The art of sound pictures (1930)

WHAT PEOPLE WANT 27 An example of this may be found in the submarine disasters and the resulting picture Submarine. The United States had lost several submarines since the War, because these dangerous undersea boats were sunk, with men sealed up alive, fathoms deep under the sea. The most recent disaster was that of the vessel which was sunk by a revenue cutter off Cape Cod. Signals were heard from the crew, and the public was kept at a high pitch of excitement for several days, before it was finally determined that all hope was lost. Public interest was kept alive for a much longer period while salvage operations were under way to raise the boat. Finally, when the submarine was raised, there was another period of public interest in the finding of the bodies and of notes or other messages that told how the men died. The motion picture value of this event lay, first of all, in the tremendous newspaper and magazine publicity which it received. But it lay as much or more in the extraordinarily intense emotional appeal. When men are sealed alive in a steel boat 120 feet below the sea, there is a universal desire to save them. The flood of messages received by the naval engineers, suggesting every possible and impossible device for bringing the boat to the surface, or for getting air to the submerged crew, was evidence enough of this. Add this tremendous emotional appeal to equally tremendous publicity, and you have an ideal picture subject. Submarine was produced very cheaply by Columbia. But the box-office returns far exceeded those on most super-productions. Of course, not all big news stories can be translated to the screen. Writers should also analyze the emotional