Distaste for the modern is a staple of all eras and an Irish Timeseditorialist in 1931 could scarcely contain his satisfaction that the newest form of entertainment, talking films, was apparently being put back in its place by an older form of live entertainment, albeit the less than admirable variety show. – JOE JOYCE
SIGNS THAT the film’s stranglehold upon entertainment is drawing to a close crowd thick and fast. A new theatre which was opened in London last Saturday gave an entertainment that consisted half of film and half of “variety.” This encroachment of the spoken stage – we lament that it must be called an encroachment – is but one of many indications that popular taste has suffered a change.
A huge film circuit, controlling theatres both in the United States and in Europe, has realised the need for, at least, a plentiful interspersion of variety turns for a long time past; and its houses have proved the salvation of numerous artists who otherwise would have shared the general fate of their fellows.
Furthermore, a great part of the “film war” carried on between different combines across the Atlantic has been conducted with the help of mercenaries from the music-halls. The magnates have found that it is not necessarily the house which shows the best pictures that draws the people, but the house which puts on the brightest and best “supporting programme” of vaudeville.
Popular taste, it is true, did not compel these turns to be introduced in the first place; actually, what moved the magnates was the fact that there were not nearly enough films to go round all their houses. Yet, if popular taste did not put them there, it has kept them there, and now is insisting that a larger and larger share of the programmes shall be allotted to vaudeville turns. We hold no particular brief for “variety.” At its best it can be artistic and delightful entertainment; but it is very seldom at its best. Even at its worst, however, it is human, as opposed to mechanical, entertainment, people like it, and it has the great virtue that it gives employment to a large number of hard-working people, instead of a few “stars”. For these and other reasons we shall hail the return of “variety.”
The old days were pleasant, when the clapping and the din of stamping feet echoed through the theatre. Who ever stamps his feet in approval of a sound film? Admittedly, the screen can achieve effects which the stage, “legitimate” or “variety,” never can hope to achieve; but its lack of the human touch makes all the difference between admiration and enthusiasm.
Moreover, from the historical point of view there is comfort in the reinstatement of the living stage. It marks a phenomenon which is almost without precedent in these latter days – a triumph of man over the machine. Some day a decent and satisfactory balance will be struck between the two forms of entertainment; but, until that day arrives, all lovers of art will hope that man may hold his own.
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