3-D Kinematography and New Screen Tech- niques. By Adrian Cornwell
- Clyne. (Hutchinson's Scientific Technical Publi- cations. 18s.)
IT is interesting to compare this book with New Screen Techniques edited by Martin Quigley jnr., which appeared last year. Mr. Adrian Cornwell-Clyne is lucid and comprehensive on the scientific bases and the problems of the new techniques whereas the earlier book was simply a wive, vulgar and repetitive attempt to put these tech- niques more squarely on the map. This is certainly the fullest and the most valuable account to date. At the same time, cinema photography is, after all, an art and for the account to be complete some aesthetic of cinema is necessary for the writer. In New Screen Techniques: the only aesthetic implied was the perfectly uncomplicated one that as techniques get more 'revolution- ary' film art gets better, the only end being a more and more perfect illusion of 'reality.' Mr. Adrian Cornwell-Clyne seems similarly free from any precise conception of artistry or stylisation. Of course, there is the gesture --suitably vague—that 'a genius' will now have to come along to exploit these techniques, but as Mr. Cornwell-Clyne seems a firm believer in box-office success ('225,001 patrons cannot be wrong') one hasn't much confidence that the sort of genius he has in mind would turn out to be an Eisenstein or a
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