Hollywood Saga (1939)

HOLLYWOOD SAGA conducts but, to a large extent, orchestrates the composition. No written manuscript can set down the complex interplay of those various instruments which make the harmony of a motion picture : not only the action and reaction of human characters upon one another, but also the vitally important values which background, lighting, movement and picture composition add to dramatic effect. All these are separate, elemental tones which the director must combine into a symphonic whole. He sets the tempi and determines at every moment which instrument carries the theme, and the extent and manner of its emphasis over the other parts. Screen-writers, unlike composers, cannot completely orchestrate their work on paper. It is simple enough to say that the writer’s function is to conceive, the director’s to realize. That is, no doubt, true as far as it goes; but properly to realize a motion-picture manuscript, no matter how well written, the director, too, must conceive in terms of light, sound, motion and, above all, in terms of dramatic values wrought by technical craft. These are values which the average writer feels only vaguely; he calls this feeling his sense of drama. The director must feel these values exactly; he, too, calls this feeling his sense of drama. They are both right; they are both creating the picture, and I, for one, cannot lay down an exact line of demarcation, or find the spot where the writer ends and the director begins. That is probably why so many fine results have been achieved by writer and director working in close collaboration, each conscious of the other’s field of creation, but reinforcing rather than limiting each other. In the early days, of course, the complete subordination of writer to director frequently wrought havoc in many pictures which should have been better than they were. This, however, was not always the director’s fault. Few 158