The art of sound pictures (1930)

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24 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES follow what newspaper editors call “the law of the least common denominator.” Every deviation from the average is dangerous to the box office. Scenes of the highest intensity will please one small section of this colossal public, and will no less certainly displease some other section, which may or may not outnumber the former. What the high-brow critic calls the magnificent mediocrity of the movies is a necessity that is born of the very popularity of the pictures themselves. \\Tiat an artist may think is the finest possible picture often turns out to be the finest only for a few thousand artists. The striving of a certain superior class of story wTiters for tremendously emotional scenes is often based upon a profound misunderstanding. Select one million people at random from all motion picture houses on earth, and you will find among them not more than one or two in every hundred who enjoy a steady diet of such highly intense stories. It is not wholly wrong to compare the motion picture tastes with those which are reflected in people’s preferences for food and drink. The highest intensities of flavor will be found in such things as rare old cognac, caviar, limburger cheese, raw onions, and red peppers; but did anybody ever live who regularly ate these three times a day in preference to roast beef, medium, or ham and eggs? Foods and drinks of maximal intensity are chosen only at intervals. We preserve our balance best if we eat plainer food as a steady diet and indulge ourselves in the more potent viands three or four times a week. Thus with the stimulation of pictures. Nothing else can explain the perennial success of crude and insipid slapstick comedies and western cow’boy stories.