Shorter Notice
Tam is a most entertaining account of the development of the talkies, and particularly of the relations between author and script. It is not malice aforethought, for instance, Miss Kennedy points out, that calls in several authors to provide dialogue in the same film unbeknown to each other ; but it happens because the industry is composed of self-contained units and directors do not think of writers as creative artists. When there is a story to be written about a sophisticated woman in love with a ploughboy, it will seem logical to the director to call in Michael Arlen as one specialist and Sheila Kaye-Smith as another. "No insult would be intended to either." Miss Kennedy is fully alive and sympathetic to the possi- bilites of "this foundling, this Tenth Muse, this Dea ex machine, of whom we know, at present, so little." It would be interesting to have more on the subject.
Previous page
