The Film Mercury (1928-1929)

Page Twelve THE FILM MERCURY, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1929 Hollywood, Calif. The Saluation of the Cinema By Frank Pease (Frank Pease, author of this article, is a writer of international reputation. While the Film Mercury docs not necessarily endorse or agree with the opinions herewith expressed, we are printing Mr. Pease s article in the interests of an open forum on the talkie situation. — Editor). In all considerations looking to genuine dramatic efforts for the cinema we come today to the speaking cinema. Introduction of voices shifts, changes and transforms the entire emphasis as to what shall hereafter constitute practical cinema efforts guaranteeing box-office returns. In spite of much naive and perhaps even honesf opinion to the opposite, there is nothing contradictory between art and profits, between genuine drama and the satisfying of an audience, between primary principles in aesthetics and popularity. It is all a question whether they are actually or only presumptively practiced. It is the question of art or hokum, of man or nature, of the finished actor or the unfinished “realist.” The point is that speaking picture audiences are not going to be satisfied with spoken dialogue that is only on a par artistically with what has hitherto served the cinema pictorially. That would be too much! The counterpart, phonetically, of vast footage pictorially, would mean voices that are “lurid,” super-stentorian, hoarse beyond all bearing. It would mean a dialogue too Victorian, too saccharine, too “movie” to please even the ten-twent tastes of the gallery gods. While it might be a fine dramatic punctuation to hear the forty thousand roaring their Roman salvos in Niblo’s Ben Hur, it is extremely questionable whether movie audiences could stand the Great Wide West’s he men hee-hawing, the she-vamp’s sibilants and the flapper’s titterings “about It and about.” Our ears will put up with less nonsense or noisomeness than our eyes ; we are made that w<ay, thank goodness ! If no dramatic improvement were to take place through the speaking cinema — which is horrifying to contemplate — what sort of voices would correspond with what has hitherto characterised so much cinema product : size, space, quantity, numbers, the stupendous, the overwhelming, the “knock e’m dead” extravagance in visual effects that of necessity dwarfed to relative insignificance whatever of real drama and real acting there may have happened to be? Even to raise the question is terrifying . . The point is that point which has so long been missed by the cinema, namely, that art, is not any “holding the mirror up to nature,” but is far rather that throwing upon the mirror of the screen man's interpretation of man and nature. Art is a representation, not merely a presentation of nature. Art, again the drama, is a selecting, simplifying and restraining of the elements of man and nature, not merely a photographing of nature “as she is.” If this point has been missed by the cinema, the spoken dialogue is quickly bringing it to the front. In speaking pictures immediately the matter of selection comes in, even in a drama of the most realistic realism. For what things shall be spoken ? How shall they be spoken? When spoken? Finally, by whom spoken? Obviously, all things shall not be spoken. Nor may they be spoken in any manner which the uninformed, the uncouth and the uncultured choose to speak them or direct that they be spoken. This is not a matter of official censorship merely; for if, as has been observed, it requires three hundred years of breeding to produce a cultured speaking voice, it has taken ages to produce that instinctive appreciation in audiences as to what is proper, fitting and permissable in all theatric formality. “Proper, “fitting” and “permissible” are, after all, only another way of recognising selection, simplicity and restraint in things theatric, because, just here the dra ma is more concerned with manner than with moral, holding that if the manners are genuine they will also be artistic, and if artistic they will also be moral. The censor of the future will be the audience, not the Censor. The speaking cinema makes clear the fact that most direc The 1929 schedule for First National Pictures will include thirty-five First National-Vitaphone features and several specials intended for road showing and long runs. The cost of this program will be over $18,000,000, all to be expended locally. This announcement was made this week at First National Studios by Warner Brothers. The year’s program will insure more activity at the big Burbank plant than in any time in the history of First National Productions here, it is claimed. Stars who will appear in the 1929 program are Colleen Moore, Corinne Griffith, Richard Barthelmess, Milton Sills, Billie Dove, Alice White, Dorothy Mackaill and Jack Mulhall. Each will contribute from two to four productions during the year, all Vitaphoned throughout and many 100% dialogue pictures. In addition to the star pictures, there will be a number of specials with all-star casts. With the completion of the new sound stages at First National, and the remodeling of the silent stages for Vitaphone, the Burbank plant now has nine stages available for the filming tors have been mere prose writers rather than dramatists, and fairly excessive prose writers at that, a la Theodore Dreiser. But the day of mere prose just as the day of mere pose in the cinema is passing. The speaking cinema spills the beans; it tells whether He or She or only the camera has “It.” of talking pictures. This number will be increased to twelve. Production activities will be increased at the studio immediately after the first of the year. Among the first pictures to go into production in 1929 are : Collen Moore in “Early to Bed, ’ a college story by Lynn and Lois Seyster Montross. Corinne Griffith in “Prisoners,” the famous Feme Molnar play. Richard Barthelmess in an untitled play. Billie Dove in “The Man and the Moment,” by Elinor Alice White in “Hot Stuff,” Glyn. a gay college opus. Jack Mulhall and Dorothy Mackaill in “Two Weeks Off,” by Kenyon Nicholson. “The Squall,” the Vitaphone version of the successful Broadway play. “The House of Horrors,” a mystery story. Production activities at the First National studios are now under the supervision of J. L. Warner, with A1 Rockett as Associate Executive and Anthony Coldewey as his assistant. The latter has recently joined the staff there, and will be in charge of the story activities and the writers. HACEIJ'CN WILty ART DIRECTOR Columbia Studios F. N. Plans Big Film Drive