The Cinema
[TILE RIGHT BRITISII FILMS.]
IT is one thing to believe firmly that British films of sterling quality can be made : but quite another to find them. There are, however, three quite recent pictures to which one can point and say, " That is the kind of thing one means." I refer to Hindle Wakes, Roses of Picardy and Blighty. All three of these, while less perfectly good than one hopes even- tually to see, are competent films from every point of view, are enjoyable as entertainment, and also—what is important—. absolutely and undeniably English. Blighty, which is the work of Mr. Adrian Brunel, is a simple, deeply touching and sincere glimpse of the home-life of very normal English people during the War, with its ration-cards, father in special con- stable's uniform, wounded soldiers, heart-breaking telegrams from the War Office, the former chauffeur now a distinguished officer and asking his former employer's (laughter in marriage, air-raids, recruiting stations and girl-widows. The story is very slight, the film itself appears to have been made very inexpensively and rather hastily, but—and this is important— it is real life raised to the dramatic, or rather the melodramatic, and not a stale rehash of film conventions or an imitation of anything.
Hindle Wakes was very nearly a great picture, and an absolutely unconventional one, as anyone who knows the play will realize on hearing that the plot—though skilfully trans- muted to another medium—has been faithfully expressed. Mr. Maurice Elvey, who made this, as well as Mademoiselle from Armentieres, The Flag Lieutenant, and Roses of l'icardy, was with some justice regarded until quite recently as a hack- director of the sort of poorish, unreal, stale British films that disheartened us so terribly. Hindle Wakes was as sincere and as unhackneyed as anyone could wish : the acting of the older players like Marie Ault and Norman McKinncl was perfect. And in Roses of Picardy Mr. Elvey handled his story (a dis- tillation from R. II. Mottram's war-novels) so finely and directed his actors so well that one felt that it was life one saw mirrored on the screen, instead of film-studio activities. As Blighty said something intelligible and true about home- life during the War, and Hindle Wakes said something equally worth saying about Lancashire life and character, Roses of Picardy, in spite of its catchpenny title, said—as the screen has never dared to say before—that the War was a civilian's War, that men were frightened, that it all seemed a nonsensical muddle, and that the sources of human sympathy were proved, under the stress of war-emotion, to be so profound that situations normally considered impossible could be accepted then as not only inevitable but right.
Mr. Adolph Zukor, king of film-magnates. reminded his hearers the other day when lie was in London that the majority of the best films had been based on stories by Englishmen : for, he said, they wrote with a wider outlook and a richer background than those of the country of his adoption, America. Now, on the other hand, British film-makers are always being told that they must make films that have " international appeal " and—misunderstanding what is meant by this—too frequently attempt a sort of cosmopolitan appeal. Hence come those dire peeps into bedrooms and cabarets, those " filmish characters like no one anywhere, that architecture or that behaviour which is as incredible as it is ugly. Mr.
Graham Cutts's recent film, The Queen was in the Parlour, technically competent as it was, came under this category :
for there is no plot-maker in the world so artificial or so flat as Noel Coward, that child of the night-clubs where one bores oneself looking for amusement. Mr. Zukor knows better than that, whatever his firm, Famous Players, may produce
and he proved it in Beau Geste, which is one of the films, made in America, that one wishes had been made in England.
He was indicating that genuinely English films can have, above any others, " international appeal," for English character and the English " attitude to life " still set an international standard.
This country has done so well already in film records, as apart from film-dramas, with pictures like Ypres and Mons, that high hopes are being built on The Battles of Coronet and the Falkland Islands—now being produced with the co-opera- tion of the Fleet. The story of these two naval battles is a
drama in itself, for Admiral Cradock and Admiral Graf Von Spec were old friends and at Coronel Von Spee knew Cradock would fight, though he was hopelessly outgunned. At Valparaiso, after the British defeat, Von Spee at a public banquet steadfastly refused to drink " Damnation to the British Fleet " and proposed instead the health of " a very gallant foe." When Von Spee's turn for inevitable defeat came at the Falkland Islands battle, he—like his friend and foeman—refused to surrender and sank, his sons beside him, with his ship. It is a great story and it will make a great film to honour both England and Germany, which should thrill all the world. For the story is in the behaviour of its characters, since the characters symbolize what is both human and admirable, and this kind of drama the cinema can magnificently reveal.
Love affairs, crimes, family discords, daring adventures are the same all the world over and remain very much the same from century to century. It is the story-teller with his divine gift for understanding motive and character alone which makes them live, and it is this which the British film story- tellers must do. Ruritania, the cabaret, the stock morality and immorality of our contemporary and extremely decadent theatre, are not their province. English life and character, whether to-day's or yesterday's, is their province and that— dramatically presented—is where they will excel.
IRIS BARRY.
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