16 
LAND 6? WATER 
me meArRE 
By W. J. Turner 
December 12, 1918 
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E official description of Jolly Jack Tar, the new 
'musical kineinatographic melodrama at the Princes 
Theatre, is set forth thus : _ ■ 
"A Nautical Mu ical D \ ma in a prologue^ 
and two acts. 
By SEYMOUR HICKS 
and Arthur Shirley. Music by Herman Darewski. 
Lyrics by Davy Burnaby, James Heard, and John P. 
Harrington. Staged by Frank Collins. 
The entire scenery designed and executed by John 
Bull. 
The naval details have been supsrvised by two com- 
manders of the Royal Navy." 
Most of the blame, if you dislike the play, can therefore be 
put on the shoulders of Mr. Seymour Hicks, and after that 
in a gradual decrescendo upon the other collaborators, reserving 
a final sniff of disapproval for the two naval commanders. 
On the other hand, if you like the play, divide the credit 
from the bottom up, and justice is likely to be done. I add 
one note of warning : Do not think that the entire scenery 
was designed and e.xecuted by Mr. Horatio Bottomley ! 
The prologue begins with a motion picture — "The Sea." 
Whoever thought of this is to be praised ; it is a logical 
beginning, and for some minutes the audience can gaze in 
silence at the waves rolhng in on the shore and, if they have 
been able to get enough drink, contemplate all that Hquid 
with entire satisfaction ; teetotallers can think of King 
Canute, and poets of England : 
This little world ; 
This precious stone set in the silver sea. 
After the motion picture — or during it — there is a song : 
"The Voice of the Sea" — e.xtremely touching. Then follow 
three tableaux: "Drake's Famous Game of Bowls," "In 
Nelson's Day " and " To-day," interlarded with motion pictures 
of Drake's presentation to Queen Elizabeth and Nelson's 
embarkation and death. I must confess to a strong distaste 
for faked motion pictures of past historical persons and 
events. I may be singular in this, but I cannot imagine how 
anyone can get pleasure out of what purports to be nothing 
more than an exact representation of an actual scene, and is 
not — and cannot be — an exact representation. Such motion 
pictures could only have merit and interest if they were true ; 
for instance, our descendants will enjoy keenly aU such real, 
topical films of to-day as the King and Admiral Beatty on 
board the Queen Elizabeth. The mania for faking which 
possesses all film-producers is fatal to any artistic merit in 
motion pictures, which, to have any virtue, must either be 
taken direct from real occurrences — when they will have the 
interest of being true representations of what actually 
occurred — or be admittedly fictitious, as a novel or a play, 
and depend entirely on the quahty of their acting ; which is, 
at present, for the most part bad. 
Motion pictures are, however, ingeniously and effectively 
used all through Jolly Jack Tar to carry on the action, as, 
for example, when the hero; Ben Bartimus, swims to his ship, 
when the fleet is going into action, and when Ben escapes 
from the prisoners' camp into Holland. There are possi- 
bihties in this use of the film ; and, indeed, one dramatist, 
Mr. Monckton Hoffe, in Anthony in Wonderland, had already 
experimented successfully with a motion picture as an integral 
part of a play ; yet I am not sure that the removal of some of 
the stage's ancient limitations is an unmi.xed advantage. 
An escape from prison is just the kind of incident, for instance, 
that cannot be done adequately on the stage, but which can 
be marvellously done on a film ; but we don't want dramatic 
authors to concentrate on that sort of thing, now they have 
the means to do it, to the exclusion of the far finer situations 
proper to the stage. It was a sound practice in Greek drama 
to have all incidents occur off the stage and be related, where 
necessary, to the audience ; for it confined the dramatist to 
his vital business, the expression of character and the awaken- 
ing of the imagination, and prevented him from fooling about 
with imitations of Ajax kilhng ten Trojans at a blow or 
similar nonsense. 
