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Page Thirty "The Digest of the Motion Picture Industry' CAMERA! YEAR BOOK STAGE AND SCREEN By G A E ,°cSJ R A S ETT The stage and film are allied,— one is the forerunner and producer of the other. The stage has played its part in covering the main Thespic field of the amusement world and it will now become an art not abused by every form of so-called dramatic ac- tion. It will narrow; its appeal will not be so wide. It will never be greater than it was but it will be better on the whole. Instead of the primary amusement of people that it has been, it will be secondary—and auxiliary. It will specialize—the acting and the play must be good or it will not appeal, but its old sweep has gone forever. There are some who remember the old stage—the stage redolent with memories and traditions that came even from Shakespeare's time- mem- ories that fringed everything from the stage apron to the Green Room and traditions that were bandied from actor to actor of each generation with an added flavor here and a new touch there, from some rare personality. It was the mimic stage—the stage of make-believe. The creations were those of imagination, fundamentally human, but sometimes glorified by poetry—sometimes bizarrely raised by exaggeration. It was play—and make-believe. Realism was not thought of. The stage was for amusement and for cultivation only in a secondary degree for philosophy and for seriousness only in a meagre way. Its history and development is an- other story and a long one. Suffice it is for this article to let our memory pleasantly stray back to just before the old stage was giving its dying flicker, and to recall its old impression. Many remember what a mystery it was. The trip once a week from a real home to the make-believe theatre and make-believe play. The curtain with the usual Venetian scene painted upon it hid an anticipated deiight. The strident tuning of musical instruments, the yap of boys vending sweets loo— prepared the mind for a holiday time. This was the theatre that came to us after three or four centuries of vogue and was the principal diversion. It had an endeared place in the hearts of many who had adopted it as an in- stitution personal to their lives. Its traditions were sacred, as it had lasted so long it seemed that it should always be with but little or any change just as it was. The large theatres and the lights upon the stage from candle chande- liers and footlights had created a broad method of acting and even when gas came there was little change and both mellowed and hazed the ef- fects so that the acting so attuned it- self to it that even the plays, crude to us now, came over with a mysterious appeal to the imagination of the people of all those times; I speak of the imagination of the people of those periods, because it is true that the col- lective mental state of a people ruled by its imagination does change. Many are yet young who remember the quiet diversion of the theatre then when it was flirting with sin to be a devotee. A slow, jingling norse car brought you from the play house to a nearby corner and your footsteps made a dull echo in the half-lit streets as you wandered home. It was a more serious life then—a life that had a few moss-grown standards and people actually preached the study and attention to duties—old fogy times, of course, and only reactionaries now lament them GEORGE FAWCETT —they were far away from the cab- aret and the little feed and drink after and the chatter with languid but alert people who always seem to be on the verge of some great accomplishment. This later day progress and civili- zation had not set in with such a rush; the mind had not taught that it must be constantly sated in its diversions. These old quiet days—the Victorian days—with the grate fires and sopori- fic novels—were contemporaneous with the old stage of make-believe. There was no thought then of the film, telephone or automobiles. "We were the fag end of an age that was going out with the horse. Who can quarrel with Fate on the turn of the wheel—yet the wheel has turned—and what is here now is the natural outcome of forces of which we seem to have little knowledge—■ —except that they are here and the film trailed along as a necessary con- comitant. Whatever force is here with us must be reckoned with and this new force in amusement and education is here— with great impetus, as elemental as it has been for the most part. It was what people, plain people, wanted. It amued and enlarged the mind's horizon. It linked all nations and brought the world nearer and it is therefore silly to dodge it. It leaped where the stage could not go. It be- came the great silent force. Based on all the fundamentals or rules of stage drama—minus the voice—events of life and creation of the imagination are put in action; by that action can be portrayed with unity and interest and these events of life and these creations of the imagination can go to every corner of the earth. A world of increasing multiplicity demanded this and got It. It is here. Yet really clever people of the old regime fight it with prejudice. The stage was handicapped by voice to reach the multitude. It taxed the brain of the cleverest men to be dramatists; nothing so difficult in any art as to compress in two hours ac- tion of life and the creations of the imagination with unity and interest. This is shown by the number of plays that have stood the test of time. With the growing alertness of the people and of their multiplicity, must we come to the conclusion that the stage was inadequate? Suppose we should say that the stage was always crude—are we far away from the truth? All the other arts are crude except the best that is in them and 10 it so is the stage, though it met tl phases of the mentality of every and reflected its mental stage. There was an age when bear baiti entertained. It costs some of us pang or two to see an art we love rM ceding from the forefront—a wondeB ful art—a misunderstood, berated art —a necessary art, because it reflected the mind and the times in action—a difficult and a great art at its best and a contemptible art when elemen tal; and as it had to appeal to the ela mental and to the elect it has always been compromised. Now the film has come because it was natural that it should come, and in spite of the pre* judice of a few who still cling to the stage as the only art of entertainment. The film is an art and a great one. Itj is true that nine-tenths of its appeal is elemental—and by elemental T mean of direct appeal, of direct action with- out thought—but there is one-tenth of it that is psychological. That are ot suggestion, the crux of all the wonder- ful arts, is there too. Anyone can make the elemental pic- ture of direct action—only a great master can make the other. A voice from the Gods—from the South Seas —demands the best thought—and thel higher action of life—and we are re-1 sponding to it. We can snow our I trains, our teeming streets—all our I direct elemental art—but the con- tinual call for our inner thought and life is waving upon us from 'cros roads, jungles and slums. We must heed it, for the people of the world must be made to know or there will be hell to pay. The film is an art as well as a huge force. Thought and purpose does come through the lens and the people in front get it. Per- sonality goes through the camera and one is filmed as you are, mentally and physically, shadowy though it is—un- I canny it may be— yet it goes forth. \ It lacks but the golden voice—the voice that meant so much to the stage, whose timbe tells one's fibre, the mar- velous intonation that is synchronated with the brain which makes for pathos or laughter and made acting the rarest of arts. We will use our imagination in both as we have done. It Hamlets had to be terror-stricken when they saw the ghost they did it uy the aid of certain mystic surroundings, stage dark—lights regulated—action propor- tioned and the voice coordinated with a brain that was in the throes of a self-hypnotized condition; if theb rain had the sensitive magniture to cover it—it came to you across the foot- lights with effect and it could come to you yet, but we have no Hamlets prac- ticing and working on their imagina- tion in their closets or on the boards in village barns. It was a rare bird when it came—but sometimes it did come—acting meant conveying every phase of human thought to you, whether it was terror or trivial humour and the degrees between are very many indeed, and the man or woman who attunes his being, for ima- gination to play what stop she pleases is the broad universal actor. From Betterton's time to now there has hardly been a baker's dozen who could come near being that actor. To meet that person who craves to know and who is far away—we have to use the screen, and whereas the voice is gone, we are able to be defin- ite and wider in painting our picture, and more, we can be true and sincere. We are true and sincere because we must be. The camera in its sincerity is the greatest discovery since print- ing, and as pertinent now as printing.