"Hamilton H. Jones has again shown his marvelous ability to combine beautiful movies and fine music on the double turntable into a cinematic whole that, in New England Autumn, carries an audience through the calm delight of fall days to a climax that has great dignity and spiritual stimulation. We see autumn in its most restful and wistful mood, and the action is slowly paced in harmony with the dying year. There is leisurely strolling in the many hued woods. The leaves on the ground are scuffed through and gently scattered. We see the things that we all like to do in the forests in autumn. Finally, in an arresting sequence of autumn fruits — great, gleaming pumpkins and ruddy apples — the music turns to the inspiriting old Dutch hymn of thanksgiving. Rising first orchestrally and then voiced by a thousand singers, the chorus ends as our eyes are lifted to the simple spire of a New England church. Here is suavity, here is intelligent movie making and here are dignity and spiritual uplift." Movie Makers, Dec. 1947, 534.
"L. Clyde Anderson was given an award for Color photography, for 'October By-Ways.' We want to congratulate Mr. Anderson for his selection of colors. It is one of the very first amateur pictures we have seen where color was really properly balanced. There were no harsh notes to distract, but he chose scenes where the ensemble blended and where there was a fine eye-resting blance of color and also color composition. It was obvious that Anderson used haze filters on his outside scenes as the sky does not have that postcard-blue effect, but has been reduced to almost a gray haze which helps the fall colors in the trees and does not take the eye away from the main points of interest." American Cinematographer, Jan. 1937, 37.
"Herman Bartei has, in Pathetique, made another contribution in the special field which he shares with Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski — that of setting music to film. In this process, the music is the absolute, to which the footage must conform. While Disney achieves his conformity with drawings, Bartei uses actual cinematography of natural scenes. Mr. Bartel's absolute in this instance is the first movement of Tschaikowsky's Sixth — or Pathetique — Symphony, which is played from start to finish on double turntables, while the film sets forth what its maker feels is an interpretation in motion pictures of the music. The footage consists of autumn scenes, whose subject matter and tempo are varied to agree with the musical expression. The success or failure of this type of effort must depend upon the universality of the conviction of unity between musical and scenic episodes. Mr. Bartei reaches several high spots, notably one in which swirling crows against an angry sky are in very real harmony with the musical statement. Other scenes of autumn mist are very apposite to Tschaikowsky's phrases. The synthesis as a whole is both convincing and emotionally exciting." Movie Makers, Dec. 1943, 474.
"In the fall of the year, the late flowers are blooming, the evergreens have about completed their year's growth in preparation for the heavy winter, the deciduous have donned their golden mantles soon to become their winter blanket. All part of the thanksgiving for a bountiful season. The tall golden hillside trees set in a great panorama, interspersed with the dark grenes, the paths carpeted with golden leaves of varying hues of yellow, orange and red. It is here we visit the Mortons with their trailer in the pines" PSA Journal, Nov. 1959, 49.
"A journey from bustling Chicago to the fall foliage and winter landscape of rural Wisconsin." Chicago Film Archives.
Film treatment of the poem "When the Frost Is On the Punkin" by James Whitcomb Riley. Intertitles with text from the poem are interspersed among images that match the themes and content of the poem. The scenes include shots of harvest work, fall scenery, turkeys, and pumpkins.
Total Pages: 2
Amateur Cinema