The art of sound pictures (1930)

ISO THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES of their unpleasant emotional effect on normal motion picture audiences. Heroes and villains should experience conflict emotions well toward the beginning of stories. The heroes, however, should overcome these emotions in the end. Furthermore, the leading character in a screen story must never be depicted as feeling too much fear, jealousy, hatred, or even rage, lest he lose, once and for all, the sympathy of the audience. His emotions must be kept, for the most part, normal and pleasant. On the other hand, no combination of unpleasant emotions is too extreme for the villain. He may show extreme fear, hidden hatred, devastating cruelty, and virulent rage, to the delight of the audience. For the villain stands for the obstacles which the hero must overcome in order to achieve success. Characterizations should be subtly depicted. The villain, as a rule, should make a good appearance. He should cover his unpleasant emotions, revealing them only in moments when he is alone with his audience. The good old rules of the days of the ten-cent melodrama, with respect to the villain’s villainy, have not greatly changed. When he is permitted to show too many of the pleasant emotions, he frequently elicits greater sympathy from the audience than does the hero himself, thereby ruining the average screen story. The normal pleasant emotions which must be woven into the story are always complex, and the commonest in everyday life are desire, satisfaction, passion, and captivation. Appetite, or self-seeking, consists fundamentally of desire and satisfaction. Love, sex, or erotic emotion is made up of passion and captivation. Desire and satis