Confessions of a Film Reviewer

I must confess that it is much more difficult for me to accept the illusion of reality in a moving picture than in a stage play or even in the stylized artificiality of the ballet. One trouble is that I have been in the studios and seen the pictures being made, and the most touching scene is usually spoiled for me by the thought of the cameras moving up on their dollies with the whole assortment of technicians, directors, assistants, make-up artists, off-duty extras, and so on, lurking in the background. Just a few short scenes take all day to shoot, and even these are usually not in sequence. An actor on the stage plays himself into his part, making it an artistic whole. One could never reach the same level piecemeal. I recall the story of a German actor who played Frederick the Great so convincingly that he finally came to think he was Frederick the Great. This continuity doesn’t exist on celluloid. That is one reason, I think, why one remembers plays and forgets films.

Films operate on a shallower level of consciousness. There is so much less effort required to return to the popcorn-scented womb and watch the reels unwind. I remember in the early part of World War II Canadian soldiers in England at their Maple Leaf Clubs were given tickets to London stage productions. Most of them were seeing the live theater for the first time in their lives, and they could not follow it. The pace was too fast, they were not used to the more concentrated attention that stage dialogue requires, their minds had been dulled by the Hollywood daydream. For the cinema is ephemeral. I find that I can remember the plays I have seen—even the inferior ones—for years; the films I forget for the most part in a few months.

FR

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Francis Russell

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I must confess that it is much more difficult for me to accept the illusion of reality in a moving picture than in a stage play or even in the stylized artificiality of the ballet. One trouble is that I have been in the studios and seen the pictures being made, and the most touching scene is usually spoiled for me by the thought of the cameras moving up on their dollies with the whole assortment of technicians, directors, assistants, make-up artists, off-duty extras, and so on, lurking in the background. Just a few short scenes take all day to shoot, and even these are usually not in sequence. An actor on the stage plays himself into his part, making it an artistic whole. One could never reach the same level piecemeal. I recall the story of a German actor who played Frederick the Great so convincingly that he finally came to think he was Frederick the Great. This continuity doesn’t exist on celluloid. That is one reason, I think, why one remembers plays and forgets films.

Films operate on a shallower level of consciousness. There is so much less effort required to return to the popcorn-scented womb and watch the reels unwind. I remember in the early part of World War II Canadian soldiers in England at their Maple Leaf Clubs were given tickets to London stage productions. Most of them were seeing the live theater for the first time in their lives, and they could not follow it. The pace was too fast, they were not used to the more concentrated attention that stage dialogue requires, their minds had been dulled by the Hollywood daydream. For the cinema is ephemeral. I find that I can remember the plays I have seen—even the inferior ones—for years; the films I forget for the most part in a few months.