In Jolly Jack Tar, on the contrary — whicii is an amusing 
spectacle, and not a drama — the best scene is the attack on 
the Mole at Zcebrugge. This is really excellently done, and 
well worth seeing. The worst scene is the spy scene in the 
photographer's top floor in Soho, London, where a couple of 
Germans, disguised as photographers, receive messages about 
air-raids, and when the raid commences push open a desk 
and disclose a searchlight presumably to aid the Gothas ; 
though its only possible effect, if it had any among the multi- 
tude of searchlights, would be to draw a bomb on their own 
heads/ These two lunatics also ejaculate each time a bomb 
drops: "Let's hope that was Westminster Abbey!" It 
would be no credit to our Navy and Army, and to Foch, 
that Germany collapsed if all Germans were such fools as 
this pair. This scene is preceded by a motion picture entitled 
"Gothas preparing to start for London," and I chuckled on 
seeing that- the so-called Gothas were really our B.E. 2 Ds., 
taken, obviously, from some aerodrome in England. 
One of the best scenes was in the Inn, where the hero, 
Ben Bartimus (Mr. Ambrose Manning) has gone with some 
chums to have a jollification prior to going on board ship 
for the anticipated great "stunt," which, though unknown 
to them, is to be the attack on Zeebrugge. Here he is 
drugged, and his papers are taken by a German spy who 
intends to impersonate him and put a bomb on board the 
principal ship and blow her up. The attempts of Ben's 
"girl" (aged forty, and about the same weight) to prevent 
the spy's escape and to awaken Ben, and Ben's dawning 
realisation of what is at stake, and his heroic effort to recover 
control, are done with great verve, and when the spy ulti- 
mately escapes and Ben realises that he has missed his boat, 
and is, technically, a deserter, he thrills all hearts with a 
dramatic declaration that he will swim to his ship. This is 
where the film comes in, for we actually see Ben swimming 
to his ship and arriving like a drowned rat on board. Like 
the escape from prison scene, it is very effective, and, as I 
have mentioned above, points the way to motion pictures 
being largely used in future stage melodrama. On the whole. 
Jolly Jack Tar is a good entertainment, it is exceptionally 
well stage-managed, and is played by all concerned with 
great gusto. 
Last week I received an interesting letter from a soldier 
who supports some recent remarks of mine on the inferiority 
of actual to imaginative experience. I hope he will pardon 
my giving a short extract here. He writes : — 
" I have been in the war zone since the first Somme push 
— -in the siege artillery. I have seen the fights for Thiepval 
from July ist onward. I was in the grand scramble after 
Fritz when he retreated to the Hindenburg line in March, 
1917. I saw the Australians marching up to take Bullecourt, 
assisted to hold up Fritz's big counter-attack there in April, 
1915 — was in the retreat of last March and the advance from 
Albert over the old Somme battle-fields this August — and 
yet I never felt so excited on any of those occasions well 
calculated to excite as when I saw a comparatively tame 
film of our people salving abandoned Hun war material on a 
kinema when home on leave. My recollection of "big 
stunts" and "great events" is that I always felt a sense of 
helpless disappointment in that my emotions seemed to 
refuse to rise to the pitch of excitement my dramatic craving 
demanded. I knew from experience that a very sligh'^ 
dramatic effect in a film picture is enough to arouse m\ 
emotions thoroughly, and I was obliged mournfully to tell 
myself that if I wanted to really enjoy the gloriously dramatic 
and thrilling in this war I must see it not in realitj', but on 
the screen — in peaceful BHghty." 
True, absolutely true ; and yet there are men (over mili- 
tary age) who believe that war is more exciting than 
poetry ! 
There are very few soldiers who will not confirm this 
experience ; but, of course, it is chiefly the more imaginative 
men who find war so little exciting. A military pageant, 
a procession down the Strand, or a brass band playing out- 
side a Mess are far more stirring than the most tremendous 
battle ; and if it were not for the fear of being killed, which 
at times becomes acute, war would have no excitement what- 
ever. It has become a platitude that the poets have always 
indealsed war, but it would be more exactly true to say that 
war had stolen its glamour from the poets. 
