"THE BIRTH OF A FLUENCE."
In consequence of the new tax on imported films the Cinema industry in England has received a new fillip, and a wave of enterprise is passing over the studios. In place of the familiar—almost too familiar—American dramas we are to have English. No more of those square-jawed stern American business men at their desks, with the telephone ever in their hands and instantaneous replies to every call. No more police officers, also at their desks, giving orders like lightning and having them understood and acted upon as quickly. No more crooks clambering over the roofs of an express train. No more motor-car pursuits. No more Indians, no more cowboys, no more heroines in top boots.
And what is there to be instead? Not—I hear you cry appealingly—not panoramas of Zurich or Cape Town? No, not those devastating views of scenery, but home-made films "featuring" English performers, with an eye not only to entertainment but instruction. That is the new movie note. And for a start a wonderful picture has just been completed, under the title "The Birth of a Fluence," taking the Cinema-goers (as they are called) behind the scenes of a London daily paper.
Not a real paper, of course, for that would be telling too much, but an absolutely imaginary paper, yet like enough in many respects to a real paper to afford to the imaginative spectator an idea of how such marvellous sheets are put together.
No expense has been spared to get an air of verisimilitude into these pictures, at a private view of which we were permitted to be present.
Let us give a rough sketch of the film, which is some mile and a half long, or as far, say, as from the House of Lords to Printing House Square. But first we must remark that the unseen force which agitates all the documents and blinds of the various rooms shown is not due, as it usually is, to the circumstance that the pictures were taken in the open air, during a gale, but it symbolises the power of the Proprietor of the paper, who can by a breath make or unmake Governments.
The first picture shows the arrival of the Editor, a man of desperate mien, dark as a thunder cloud, ready to be affrighted by nothing, with instant disapproval of whatever he disapproves breaking through his alert, intellectual features. To him, stern patriot as he is, it is nothing that men do well. He is there, vigilant and implacable, to pounce swiftly and mercilessly on derelictions of duty. No one knows so well as he what is possible to a Minister and his Department and what not. They themselves, the Minister and his Department, are totally uninstructed in the matter. Truly a remarkable man.
The Editor opens his letters; touches bells, speaks through telephones, and generally proves himself to be more than a man, a Force. Imaginary as is the whole affair, no one seeing this film can ever open a morning paper again without a thrill, a foreboding.