Mr. CEDRIC BELFRAGE
CEDRIC BELFRAGE , film critic of a leading Sunday newspaper, only recently succeeded Francis Birrell as B.B.C. critic. He is unique among London writers on film subjects in that he has lived and worked many years in Hollywood. Only four weeks ago he returned from a six weeks' visit to the i Californian film capital. While in Hollywood, he spent many entire days in the studios of the big companies, discussing the present state of film affairs with such leading executives as living Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn, David Selznick of Radio Pictures, B. P. Schulberg of Paramount. From a careful analysis of the situation, he concludes that the talkie is waning in America, that this is due to loss of audience-interest in indifferent stories (the big stories like Grand Hotel, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express,and Scar/ace can still pack the cinemas) and that American producers today will welcome outstanding British pictures as providing novel and stimulating- -material to recover their own audiences and restore the now dying habit of movie-going. In his talks Mr. Belfrage ingeniously mingles observations on the Movie in general with reviews of current films. He is no highbrow-and his opinion of pictures is a reliable guide to the ordinary listener.