The March of Time

In 509 cinema theatres throughout the land this week (Feb. 1) the editors of TIME present The March of Time, a new form of pictorial reporting. Related to the newsreel as a newsmagazine is related to a newspaper, The March of Time is a recapture of memorable scenes from the day's news. Edited, like TIME, in the historical spirit, it runs for 20 minutes, deals with half a dozen different subjects.

What. Just as regular newshawks make the events of yesterday live again in print, so The March of Time undertakes to recreate them on the screen by the simple process of going back to the "scene of action and getting the characters to repeat themselves in word and deed.

Examples from the first release of The March of Time:

P: In Washington, NRA will go on trial before the U. S. Supreme Court because a smalltime battery manufacturer in York, Pa. could not pay the 40-c- per hour minimum wage required by his code. No newsreel camera was on the spot when Fred Perkins was visited by the Federal marshal, told he was violating the law, but he and his wife and his workmen will never forget the scene. To York, Pa. and into Fred Perkins' home and battery shop went The March of Time's photoreporters (scriptwriter, director, cameramen). The story was reconstructed and rehearsed just as it originally happened. Floodlights were turned on, cameras cranked. Result: On the screen, The March of Time audiences see & hear Fred Perkins call his workmen together for counsel, hear him tell them he cannot pay more than 25-c- per hour, see him enter his kitchen after a hard day's work, hear him tell his wife that NRA has cracked down, that he must post $5,000 bail or go to jail. To jail he goes; after 18 days, out on bail he comes. Then to his aid go eminent volunteer counsel--David Aiken Reed and John William Davis--who personally re-enact their conferences with their client following his conviction in Federal Court (TIME, Dec. 17). And The March of Time camera takes the Perkins case to the doorstep of the Supreme Court.

P: A milestone of U. S. musical history was the opening night of Impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza's last season at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House (TIME, Dec. 31). Into the Metropolitan that night went The March of Time's photoreporters (in top hats & tails) with the first sound-camera equipment ever permitted inside the old opera house during a performance. From a grandtier box wired for sound two of the reporters filmed the action and music on the stage, the swank audience. Others followed Gatti-Casazza backstage, saw what he saw through his private peephole to the stage, heard what he heard in his office as Aida progressed, caught his unposed facial expressions as he listened to Martinelli's high notes, to the thunderous applause. Finally, the camera watched him clap on his hat, shrug into his overcoat, trudge wearily down the corridor, away from the last Met opening he will ever direct.

P:News to millions of cinemaddicts is the fact that the political balance of Japan, hence the peace of the Orient, centres on 85-year-old Prince Kimmochi Saionji, Last of the Genro. It is this Elder Statesman who most often makes up the imperial mind of the Son of Heaven. Yet this potent old Japanese has been completely missed by U. S. newsreels. Therefore to the tiny fishing village of Okitsu went the newscameras of The March of Time, with the result that shots of Prince Saionji, guarded night & day by 40 soldiers, sitting on his flower-bordered porch reading the newspapers, are the first to appear on any U. S. screen. Also new to most U. S. eyes are old shots dug out of Japanese film libraries of Prince Saionji coming & going between his Tokyo home and the Imperial Palace. These and older scenes--Versailles (1919). Washington (1922), Manchuria (1932)--together with new exclusive views of delegates to this winter's London Naval Conference are tied into a narrative essay on the current politico-military situation in Japan for The March of Time audiences.

How. Behind this week's first release of The March of Time lay nearly a year's practical experimentation and the expenditure of $100,000. Last March TIME'S editors went to work on a plan to compile selections of old shots from film libraries, lead them up to spot newsreel views of the current week. Results were disappointing, largely because in many cases library clips were mere flashes of persons and events. Then the editors decided to adapt The March of Time radio technique of re-enacting such scenes as were needed. First experimental dummy reel was completed last August, showing such subjects as the birth of the Dionne quintuplets, the death of Hindenburg, U. S. midshipmen cheering the Pope. Three more dummies were made, tested on cinema audiences by "sneak" previews. By October the editors had made two important discoveries:

1) With certain crudities eliminated, the venture was worth trying.

2) The principal characters in a news story, if allowed to behave naturally, are perfect cinemactors and usually willing ones.

Co-operation by bigwigs was vastly heartening and re-enactment by hired actors became less important. Occasionally, however, certain transitions in the news narrative did require special shots. Thus the Prince Saionji sequence was briefly filled out in Manhattan by a helpful Japanese whose resemblance to the Last of the Genro is so close that few laymen can detect the synthetic bit.

Perfection of this new technique of visible, audible journalism was one problem. How to sell the product against the ice-jam of cinema block-booking was another. Should TIME hand The March of Time over to one of the big distributing systems? Contrary to orthodox advice, TIME decided to take a chance on doing its own distributing through an "independent" distributor, First Division Exchanges, Inc. Vice President David L. Loew of Loew's Inc. broke the ice by being the first to contract for The March of Time for his chain. Other potent chains--Balaban & Katz, Poli-New England, Fox West Coast--followed suit, taking the monthly March of Time release at one of the highest prices ever paid for a non-feature film.

Why. Asked, as it often is, why it should venture beyond the publishing field into the cinema field, TIME replies that all news is its province, regardless of the method of presenting it to the public. Syndicated journalism may have eliminated the silver-tongued reporters of the Frank Ward O'Malley and Richard Harding Davis schools. In their place, modernism has given the talking cinema to journalism. The March of Time is contemporary history on the screen, welcomed by the industry as a new pattern for pointing up new ideas in the treatment of news, the cineman's cinema.

Unlike the radio program. The March of Time is not a promotion project for TIME, the Weekly Newsmagazine. Organized separately as The March of Time Inc., the new venture must win popular support and thereby carry its own financial weight, or it will be discontinued.

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