Some remarkable blunders are perpetrated in the production of some
modern films, either due to an oversight on the part of the producer
who endeavours to make it too realistic, or inattention to details.
These incidents have a tendency to do more harm to the cinema than
good, for these little slips which have been allowed to creep in
and appear on the screen are apt to make the picture patrons become
impatient. Some people find amusement in the noting of all these
blunders. Let me enumerate a few to show what I mean, for they are too
apparent to escape notice. For instance--
A monk in a picture of the twelfth century is seen to switch off the
electric light!
Louis the XIVth is supposed to remark to a lady-in-waiting, that she
wants “taking down a peg,” an expression not quite in keeping with the
period portrayed!
Again, it is just as ridiculous for vaccination marks to be shown on
the left arm of a harem-queen of the East--period, a thousand years
ago!
One sees such items as, a view of Curzon Street, showing huge pillared
porticoes and palms.
A duke who wears appalling American “reach-me-downs.”
A duchess who is Irish, and therefore must say “Be jabers” and
“Begorra.”
Views of English countryside and ducal park, displaying granite
boulders, tropical palms and scores of American cars all on the wrong
side of the road!
Another delightful oversight--a man who enters a strip of undergrowth
wearing a tie, walks straight through and emerges with an up-to-date
West End made-up bow, to the old miser in “Wuthering Heights”; the
times are Victorian, and a conspicuous object is a safe made in 1915.
One laughs at the absurdity of the whole thing, when a lady in a
crinoline is shown knitting a jumper; or a disreputable attic is
furnished with a beautifully carved wooden bed, fitted with silken
hangings.
Copies of the “Peerage” figure in this satire--of course it is
American--and it is such instances which are creating a bad name for
the cinema. American ignorance of the British peerage is shown in
the film featuring an old Warwickshire family, Armitage by name; a
beautiful daughter, the Honourable Diana Gwen Beaufort, etc., Armitage.
Her young brother remained the plain unvarnished “Eddie”; her mother
“Mrs. Armitage,” and they were apparently not on the same aristocratic
level as the Hon. Gwen. A framed copy of the family crest is much
to the fore. It is only too noticeable that the Hon. Gwendoline is
in direct succession to the family honours, totally excluding her
living brother. In the end this captivating young personage marries an
ordinary American commoner; the honeymoon is spent at the ancestral
home in Warwickshire--Armitage Castle. How, or why she got there the
film story does not relate.
Such ignorance causes the public to distrust all films, and does much
to lessen the attendance of intelligent people at the cinema theatres.