Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1914)

THE MOVING PICTURE \\'ORLD Expressions of Life By Louis Reeves Harrison. 1073 THE screen portrayal should tell a story with a punch in an interesting way. That is not a complete summing up, but it covers a multitude of artistic and scientific errors. A plot that holds attention comes very close to being the foundation on which the whole storied structure is to be built, but there is a good deal else besides, notably an ability to visualize a trenchant criticism of existing conditions and a wondrous gift of making an experience, however remote in time and place, seem plausible. Besides a knowledge of photodramatic construction, this requires a certain amount of audacity, for the author must convince an audience that what is going on really did happen. This plausibility saves many an awkward explanation in subtitle and puts the spectator into an indulgent mood where he is willing to overlook unavoidable shortcomings. This is all easy to tlie author of inborn quality, the natural story teller, but it is extremely difficult to acquire. Even in great photodramas of no particular time and place, amid the mystical atmosphere of nowhere in particular, the born author will easily provide a steady current of narration that is reasonably possible and rarely dull, often replete w'ith artistic charm, constituting nearly as often a play that finds a ready market. The naturalborn writer of stories has an instinct for providing thought stimulus under the guise of pure entertainment, kindling the emotions, before he a-ks the audience to do any hard thinking. He does not exhibit human weakness for the sake of that exhibition, a thinly veiled sermon, but for purposes of contrast, thus submerging the idea of showing men what they should be or might be under conditions quite possible for society to bring about. Such an author may picture exceptional phases of life, but he does so to awaken exceptional interest. Mere expressions of life that have no meaning, the automatic movements of characters in and out of houses on their way from one place to another seriously weaken a photodrama unless they are indicated to enhance suspense at a crisis. Mere expressions of beauty when a lovely scene is handy are better, but they should be utilized only when carrying forward the story, and they should enter into it as if unsought. That naturalism in which the audience delights makes the treatment of a screen story very important, but the source of it should lie in the scenario. The author really selects the types and it is his business to let them follow their natural inclinations, their natural tendencies, once he has brought the various characters together under striking or exceptional conditions. The strong expression of life must begin at the beginning to be effective in the end. The instinct of a natural story teller warns him against errors that must be carefully studied to be understood by those who merely feel the narrative impulse, and greatest of these errors is that of narrowing one's horizon. Life as devised by the Creator of it has an infinity of aspects, so that the only creed a born author can wear is one that can be slipped on and off for the occasion. His code is that of the story he is telling. At one moment it is a delightful romance of unconscious realism, at another it concerns a realistic social problem into W'hich is woven the romantic destinies of a group or of an individual. He may at one moment have the power of making ordinary lives seem beautiful or interesting by dressing their commonplace in a sympathetic or imaginative way. He may at another have a graphic mastery of visualization that makes the screen glow with the turmoil of battle, or with the movement of great masses in their intense struggle for existence. The born teller of stories may frivol in melodrama or strike an ultra-modern blow for our betterment ; he may present the human narrative as a historical lesson or as a cross-section of actual existence ; he may offer a solution of present social entanglements or probe the mental subtleties of men and women ; his limitations arc those of his genius, never of his subject matter. If that subject matter be of live interest, so much the better, but ability to handle it is what wins in the long run. The ability of directors and actors in visualizing a story has long been recognized — the ability of one who creates the stories to be visualized was an after consideration — it is just beginning to count. Those who are gifted with narrative power and knowledge of constructing stories for visualization have been accorded meagre recognition until this year, but their importance as one of the factors of success in screen production will be deeply impressed upon producers before the year has come to a close. Those authors who are already receiving recognition have passed through a trying period, during which patience and toleration alone have enabled them to survive. Rampant directors of the old type, of the rush-order, make-it-while-you-wait kind, could not see that anything was vital to a theme, that nothing in particular was of structural necessity, that secondary characters should not be given importance through favoritism, that the injection of irrelevant details meant distraction if not de-truction, that intrusion of their personal ideas blurred the development, if it did not wholly eliminate the author's intention. Such directors were told to go ahead and turn out a photodrama in a given time at a minimum of cost, and they did it, either because they had to or because it was an easy way to easy money. One result was a flood of screen inanities, another result is in store for those who produce without principle. Inability on the part of producers to distinguish between what is transitory, the aspiring scenario of incompetence, and w'hat is permanent and enduring, the work of an author who is in a state of development akin to that of the art itself, is behind light-hearted confidence in the plenitude of plays : so also is a desire to appropriate rather than reward superior creative talent. But the genial gentlemen who have been measuring merit with a bushel basket are beginning to look about them anxiously for something worth the large expenditure of their time and money. Having exhausted the seemingly inexhaustible, the literary and dramatic veins of expired copyright, they are now rushing madly into the acquirement of every modern work of fiction, irrespective of its suitability for screen presentation. What can be better than w-hat has be-en ? Having acquired mastery of screen publication, the producer now finds himself looking about anxiously for something worth while to publish. \\'hat seemed easiest in the period of amateur scenario overflow has suddenly become difficult if not decidedly embarrassing. He formerly published because he had to visualize a story, whether or not it was a true expression of life — he had simply acquired control of a wonderful medium of conveying thought and emotion — but things are coming to such a pass that there is less and less call for his visualizations unless he has a stor}^ to tell. Will authors please send him a few powerful expressions of life at $25 per reel? Will they?