... THE CINEMA A Pronouncement By JAMES AGATE I AM now about to make the most important pronounce ment that has ever been made or ever will be made with reference to the representational arts by any critic from Aristotle to Miss Lejeune. Aristotle couldn't have made it, and my fair rival who revealed her age in the matter of Mr. Bernstein's Questionnaire is obviously too young to have attained the ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE WHAT PLEASES THE PUBLIC THE other day I read somewhere-- precisely where doesn't matter-- an attack on the quasi-musical person. It was a witty and an erudite attack, but completely invalidated, to my mind, by the notion, undeclared though implied throughout the article, that great composers write their music for the benefit of musical critics only! I think I never ...

... THE CINEMA The Petrified Forest By JAMES AGATE MR. LESLIE HOWARD has written me a charming letter which I feel it my duty to give here:-- Dear Mr. Agate,-- I know it is silly for an actor to answer back at his critics, but as you have done me, I am sure quite unwittingly, an injustice in your article in the current TATLER, I hope I may be allowed these words. I am sorry you did not guess ...

... THE CINEMA Nonsense and More Nonsense By JAMES AGATE THE other evening I turned into a little picture-house in Oxford Street to see the kind of entertainment offered to people who want to drop into a film casually. I was, as a matter of fact, stranded at Oxford Circus with an hour to spend and nowhere to go. It occurred to me that all over London there must be many thousands of people ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE Suggestion for a Dickens Film WHY on earth does nobody film Great Expectations? Or, if it has been filmed-- and it is at the back of my mind that the Swedes had a good shot at it in the silent days-- why is it not re-filmed? The question arises because the Dickens novel has just been successfully dramatized at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre, and though I much enjoyed the ...

... THE CINEMA t La Dietrich's Latest By JAMES AGATE During his last ill ness Old Man Czepanek in sisted on his daughter Lily reading aloud the Song of Songs. Hence the title of the Carlton's new film. As he was dying he would probably not feel up to explain ing the mystical nature of that canticle which with any other interpretation is hardly suitable reading for a young girl. To the pure, ...

... THE CINEMA Film Programme By JAMES AGATE I HAVE often thought that those people who do not read their theatre programmes-- and I confess I hardly ever do so myself-- miss a considerable treat. As often as not it may be the best part of the evening, for I conceive it possible that the programme may be better fun than the play. I must say, none the less, that I was a little astonished to find ...

... THE CINEMA Monsieur Korda Voit Clair By JAMES AGATE THE new film called The Ghost Goes West, at the Leicester Square Theatre, having been deliriously acclaimed, is obviously a very great success. There is never a moment in it in which Mr. Korda and Mr. Rene Clair do not between them hit the target of satisfaction. From first to last every shot hits the bull's-eye plonk. But to me the film is a ...

... THE CINEMA The Parnell Film By JAMES AGATE IN view of what follows there can be no harm in admitting that I went to the Empire to see the film of Parnell in what can only be called a scoffing frame of mind. Reverence is too strong a word to connote my regard for my colleagues in this business of film criticism, but there are many of them whom I respect, and when these, prac tically ...

... THE CINEMA A Supper of Horrors By JAMES AGATE DANDIN, the judge in Racine's comedy of Les Plaideurs suggests to Isabelle that she might like a little distrac tion. What would she like? The spectacle of a little torturing? Eh, monsieur, says Isabelle, peut-on voir souffrir des malheureux? And Dandin replies:-- Cela fait tou jours passer une heure ou deux! The late A. B. Walkley said with ...

... PLAYS. MUSIC. AND OTHER. ENTERTAINMENTS Week by Week. The Walls of Jericho.-- It is a strange but rather interesting play that Mr. Alfred Sutro has written for Mr. Bourchier at the Garrick. We know Mr. Sutro, the translator of Maeterlinck. We have read Mr. Sutro as a historian of the ways of the Wood in a series of short stories. The Walls of Jericho has a touch of both, for the play ...

... FIUAYSp MUSIC, AB3 OT111 EBJTE1TAIHMEMTS 'WoK. Iby W]&° Orphee at the Opera.-- The production of Orphée at Covent Garden, to which I just made an allusion last week, proved very interesting indeed, although I prefer it sung in Italian. Madame Kirkby Lunn sings the music of Orphée beautifully, but I wonder why she seems to scowl so much in the part she plays? Perhaps scowl is too strong a ...