The Cine Technician (1939)

90 THE CINE-TECHNICIA N Aug.-Sept., [937 comprehensiveness held the key to world domination in film material, but, alas, the thunder went west. America discovered her own amazing gift of economy in verbal expression, and with a closer knit vocabulary left us gasping. She saw with native instinct that the speed of the moving scene demanded an equally rapid speech. And with the revolution we forgot the lessons of the silent film. I am probably a lone voice crying in the valley when I ask the modernist to learn a little from the old days, and plead for a return in part to the faith of the past, to the enthusiastic conviction that films speak through pictures to the heart rather than to the head, that by an appeal to the feelings of the audience you will reach thought. Griffith said bluntly, "I build my pictures, not word by word, but emotion by emotion." Therein lies the whole foundation of the moving picture. That is the first legacy of the silent film to the talking film. It is a little dangerous to stress the emotional appeal at a British script conference. It is gently frozen out and labelled melodramatic, ham, hokum, or slush. All sentiment is generalised as sentimentality ; we are scared of broad, Rabelaisian laughter or frank and outright drama ; we scuttle like rabbits behind a smug reticence. America has not forgotten. Emotionalism is at the making of all her many successes. "Smilin' Thru" swept the world, Spencer Tracy becomes a God-fearing priest in "San Francisco," Clark Gable goes on his knees crying "I want to pray, what do I say ? ", Capra gives us a court scene in "Mr. Deeds" that touches us on the heart. Her gangster films are strong with emotional attack ; the bad man is never all-bad, the hero never all-good. A British historical event, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," is coloured with a romance of the heart even in the very charge itself. Korda makes a British monarch something close to the simple man, with human feelings, rather than a puppet of crowns and panoply. Examine all the American successes and you will find this keen emotionalism woven into the structure, often daringly and blatantly. I am sure at the script reading it must sound very much like hokum, but how right they are. She has remembered that legacy of the silent days. Films appeal to the emotions first, the head afterwards. It is a legacy that guides them in the choice of material, of the content of the film. The second legacy is equally fundamental, it relates to the form. To me it is the master-key to the secret of the screen. The tremendous urge to express one's self without words was a powerful spur to effort, to imagination, to artistry. There is no limitation in the talking film, hence no urge to overcome difficulty. No urge predicates no enthusiasm to make discoveries. Every difficulty can be met by speech, so dialogue has become the backbone of the film. To gather the material of the script one reads merely the dialogue. It tells all. The old scripts had to encompass the details of every movement, every action, every gesture. That was motion picture necessity. Talk has relegated the visual factor to second place. We think far too much in terms of words, far too little in terms of picture. Do not misunderstand me. I do not undervalue speech. It is as profoundly important as music was to the silent film, but it is used disproportionately. The vital problem should be the neverceasing search for visual methods to tell the story. Speech enters to economise the telling, but the intriguing play of the moving scene on the screen must ever be predominant. Haven't you ever felt the desire whilst watching a film. to peep round that corner on the screen scene, to look outside that door, to steal into that crowd to see for yourself, all indications of the latent potentialities of screen form in the future. Hitchcock takes you round that corner sometimes. He has the intriguing gift of visual appeal in his films. You are aware keenly of his scene, only subconsciously aware of his dialogue. He uses that to economise and illuminate his scene, never to dominate it. These then are the two legacies from the silent davs — matter chosen primarily for appeal to the emotions, and method based primarily on visual appeal. Economise through speech, emphasise through music, but never lose grip on foundational values. I think these things will be accepted with greater faith in the days to come in our own native industry. Quota Acts may find a way to stability, and in this matter I am attracted by Miss Lejeune's hint of reciprocity, but the ultimate solution of all our difficulties is quality. Where does the technician enter to help the fight ? This is no longer a one-man job. It is group work, and the technician must be permitted to move outside reticence and stake his claim to be in the van of the conflict. Collaboration of emotionalists is the British need, for we are working in an emotion-provoking medium. Cameraman, sound-expert, art-director, film-editor, director, producer, and not least story-writer, must collaborate unceasingly. A working group consisting of many individuals isolated in grim compartmental solitude, ploughing lone furrows, will continue to make films they never know till seen for the first time in the combined print in all their stark nakedness. It is then that the group is dismayed at the result of its joint effort. You must be persistent in the claim to collaborate, but you must prove your right by untiring flogging of the imagination in the domain of your own special technique. It is for you to find new ways to amplify vour form in order that it may illuminate the content you have, by collaboration, sincerely approved and accepted. Believe me, the technician who does this thing is sought after avidly. A common comment behind the scenes is that X is not as good as Y, he hasn't Y's imagination. The field of imagination is infinite. Think of the work of the camera-man. He is first lieutenant to the director, and the eve of the audience. How vital is his aid if through advance collaboration he knows what the scene is designed to express visually, but knows more powerfully what the audience is to feel emotionally. His imagination will assuredly have done something towards a finer handling of his technical tools towards the desired end. Consider how lighting and composition made "The Informer" a thing of pure visual and emotional delight. The dramatic work of the camera-man was magnificently intensive. The sound-expert knows in his heart that sound embraces speech, that the whole is greater than the part. Must sound always be bound hand and foot to realism ? Why not use sound to strike dramatically at the emotions by distortion, reduction, or even sudden non-realistic removal ? We have all experienced that absolute silence in the mind when absorbed in thought, though surrounded by the babel of the outer world. Something breaks that thought, and the sounds of life crash back to our mentality. Does not the neurotic human cry aloud that some simple sound shrieks to him with ear-splitting harshness ; is not the key moving quietly in the cell door terrifying in itgrating horror to the condemned felon ? Dare you make {Continued lit foot of page 92)