particularly valuable to teachers, and the List of Periodicals should be in the hands of all Film Society secretaries. The booklet is available from James Ross, F.I \.. F.R.S.L., The City Librarian, Bristol. Primarily it is designed with special reference to the availability of the books through the Bristol Libraries, but it stands as a remarkably complete bibliography on the cinema, and as such will be welcomed in a wider field. T. B. 95