Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 27 That, perhaps, conveys my conception bf the very human demand for humor .n the drama. The film drama that fails of this quality of humor fails both as a picture of life and as an entertainment for the people at whose taste the picture is aimed. The smiles must be introduced with finesse. Otherwise, efforts at relief of the picture with humor will fail. It must not be obvious. It must be natural, a i.part of the story, not something dragged anto it. The present-day play must be clean in every way; free from the morbid or the spectacularly repulsive; strong and vigorous in tone, yet possessed of plot threads having the sweetness and cheerfulness of a debutante at her first tea. A play can be virile and still be dainty. It is all in the subject and in the production. A play that carries a good, homely moral is a public servitor, and t blends into the great instructive literature that, new to our age, is being built !by motion-picture producers. And, consequent upon this screen literature, there is a great responsibility : upon the men who guide the making of the pictures. Life itself has tragedies more constant and more grim than pen or brush or camera can depict. What is a tragedy in one household may not be so in another household, but the sun is not shining all the time for every one, everywhere. The end of a day should not, therefore, be marked for the motion-picture patron by viewing upon a screen a story of morbidness, terrible wrongs, crimes, false doings, and false witnessing, merely that these same spectacular, repulsive incidents might be assembled, called a photo play, and sent out to entertain the people whom it only offends. The viewpoint of the motion-picture public has changed, and the ideas of successful producers have grown with the public mind. They have broadened, developed, and taken tone together. The photo play to which one can take his family, knowing that it contains nothing offensive, or too deep for the young mind to fathom, nothing touched by a daring deviltry to incite a wrongful curiosity or to plant a harmful thought, is the kind that the public wants. The way is clear to the maker of motion pictures and to the exhibitor who builds his daily program with a hope of permanency in the business. "The drama of real life, with all its wonderful lights and shadows, must be presented," observed Mr. Hutchinson. Here is a screen from "The Little Lady Next Door," well illustrating the human touch, even by the baby. This changing the public taste has been felt. Producers are seeking plays that meet these advanced ideas of rightful entertainment, and, to that end, are working conscious that "screen literature" is growing a bigger, more vital thing every day. Sight is the most swiftly responsive and most powerfully active of our senses. The eye burns its lessons deeply into the mind. There is no illiteracy in vision. Education is not required to read and understand the language of the screen. But seeing is a way toward education, not only concerning physical things, but opening as well a channel to introspection and a better measure of one's self. That is why both the classes and the masses constituting the motionpicture public, have raised their standard of taste, with the resultant of improved pictures by the big producers who are responsive to the public pulse. It is a duty that the makers of film cannot neglect to be sure that their art is continually growing and developing along with public taste, the constantly improving standards of life and the art demands of that life. Popular literature is continually improving in quality. We find the great, successful publications are clean and wholesome. Probably I can point to no better example than The Saturday Evening Post, which entertains everybody and never offends anybody. The idea is the sort of story that depicts interesting phases of natural life. A few years ago we saw a "run" of muckraking that had its effect on the literature of the day. Now the people have outgrown this. The public, to be entertained either in literature or the motion-picture drama, does not have to be taken on "slumming tours" in the half world. Virtue, honor, decency, and the clean everyday life of the people is fuller of real interest and more appealing to the great body of motion-picture-play patrons than the false values of the hectic regions we sometimes call "Bohemia," the "bad lands," or some other whitewash name. Cleanliness — there is no other word — should be the basis and final test for pictures entitled to a place in the public library of screen literature. Plays that are entirely wholesome and enjoyable, and in which the tear and sigh are blended into a smile and laugh, represent the best thought of the day. If a moral attaches, let it be driven home convincingly, but shorn of sting or sordid shading. Motion-picture plays should know neither creed, color, age, nor sex, and should never paint to the eye of any one of these offending things. And sometimes smile. Watch for It. "A— is it? A— A. Now I see! That's the call of the navy code !" The man, alone in the wireless cabin of the Irvessa, spoke to himself. He glanced quickly at his chart, and saw that the ship must be well within a hundred miles of Samar Island at that moment. That is the first paragraph of the first serial story to be published in this magazine. It will begin soon. You'll want to read it. Watch for it. i