The Cinema
" Royal Cavalcade." At the Regal
MOST film companies, after searching their news-reel files, have been assembling a Jubilee record of public events during the past twenty-five years. Royal Cavalcade, a British International prodtiction made at Elstree, is more ambitious. News4eel extracts are used, but they are blended with episodes reconstructed in the studio—for instance, a glimpse of Colonel Cody's primitive aeroplane, taken at the time, is followed by an impression of Captain Scott arriving too late at the South Pole. An occasional connecting link is provided by the adventures of a penny, newly minted in the year 1911. The penny changes hands, buys a paper with the news of the Sarajevo murder, is taken to the War as a keepsake, pays for a ride on the giant switchback at Wembley, and so on. The idea is good, but 'a coherent narrative is scarcely intended, and could have been' achieved only by a process of drastic and arbitrary selection. The filth is offered simply as a popular panorama, and the intervals between major events are filled chiefly with glimpses of changing social habits—new fashions, new games, new (lances, new entertainments, new ways of travelling and new ways of spending holidays. The War has a long sequence —rather too long—and the film closes with a patriotic crescendo : the King's recovery from his illness leads to a vision of famous English kings of the past, while Land of Hope and Glory is sung by a boys' choir.
Royal Cavalcade is difficult to criticize because, everything depends on. what you expect from this kind of picture. Much of th detail is vivid and skilful, and the film runs with unfailing- zest for Over an hour and a. half,. but there are sonic queer lapses. A scene at the War Offiee,' showing Sir John French and Sir Henry Wilson on the eve of war in August, 1914, might also have been taken at Madame Tus.saucl's, and Sir Edward Grey, addressing Parliament (hiring the same critical periOd, Is 'an equally poOilikeness. The scene of Lady - Astor's introduction to the. House of Commons, on the other hand, is well' &the,. for Lady Astor plays the part herself, and there are many sharp and. lively snapshots of Period types and period tastes. A hditile critic could certainly argue that there is something incurably frivo- lous about a picture .which skates so persistently oyCi.' the Sur- face of events, but the producers would have got into a hopeless tangle if they had tried-td go too deep, And the, refusal of the film to deal with causes has a certain unexpected merit ; by showing_ a people drifting along in a state of cheerful uncon- sciousness it manages to convey a curious impression of destiny working somewhere out of sight.
Royal Cavalcade will be generally released during Jubilee
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week next month. It is not an inspired masterpiece, but thas many effective qualities—and it might so easily have been much worse.
" Skylark." -At the Curzon • SUPPOSE that two recruits go up in an army aeroplane for
a flying lesson, each- thinking that the other is the instructor, and suppose that the aeroplane is equipped for an attempt on the long-distance record and that the recruits keep on flying round and round the aerodrome because they are afraid to land. . This excellent idea is the basis—or, rather, the whole substanceof Skylark, an ingenious French comedy which would be better.. still if the aerial. adventures...started a little sooner. The .early sequences, concerned. with the reluctance of the chief ,comedian to marry the daughter of his old employer, provide an excuse for getting him into the, air, but they are too elaborate and too slow. However, once the aeroplane takes off,. and once the commandant of the aerodrome has to. conceal. his official fury from the journalists who hasten . down to see the record brok.en--- then Skylark begins to be. very Amusing indeed. It mould have .gqiued,.. perhaps,, from . a slightly more extravagant treatment, and a few of the, jokes are .repeated too often, but it is a very agreeable trifle, and M. Noel-Noel, so .
meaning and so inarticulate,is a _comedian .whom English audiences will certainty wank to see . again.
CHARLES DAVY:
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