THE CINEMA
" God's Country and the Woman." At the Plaza—" Call it a Day." At the New Gallery
THE attitude of most film producers and consumers towards the cinema closely resembles that of the completely un-.
sophisticated man towards art. For the man in the street, realism and photographic exactness are not merely the prin- cipal, but almost the only values. In life, people do not gesture silently, they talk ; as soon, therefore, as the technical experts can manage it, talk they shall. Colour, toy, we must have the moment scientists can reproduce it, for the world is undeniably coloured. It never occurs .to anyone to ask whether the individuality and life of the cinema are not bound up with these very limitations, just as the life of modern drama seems to be bound up with the artifice of three-wall rooms and foot- lights and make-up, and to be sensibly diminished in the more naturalistic surroundings of an open-air performance. No doubt we shall have to go right through the awkward age again before colour can become, what talk now is in the best movies, an integral part of the design.
In ordinary black-and-white films it often happens that the photographic composition and the play and contrast of light and shade produce effects that are both beautiful and highly dramatic. That is because many people (as we can see from the high standard of amateur photography) possess this kind of visual sensibility. But how many have an eye for the pictorial and dramatic use of colour ? People whose own homes are charmingly- decorated can remain oblivious of the tawdry and vulgar spectacle that confronts their eyes at the average play or opera. Since films are necessarily made for tasteless and international millions, and only achieve occasional beauty and significance on the quiet, so to speak, when no one is looking, I am despondent about the future of the colour-film.
There is in any event much to be said for the American view that the pictures are taken too seriously over here, that 99 out of too movies are either a good evening's entertainment or not, with no possible further significance whatever. Mr. Agate the other day quoted Mr. Nathan's theory that acting has nothing to do with the film or the film with acting, and that the proper function of the screen is to exploit the exuberant vitality of its favourite stars. Certainly the two films named above, which lack exuberant personalities, also lack everything else which could be expected to draw a moderately intelligent person into the dusky cave. God's Country and the Woman is as arrant nonsense as its title would lead you to expect. It is All-Colour (yes, too per cent.), and it concerns the deadly rivalry of two adjacent timber companies. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes George Brent and Beverly Roberts take their course ; and the story relates how Love redeems the former from a life of worthless philandering, transforms the latter from a mannish backwoadswoman into a tempting morsel
of femininity, and in the process heals the strife of their- respec- tive firms. In technicolour, Mr. Brent looks like A rather more
vulgar Clark Gable, while Miss Roberts is certainly the Camp Fire Girl of Beatrice Lillie's dreams—that is until Love brings her out in a rush of frills and ringlets and scarlet lipstick.
The director evidently values the story only for the chance it gives of photographing quantities of lake and pines and floating timber. Well, the pines are inconceivably verdant, the lakes indecently blue, and every log has the golden glow of breakfast- table honey. The whole thing is not twopence- but four- pence-coloured. Whistler held that nature was too green and badly lit. . I should like -to have heard his comments on a coloured movie.
I hoped, after this, to strike a black-and-white film of reasonable maturity, and, misled by some good notices, went to Call it a Day, which is an American picture based on a play of Miss Dodie Smith which I have not seen. My luck was out. For imbecile psychology and dialogue wavering desperately between the flat and the facetious, Call it a Day
takes some beating. Drop in in the middle, and you would suppose it to be a British quota. short. The average mental age of the characters is about elevens and when I realise that their behaviour and sentiments are supposed to be typical of an English upper middle class home, I blush for shame.
CHRISTOPHER SHAWE.
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