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INDIA ON THE SCREEN
India having taken the place of gunmen on the screen, the inevitable question is being asked. The word Art is being whispered, though God forbade that it should ever be applied to the gunmen sequence. But India . . . atmosphere . . . Flaherty has gone out to spend a year or two photographing large chunks of atmosphere.
It is unfair to generalize. Films that strive to be instructive ought not to be compared with those that are made solely for diversion. Both Lives of a Bengal Lancer and Clive of India are in the latter category, though they mark an advance from the crude Son of India of Ramon Novarro and the terrible early Kiplings.
If you attempt to make an analysis, you will find that Bengal Lancer is really a Wild West picture in an Indian setting — a minimum of Indian setting, for the North-West Frontier is nothing more than the hills of Hollywood with Gary Cooper and Aubrey Smith capering about them. It forms superb entertainment.
Clive of India is essentially domestic — a love story — though, coming after Bengal Lancer, it was expected that the conqueror of India should never leave his elephant unless it were to blow up half India. Not one second of that picture was made in India. It was purely diversional. The atmosphere was an effect.
Flaherty's methods are different. He gives you the real thing. Generally in immense slabs. As an instruction, it is of value. He contrives also to make of it a work of art. But to attempt to combine it with a story would be to court disaster. I prefer the simple devices of a Chaplin. Thirteen years ago, when he made A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin showed us a girl waiting for a train. The train came in. He did not show us the charging, tearing express; but only the flicker of lights from the carriage windows on the girl's anxious face — firstly rapidly, then slowly, until the train stopped. "I did that with a piece of cardboard," he told me.
This will have to be borne in mind when Kim comes to be made. Irving Thalberg discussed it with me when I was in Hollywood. He wanted me to stay on and tackle it ; but, alas ! my other engagements did not permit this. When, however, it is undertaken, it will have to be decided whether the atmosphere or the story is of greater consequence on the screen : the two cannot be combined as effectively in this new medium as they are in the book. Essentially, it is an atmosphere book. But there is a story, and if a diversional film is to be made, the atmosphere will have to be relegated to effects.
There is happily a public — a very large public — for both types of film, as the astounding and deserved success of such a production as Forgotten Men shows. There we had a neatly assembled jig-saw of
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