David Lascelles,
Celluloid Creams: A Century of Film in New Zealand. Wellington: IPL Books. 1997
ISBN 0 908876 96 3.
144 pp.
NZ$39.95 within New Zealand or $45 overseas (Pb) Fax 64-4-499-3032.

David Lascelles,
80 Turbulent Years: The Paramount Theatre Wellington 1917-1997. Wellington: Millwood Press. 1997
ISBN 0-908582-80-3.
90 pp.
NZ $39.95 (Pb)

Uploaded 1 July 1999

Both Celluloid Dreams: A Century of Film in New Zealand and 80 Turbulent Years: The Paramount Theatre Wellington 1917-1997 are thin, glossy, coffee table books published by very small local presses. Yet both volumes turn out to be surprisingly interesting and informative, contributing to cultural studies in Aotearoa New Zealand.

David Lascelles, the author of 80 Turbulent Years, is a well-known figure among filmgoers in Wellington, New Zealand, where the Paramount is located. He has been an active member of local and national film organizations for decades, having worked as a journalist with a focus on film during those years, and runs his own company, Film research, based on his personal collection of film reference material. So he has standard, recognizable credentials for writing this sort of book.

In contrast, Celluloid Dreams names no author on its title page. On its copyright page, however, Geoffrey B. Churchman appears as editor-in-chief, with assistant editors Stephen Cain and Patrick Hudson. Researchers credited here include Warwick Bennett, Amber Bill, Peter Chapman, Chris Daish, Donald Holder, Melanie Mills, and Anne Nelson. In addition, David Lascelles, Lindsay Shelton (long-standing member of the New Zealand film commission), and ‘John Bell of Time Cinema’ receive acknowledgement for their assistance. Of all these names, only David Lascelles and Lindsay Shelton are well-known figures among the New Zealand community of film scholars.

So Celluloid Dreams looks a little suspect, especially in comparison with New Zealand film 1912-1996, which established scholars Helen Martin and Sam Edwards had published shortly before Celluloid dreams reached bookstore shelves. Nonetheless, it has its own value.

For one thing, Celluloid dreams is not a history of film production in Aotearoa New Zealand. Instead, its subtitle (‘a century of film in New Zealand’) refers to the complete cinematic apparatus. Celluloid Dreams thus does something unusual among histories of film in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although it ends with a chronologically arranged, 41-page appendix of credits, running times, and plot precis for feature films produced in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1940 and 1996, its two major parts “Cinemas” and “Films” are made up of chapters organized more thematically than chronologically, and the themes in question – government attention to cinema; exhibition, distribution, and consumption rather than production; technology’s effect on society – have been relatively ignored by publications aimed at general audiences.

Chapter 3, for example, “Independents and chains”, gives the most detailed presentation on the development of chains that I’ve yet seen for this country. This includes the clearest explanation I’ve seen for how Michael Moodabe, with Twentieth century fox backing, eventually broke and replaced the Kemball, Kerridge, Fuller-Hayward combine (22). The development of exhibition chains occurred despite strong competition from existing independent exhibitors. Many independents succumbed only in the face of racketeering, the authors claim (19). Not surprisingly, racketeering brought government intervention.

Endnotes occasionally do appear. Elsewhere, internal evidence, e.g., in Chapter 3, suggests early newspaper accounts as source material. One problem, perhaps resulting from using too few sources, is to take Auckland as a model for the rest of the country’s experience. In fact, in Chapter 2 “The growth of the cinema industry” the authors state baldly that ‘where Auckland led, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin followed’ (10). This is obviously not history in depth.

On the positive side, the volume is well illustrated, with 15 pages of color plates that range from a popular post card image (of Auckland’s Civic Theatre) to publicity stills from various feature films. Credits for and identification of these images and the numerous black and white photos through the volume are skimpy. While greater attention to such details would be reassuring, the images themselves sometimes prompt informative captions. For example, a photo of a hand holding a glass slide has a caption explaining both how they were used as well as how fragile they were.

