"Short wide screen amateur film made by George Ives, a Chicago Metro Movie Club member, and edited by Kenosha Cine Club member Ron Doerring. A corresponding 1/4" audio reel for this title is also housed at CFA, but has yet to be digitally transferred" Chicago Film Archives.
"a murder mystery drama with a cast of at least 14 players" (HMHT 1933: 299).
"This film shows the excavation of a 7th-century ship at Sutton Hoo led by Charles Phillips, a fellow at Cambridge." (EAFA Database)
"A film of the family's pet K9 with its characteristic activities set to alphabetical prose with a pleasing pulse. Those who see the film will just love Suzy and the narrator, too" PSA Journal, Nov. 1959, 49.
"Technically superb macroscopic work marks the great part of the footage of Swamp Song, a color story of the insects found in the marshes and woods of the countryside, filmed by R. H. Unseld. Perfect focus and precise exposure distinguish the studies of insects, and it is not unlikely that they are the best of their type that have yet been filmed with an amateur camera. It is unfortunate that the story motif of this picture — a father and son wandering through the woods in search of insect types — is not better integrated with the extraordinary macroscopic footage. Nor is the technique of the titling on a par with the rest of the film. But the macroscopic insect scenes are truly astonishing, and such highlights as the invasion of a termite colony by a roving band of ants and a series of ultra closeups of butterflies are without parallel." Movie Makers, Dec. 1938, 621.
"A swan in the garden of Great Pednor Manor, the home of Captain Watson and his wife." (EAFA Database)
"This nature film about Swans is divided into five sections as follows, The Swan; In the Spring; The Site of the Nest; Eggs!; The Happy Family." (EAFA Database)
"It is generally accepted by the less moronic elements that Hollywood's version of life in the army not only missed the point but overlooked it completely. Reginald McMahon, a hardy private first class during the war, has compensated greatly for Hollywood's sins in his Sweating It Out, a clever film recording the period between V-J day and his return from overseas. Mr. McMahon was with the 24th Combat Mapping Squadron, stationed at Gushkara, India. He was in a position to show what a hot, boring climate does to military stiffness and the blithe American temperament; and he has done so. Barracks life becomes very real in his hands, with its essential lack of glamour, its endless small detail and its everlasting poker games. The negative aspects of army life at an outpost — K.P. and guard duty — come in for their proper share of bitter comment. Mr. McMahon is to be thanked for recording the trivia that make up army life in a way that makes one almost nostalgic for them." Movie Makers, Dec. 1946, 488-489.
"Take a dozen or more normally exuberant youngsters in the second grade of school, mix them amid a day-long session of changing classes, and flavor with the excitement of making a movie — this was the recipe which Herbert F. Sturdy set himself to follow in cooking up Sweeter by the Dozen. He has been remarkably and quite charmingly successful. That the school was West Lake, in the svelte suburbs of Hollywood, and that the pupils were the progeny of "name" figures in the film colony, may have had, perhaps, something to do with it. But kids will be kids — whether in Glendale or Grand Rapids. By some alchemy of the camera, Mr. Sturdy has indeed made them sweeter by the dozen." Movie Makers, Dec. 1951, 412.
"Sweetheart Roland comes to us from Grimm's Fairy Tales and depicts a grandmother reading the story to a young child of perhaps three years while the latter imagines just what the tale would have been like in real life. This gives the producer sufficient latitude to act out the story with his characters much as the youngster might imagine it. Synched dialog of the actors with the narrator's voice is a clever innovation seldom seen on the amateur screen" PSA Journal, Sept. 1966, 34.
Total Pages: 299
Amateur Cinema