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Illustrated by ~]ohn Yield, Jr.
ice upon a time there were two young fellers in search of Perfection in Screen Art. They were earnest students of the movies and wanted to see the Eighth Blunder of the World ease itself into better and finer things. The first young man, whom we shall call Egbert because his name wasn't that, believed everything Griffith, De Mille and Ingram said about themselves and perished a miserable death. He died of lockjaw trying to read a Griffith subtitle out loud.
The other young man fell in love with Phyllis Haver and, as a result of his infatuation, only went to see Mack Sennett's comedies. Consequently when anyone stops him on the street and asks "What's the matter with the movies," he can't get interested because he doesn't see where anything at all is the matter with the movies. He doesn't know what it is to laugh at a picture and not with it.
Sennett and the Deep Thinkers
great many serious students of the movies — and there are such badly advised persons — are out gunning for the Art of the Screen and, just because they can't find it, they are about ready to put a note on the pin cushion and turn on the gas. Because they have heard deep tli inkers speak in ashamed tones of those terrible slapstick comedies, they have been running with their hands over their eyes every time the vulgar words "Mack Sennett Presents" are flashed on the screen.
1§ Who says Sennett is not presenting an accurate picture of jitney and delicatessen life in America? His heroes are always consecrated to an utterly ridiculous cause and they are entirely unable to carry through any plan without making foolish and painful blunders.
<f While other directors insist that the world is torn by the passion of love and hate, Sennett insists it is peopled by a quarrelsome set of boobs, crooks and assorted dumbbells all out for a good time.
And so they have passed up the one director who never burned Babylon except by way of a joke.
It is a popular theory that Sennett's comedies are only enjoyed by half-witted children, vulgar small boys, demented plumbers, drunken taxi drivers and village idiots. No perfectly refined lady or gentleman with a social position to maintain would ever admit laughing at one of Mack's unseemly brawls in a delicatessen shop. And the critics point the finger of scorn at them.
A World of His Own Observation
»ut, for all of the aloofness of the wise guys, Mack has achieved what no other director has done; he has created a world built from his own observation on the screen, peopled it with characters which have no point of resemblance in common with other dummies of the movies, and has given his screenworld a code of manners
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