Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1921)

February, 1921 MOVING PICTURE AGE 13 What they wanted and what they got. The annual family tragedy shown in a single picture. All the wishes and all the disappointments at their nonfulfillment are shown without the use of the old flash-back. Bringing Photoplay One Step Nearer Art Revealing a character's thoughts and recollections by means of cutting in scenes has offered a substitute for the clumsy flashback and permits a nearer approach to real art By Jerome Lachenbruch Publicity Director, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, New York City ART has always been wedded to form, for form is the skeleton of the artist's medium of expression ; and whether it be regular or irregular, it clothes the artist's ideas. Without it, art would remain idea, emotion, or a mingling of both ; but to break through the barrier and become articulate depends upon form. As various forms of art mediums have been perfected, art itself has grown versatile. We have many schools of painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and each chooses a different form of expression. Before the first painter discovered the use of pigments, his art remained in the limbo of unfulfilled desire. Technique, then, is fundamental to the creation of works of art, though, of course, technique is not art. And it is interesting, if we can only consciously remove ourselves from our immediate interests, to observe the struggle of a new medium of expression to achieve various new forms through which it may confidently knock at the door of art. The motion picture has acquired the fundamentals of a new art. It has found the raw ingredients : the story, the director, the actor, the artist, the scene builder, and a host of other units that combine to equip it in its struggle for companionship with the elder arts. And now, it is concerned with applying the technical equipment of these various units in their individual association with the photoplay. How much of the artist, how much of the actor, what of setting, and what sort of story, are still the baffling questions that confront the creator (in a plural sense) of a screen production. In the past, audiences have had moments of intense joy through the realization that into the exhibition of some part of a photoplay, art had found its way. But, unfortunately, the motion picture has been unable to carry through its prolonged moments of artistic intensity ; so that what we enjoy are only pungent possibilities, suggestions of what may come. Each new technical discovery presents another way to create objectively that which exists latently in our imaginations. In the early days of the screen, we had the flash-back, a technical device by means of which an episode or a series of episodes that had occurred in the past, was recalled by the player. In this way, events that happened before the opening of the story were