An interest in the history of film technology appears scattered throughout the text. The book even opens with a brief summary of magic lanterns, Edison, and the Lumieres. This interest is less technologically focused, though, than socially oriented. For example, discussion of television is in terms of its impact on Kiwi film attendance figures (29) or film production (Chapter 7). Other indications of the authors’ general interest in film as a social phenomenon are more culturally specific: the The Dansant held daily in the late 1920s at the Auckland Regent theatre’s ballroom, with compulsory evening dress two nights each week (25); or the end of playing ‘God save the Queen’ in 1972 (30). Chapter 4 is appropriately entitled “A century of going to the movies” and covers topics as diverse as post-World War II children’s film clubs to the origins of the Federation of Film Societies.

The strongest contribution Celluloid Dreams makes to New Zealand social history may be its chapter on censorship. Once again the authors begin with the late nineteenth century to set their stage. Their objective is to trace the pull and tug between more or less conservative and liberal forces throughout the century. Perhaps the illustrations border on exploitation of the subject, but once again I can’t think of a single better discussion of the subject in print, current up to its printing.

The final chapter, “TV, the 1970s and the Film commission era”, is slightly mistitled. The bulk of its pages is devoted to box insets featuring significant personalities in the contemporary history of New Zealand film production, from John O’Shea to Merata Mita. Such insets appear to good effect throughout the volume, although they occasionally contribute to a slight repetition of details. In this chapter, too, the insets work well. However, where one of the strengths of the volume elsewhere is its relatively up-to-date quality, here it seems curiously limited in its choice of filmmakers to feature. In fact, it may have been a dated choice to end with a chapter on the so-called Film commission era. Even when Celluloid Dreams was being prepared it wasn’t hard to see that the involvement of off-shore producers, especially of television programs, was changing the face of the New Zealand film industry.

80 Turbulent Years is also a pleasant surprise in that it offers more than its title suggests, and again, the surprise lies in its contribution to cultural studies in Aotearoa New Zealand. Beautifully illustrated and laid out, printed on high quality paper, David Lascelles’ volume is manifestly a labor of love as well as an intelligent and well-informed expression of the author’s understanding of the Paramount’s significance for film history in this country.

From the first chapter, in which the local paper is quoted as placing cinema attendance figures ahead of those for church-going (2), Lascelles situates the specific details of ownership, programming, dealings with the City Council, and other practical matters within the larger context of Kiwi society. In the 1930s the Paramount had charity screenings on Sundays (23 and 27), in the 1940s it did well entertaining U.S. military personnel, from the 1950s it has been a venue from time to time for the Wellington film society (to their mutual benefit), and with the arrival in the mid-1990s of Kerry and Trish Robins, whose De Luxe cinemas now runs both the Paramount and the Embassy, it continues to hold its own as an important fixture in Wellington and in the country’s cultural scene.

Lascelles intersperses thorough coverage of programming over the years with the story of how the theatre has survived as an independent or not, how it has shifted the percentage of film screening time to live performance from the silent era to the present, and how the theatre has coped financially with necessary physical and technological changes over the years. He even manages briefly to cover the history of other cinemas in Wellington. His readable style makes it all interesting.

As the back cover notes, “what makes this theatre unique is that it still carries the original name, stands on the original site, has a single screen house and apart from a six and a half month closure, not counting renovation, has been in continual use.” It was also a featured venue in Judy Rymer and Sam Neill’s Cinema of Unease; curiously, the author does not mention this, even when referring to its having screened there both before and soon after its official premiere (before as a trade screening for its producers). As a spectator at the Paramount of the Wellington Festival screening of Cinema of Unease, I can attest to the mise-en-abime effect of watching part of the country’s film history being made in a venue that is so much a part of the country’s film history and in which the film itself had partly been made.