Camera (April 1921-April 1922)

CAMERA ! The Digest of the Motion Picture Industry" Page Seven The Screen Writers^ Forum Conducted by Ted Le Berthon Editor of The Photodramatist TRIFLING WITH TRAGEDY Scieen writers shuold ever bear ono point in mind: audiences inevitably resent being tricked. One must take an audience into one's confidence: it is far better to confuse the characters in a photoplay, and the interplay of motives, only insomuch as the characters themselves feel confused. An audience, however, likes to be let in on intrigues, mysteries, motives. One may successfully surprise an audience, but one cannot successfully employ trickery, as that usually connotes a certain contempt of the audience mentality. It is the difference in reactions that affects the success of a screen story — just as a budding friendship is affected. Tell an acquaintance of a jest you employed at another's expense, and he will laugh heartily; perpetrate the same jest on him and — he may cordially dislike you for it. The more times an audience can be surprised in the course of a story, the better, providing that the situations are logical — actually might have happened, so that anyone might have been misled; but to make an audience think you're attempting one thing and then with some twist at the end show you meant something else all along, is to invite chagrin — that is, in serious drama. In comedy, the characters may have the laugh on one another, and on the audience to boot. True, some of the master flctionists, employing the uttermost irony, have deftly made a seeming tragedy appear ridiculous at the denouncement. With the highest passions and the most sacred human precepts involved, they have introduced a note of absurdity or incongruity in their stories. But they addressed and still address a few readers, a relatively .scant handful who can see the ridiculous in the tragic — and the tragic in the most ridiculous. In other words, they address the disillusioned, those who have pitilessly analyzed threadbare every human concept — those who have junked all the gods and see Life as an unfalhomable absurdity. One cannot trifle, however, with the accepted precepts, ideals, and institutions in addressing a movie audience. Unlike the disillusioned, they have very concrete ideas as to what is virtuous and expedient; they do not want high romance and passion to be suddenly pierced with the barb of satire or with stinging mirth. Their serious photodramas must remain serious to the bitter — or preferably happy — end. This does not mean that humorous relief is not welcome in the course of the story, but the humor must not be directed against the premises. By the same token, the comedian must remain the comedian from the first flicker to the final fade-out; only an audience of highly developed people have the intellectual and emotional capacity to guffaw at a human being for several reels and then — as the photodramatist reveals the intrinsic tragedy of the same human being — weep for him. As an instance, Charlie Chaplin has wanted to attempt tragedy; there is no question— to those who see deeply oi know — of his ability to enact tragic roles; but the public stomach is too weak and its heart too c'rcumscribed to permit this. To think that one who makes one laugh till the sides ache knows aught of misery or hopelessness — • why, that would be a ghastly revelation of the eternal skeleton at the feast, of the futility of existence. Our public won't stand for it, and can you blame them? Here is something for screen writei s to think about. SINCERITY Smart, clever words and phrases have no place in screen writing, unless they accurately describe something or someone or some situation. For their own sake. FRANK CAMPEAU no. There is no such thing as fine writing for the screen. There is room for the beginner in screen writing, for screen writers of none too much subtlety or depth, but there is no room for the dilettanti. Screen writing may be sincere and valid as no other form ever has been, for the obvious reason that it is concerned with essentials and with essentials only. Either Sherwood Anderson or Willa Gather would make excellent screen writers, and photoplays made from the scenarios of either would be genuine human documents — providing they were directed by a man who stood for simplicity and sincerity, unadorned by anything spectacular or clever. Neither of these fiction writers employ big words or involved, obscure passages, yet they attain effects misty or clear according to their purposes. All any screen writer need possess is feeling, imagination, and a sense of the dramatic — a sense of conflicting values. He need not use tall-browed bookster's delights — those polysyllables that delight the dilettante and often, the connoiseur. Psychologically, there is another angle to the validity of screen writing. The element of vanity is diminished to a large degree, or even eleminated. The writer of fiction has ever in his mind the eventual reading of his own published stuff and the contemplation thereby of his cleverness, his mental agility , his fine nuances. The scenario writer's brain child cannot be contrived cleverly, lest the director misunderstand; the screen writer's message must be ciTstal clear, sincere, and direct. He must sketch his picture in painstaking, minute details — in pictorial terms that do not admit of too wide interpretation. No public ever reads this scenario, this blue-print. For like the architect's blue print, or the mus'lcal composition, or play, it must be interpreted to be given expression before an audience. Of course, all interpretations are more or less unfaithful. The Beethoven Pastoral Symphony would be interpreted differently by an lowan band than by an orcTiestra of excellent musicians directed by Muck or Nikish. Unfortunately, from the screen writer's standpoint, the completed motion picture ])roduction is a finality. It is the first and last interpretation. There are not even the possibilities — from the vanity standpoint — that await the successful playwright, whose work may be interpreted horribly by a small town stock company and admirably by John Barrymore and associate players. However, there is a law of adjustment at work even here. The screen writer whose story is immensely worth-while can rest assured that it will be entrusted to a director of some capability; while the mediocre story is ground through by a lesser light, in machine-like style. There is a demand for sincere stories, written specifically for the screen — not by eminent authors or playwrights, but by those who can express themselves in simple, honest language: the language of Chekhov, Hamsun, Latzko, Tolstoi. But the language must be pictorial and the story must be dramatic. THE DRAMATIC PHOTOPLAY There is a time-worn saying to the effect that "It's not what you do, but the way you do it." Let this sink into the consciousness of the sincere photodramatist. Any photodrama of serious import, to be effective, must be founded on some great passionate crisis, in a realm where values clash — where the reason is perhaps drowned by the powerful cries of the heart; duty versus inclination, the easy or the hard path, the conventions of the past or the visions of the future. Incident is purely secondary — not what the characters do, but the way they become transfigured or altered in any way is the thing of importance. Passion creates incident, the hungry heart makes romance; inner conflict changes the outward scheme of things — makes the world look different; makes the world appear bright or sombre, hopeful or hopeless. Passion must be the dominant, and must be played in the same key throughout. Not only this, but let nothing of levity or nonsense or facetiousness enter this type of photodrama. It would be as if a conductor interposed snatches from cheap popular airs in the performance of the Brahms C Minor Symphony; or as if some cheap roisterer were introduced into the final scenes of "The Death of Tintagillus." Passion at its full stature overawes, is the ambassador of destiny, looming magnificently above mere incident and circumstance; it has naught to do with reason, and therefore is alien to humor, which springs from the reason process. The humorous relief which many writers, screen writers, and directors make much of, often ruins an otherwise well-conceived photoplay, in my opinion, especially if there is a faint suggestion of slapstickianism. If anything is introduced for light and shade, lor contrast, let it be the thing which, while ])rovoking a smile, induces a sub-conscious \nidercurrent of pity — and contributes to a rounded characterization. It is the eternal (Continued on Page 14)