Cinema Quarterly (1934 - 1935)

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MISCELLANY THE SCENARIO May I be allowed to comment on your editorial in the last issue dealing with the scenario of The Private Life of Henry VIII ? This gives me an opportunity to hit out at your brave Quarterly in a manner befitting its policy, which is belligerent and stimulating. My cardinal sin, according to your gospel, is that I deny any knowledge of the meaning of "true cinema." But in the introduction to Henry VIII I took the precaution of adding "whatever that is," and I regret to say that your editorial does not take us any further in the way of a definition. Indeed, no. It merely tells us that film form is a pattern laid up in Heaven, like Plato's "Republic," and that we are as far from it to-day, with perhaps two exceptions — Chaplin and Clair — as ever we were. You say that if the scenarist produces something on paper which is afterwards re-created in celluloid, he is being denied his "rightful recognition as progenitor of the production," or that the director, alternatively, is being given credit for creative gifts to which he is not entitled. I contend that, in the present state of cinema, that is the most abysmal nonsense. This is not a question of credits — and Heaven knows enough people gain credit for doing nothing at all — but of the first principle of film form. Not many principles, but one principle, which is this: that the content and pattern of the film are determined by the idea, and that the originator of that idea is, ipso facto, the creator of the film. In our muddled and unformed cinema, for which no one has yet succeeded in establishing any principles, as Aristotle did for the drama, the idea is at present contained in the scenario. I do not claim any special eminence for the scenario, and as a basis for a non-literary affair like a picture I stated plainly enough in my introduction that it was suspect. And so it is, and will be for many years to come, till a director can read a script as a musician reads a score. But can you hazard a guess when films will be the single, individual creation of one person? Would criticism be worth a rap which totally ignored present conditions, namely, the organised regimentation of many talents, and proceeded on the assumption that, unless one artist were the only begetter, the film was a failure, was not worthy of serious attention? 160