Judge, 1933-02 · page 11 of 38
Judge — February 1933 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis for Modern Readers This page reviews a home movie called "Our Trip to Europe" made by Stanley Jones and his wife. The review, by John C. Emery, is satirical mockery disguised as polite criticism. The Joneses filmed their European vacation and screened it at home—a leisure activity available to affluent Americans. Emery sarcastically praises their amateurish travelogue: the footage is out-of-focus, poorly composed, and includes embarrassing gaps where the seasick filmmakers stopped recording. The bottom cartoon, captioned "For a minute I thought this was a speakeasy door," references Prohibition-era speakeasies (illegal bars requiring secret entry). A visitor mistakes an art gallery for a hidden bar—suggesting the gallery's obscurity or the visitor's priorities. The review mocks both the Joneses' pretension (documenting "cultured" European tourism) and the tedium of amateur home movies, a then-novel technology that apparently produced unwatchable results.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Many uninteresting characters flit across the screen, jerkily. Not the least uninteresting of these is a thin sinister-looking individual who bobs up at frequent intervals. The au- dience shows a disposition to accept this character as the villain of the piece until it is explained that he is none other than Mr. Jones himself. Both Mr. and Mrs. Jones are adequate in their réles as’ deter- minedly interested though tired and bilious tourists. Perhaps the most intriguing scene in the whole picture is the one, taken “by Mrs. Jones, showing the louvre in the left center and, at the right, Mr. Jones talking to a man who is carrying a bundle of postcards of some sort. Here the picture seems to have been cut by the censor, be- cause the scene shifts abruptly just as Mr. Jones is in the act of digging “Wonderful skater, that chap, Chong! Look at that Figure 8!” down into his trousers pocket. —JOHN C. EMERY Home Movie Reviews (Our Trip to Europe) EVERAL new low spots in the mo- tion picture art are plumbed by the feature now current at the home of the Stanley Joneses. Entitled “Our Trip to Europe,” it is a travelogue, if you happen to like that sort of thing. It is a practically con- tinuous and slightly out-of-focus reord of what the Joneses saw and experienced on their trip across the Atlantic last year. There are two gaps in the continuity, which is quite al right with the audience. One of these gaps occurs during the ocean trip eastbound and the other during the voyage homeward. Both Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who shared the labor of photography, happen to be push-over victims of seasickness, even during Bm the calmest weather. The picture takes its audience to many familiar nooks and corners of london and Paris—these being the only cities visited by the Jones, who Were travelling on a limited budget. Considerable footage is devoted to the Thames River, London Bridge, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, the River Seine, the Left Bank, the Right Bank and the National City Bank, but these familiar scenes have a fresh and novel appearance, in the Jones masterpiece, because of the inability of the photographers to get even dose to the proper focus and to hold the camera steady for more than a Moment at a time.