A Peep Inside Picturedom.
A Few New Truths About Talkies.

(By O.N.G.)

More arrant, extravagant and misleading nonsense gets into print about the form of entertainment known as the “Talkies” than on any other subject on earth.

The main trouble is that much of it is written and believed by folks who have quite their proper ration of commonsense on other matters. They simply do not know the facts. I am not concerned about the criticisms made by people whose real worry is to find out what makes the fellow next door laugh and then try and get it stopped. No one cares about the fussy and hypercritical person who wants the movies made into uplifting and improving sermons. Then there is the type of observer who complains that our trains are not as luxurious and comfortable as those that run on flat country between terminal stations of a million people or more. The only good thing they find about us is that we do not have bars in the smokers.

There is so much misconception as to the origins and distribution systerms of films, the control and marketing habits of the makers, and, as it were, the general working of “talkie politics,” that this article may serve a useful purpose.

Not more than a score of large companies make all our film plays, and these exist either in Hollywood or London. Continental productions are small numerically by comparison, and the two countries that go in for mass production, Japan and Russia, make an article that is not suited to our taste, apart from the language difficulty.

The competition between the major organisations is not so much international, as tribal. The war is fiercest in the local areas. They steal each other's stars, grab each other's plots, and imitate or annex any new idea that is found lying about. When a genuinely new notion is being “shot” the greatest secrecy is observed, and the studio resembles an Abyssinian fort expecting an Italian attack. Still, the defenders are not always successful, and so we get these runs of plays of a similar type.

Thus a bright Yankee made a film play where the action all took place on a train. Then there emerged swiftly “The Shanghai Express,” “The Blue Train,” “The Bombay Mail,” “The Rome Express,” “The Lyons Mail,” and we were unlucky not to have had “Hurled from the Old Ab,” or “Murder on the Foxton Line.” This run came to its end when a Yankee company at its wits’ end, made one in a large motor bus.

Those of you who live in a provincial town can imagine the predicament of the theatre manager who takes, say, five brands of film. He would have the joy, possibly, of being listed with four railway films in the same week.

This now applies to what are known as “‘G’ Men” films. These are simply gangster shows except that they glorify the police instead of the crook. This crop is going to be very heavy and the police get nobler and the villains nastier in each succeeding one. They were invented, it seems, to celebrate the time when the “States” got the idea that there should positively be enforcement of law and order. I saw an illustration of the contrasting ideas in relation to this, in an American paper. A landing of gold ingots was pictured as being escorted in America by mounted policemen armed with heavy rifles and bombs, a machine gun unit, armoured cars and a tank. The English carrier was wheeling his load along the wharf in a barrow smoking and chatting amiably to a couple of mates.

These factory type of picture companies have had a general programme for many years which necessitated the turning out, good or bad, right or wrong, of a certain schedule of pictures, made, naturally, according to formulae which had proved to be successful or looked like proving profit-makers. The number of tried recipes was not so large, so there came about the rather monotonous repetition which we all know so well. The British found that bedroom farces were cheap, spicy, and easy to make. Millions of feet of film were filled with bedclothes in disorder, men in the wrong rooms, husbands making lame explanations, bewildered dames darting through windows and so on. Soon these things produced more yawns than laughs. Then there ensued a run on pictures with actors of the type of George Arliss using up all the roles of history until it looks as if in five years’ time page 41 he will have to do a male impersonation of Boadicea to break fresh ground.

But the scene has changed and two phenomena supply the cause.

First of all, the really good picture has an irritating habit of refusing to leave a town, to make way for its mates on the firm's list. There is one on record in Wellington which ran a full month, and returned for two weeks, and might easily have remained four again. In larger cities, pictures will stay for six months. This puts the whole releasing and distributing machinery into complete chaos, if the producing company is going to adhere to the old principle of turning them out like sausages.

Secondly, it was a prime necessity of the old formula system that where a subject looked on the dull or well-worn side, it was necessary to insert plenty of spice. The latter was sometimes delicate and sometimes grossly silly. It got so overdone that it provoked the attention of the public in general, and in the case of one church forced the formation of a “League of Decency” which stayed at home with enthusiasm from films selected as being in bad taste. This focussed the attention of the film magnates on a better type of play and story, and suddenly they found that dirt had never paid. “Little Women,” for instance, got in more money than all the titles like “Swooning with Passion” and “The Tempting Typiste.”

We could have told them that long ago in New Zealand where the censor certificate “More suitable for adult audiences” has always meant a twenty-five per cent. drop in the film earnings.

The concentration now is on books that have had a general appeal, and have been a success, whatever sum is demanded for rights, on plays and musical comedies that had long runs as legitimate shows, and on the classics that have survived the test of time, not as high-brow treasures, but as stories beloved by the general family folk of the nation.

The future looks good. We are going to have a year of pictures that will include a high average of really good ones, drawn from the best minds of the century. If the public use good selective taste, and keep away with determination and cheerfulness from the inferior article, the improvement will be maintained. Let us try and deserve the enthusiasm of H. G. Wells, for instance, who has announced that he will confine his imaginative work in the future to the film. Could anything be a better indication that the “talkies” are on the eve of great things?