All of the mistakes...

I can’t believe it’s already the beginning of term. How did the summer end so quickly? I’m too busy already…

A short post today, then:

Film fans in the 1920s were not so different from some fans today – they liked to catch out the filmmakers on inaccuracies and errors in continuity. Here’s a recurring column from Photoplay from 1922 (from the Internet archive, as usual, volume 22, page 213) “Why Do They Do It”:

Maybe Moran was a Weather Prophet!

Among the letters is one about sheik movies, written by Achmed Ali Berez, late of Oran, Algeria. If the letter is not simply made up, then Photoplay had quite the reach indeed! Achmed writes in to say that “It is amusing to one who has been brought up in the desert to see pictures such as ‘The Sheik’ and ‘The Sheik’s Wife’. Permit me to criticize.” 

Some of Achmed’s criticisms of these films: 

• “One does not see an Arab with glasses and still less with pince-nez.” This must be a reference to ‘The Sheik’s Wife’ because I don’t remember anyone wearing glasses in ‘The Sheik’.  Valentino certainly doesn't.

• A lengthy paragraph about the importance of horses and horseback fighting. So I suppose horses might be compared with women so often in sheik romances just because horses actually were very popular?

I also like the next letter, written by “A Nurse, Bluefield, West Virginia”, pointing out the inacurracies of “The Glorious Fool”:

• “Why didn’t the head nurse wear a cap? Where did Helene get her method of taking a temperature? She put the thermometer under her patient’s arm, then took a nap.”

Inaccuracies everywhere! It’s interesting to speculate on what pages like this reveal about movie culture. Should films reflect real-life practice (a perennial topic of discussion about representations of policework and forensics on tv shows like CSI)? Or is it simply fun to find errors (like one of those newspaper spot the difference pages)?

Monday – a new sheik novel!