The Cine Technician (1938-1939)

July-August, 1938 THE (' 1 N E-T ECHX I (' 1 A N 35 A SCRIBBLE ON US FILM-SCRIBBLERS By IAN DALRYMPLE ONCE upon a time there was a British film that was highly praised hy the Press : and lor once the Press was right. Now. the praise was allocated to the Director ol the film and he was generally hailed as a "coming young man," though he isn't exactly a hoy and had been going in various capacities for more than somewhat. Anyway, all this adulation of someone else went to the head of a certain charming and talented screenwriter, who promptly took up his typewriter and wrote a letter to the Daily Intelligentsia, couched in well-chosen phrases ol refined pain, and pointing out that the Director couldn't help having made a film of merit, because himself and his colleagues had written such a magnificent script. The writer felt strongly that the authors were much cominger young men than the Director and should have been awarded the ballyhoo. Well, maybe they are : what of it? In my view, again the Press was right. Even in the British film industry (I use the epithet loosely, to describe the adventures in Motion Picnics that happen to be conducted in the United Kingdom) there are film executives, or, shall we say, there is. we understand, one film executive, who realises that a good script cannot gravely incommode, at least, the making of a good film. I have to say. as a loyal member of my profession, that 1 am in agreement with this: but I claim with equal conviction that the script writer is of no consequence whatever. The Producer is the creative artist of a film : or sometimes the Director: or, more rarely, the Cameraman: conceivably, the Cutter: but never the Writer. If a scriptwriter were a creative artist, he shouldn't be writing scripts : because, a good script-writer is nothing more nor ACTING FOR THE SCREEN (continued from previous page) In this speech his whole spoken reply to the announcement is really contained in the first two lines, the rest only shows that the total effect ot hearing of Lady Macbeth's death is to produce from him a dissertation on the fickleness of life. My conception of this scene would be to have the first two lines actually spoken by Macbeth in fairly close shot, then cut back to a big long shot showing the actor in a large hall, and as he goes out the voice would be heard but the lips would be (dosed. Macbeth by his actions would shotv what he was thinking, and thai is the main function of movie — to be a visual medium. When all is said and done, the part of the movie that interests me most is the only part that is really creative, that of the producer, or better still the producer-director in one. The stage artist can be creative, but screen acting is mainly utilitarian. It is the accumulation of all the little bits of realism or apparent realism put together in the most significant order that makes the movie what it it. Next to the producer, the cutter is the most important "artist" in the creation of a film and it is to these two people that we must look for the development of the appeal of the film. Universality of appeal may not in itself be a virtue, but it remains an enormous commercial asset. (Stills accompanying this article by Eugene Pizey from the Pascal prod net ion , "Pygmalion.") less, and should be nothing more nor less, to the Producer and Director than the indispensable Hunter is to that great artist ot elucidation, Lord Wimsey. Creatively, the script-writer is the perfect servant : but it a perfect servant starts writing to the Press, protesting, lor instance, that the paragraph allotted to his master in Mr. G-odwith-the-Winnd's page should rightly have dealt with himself, then decency is indeed gone from the world and the servant of perfection is bogus. If a script-writer fancies himself as a cosmic force, as a creative artist, as a phenomenon to set the critics capering, then I repeat that he shouldn't be writing scripts. He should let go of Mama Film Industry's skirts and recite his piece all by himself in the middle of the room, where the audience can shy the furniture at him. Let him write a novel or a play, or serve up a whoreson stylish whimsy-whamsy dish of Lamb rechauffe for the Weekly Bumptious : or even tangle together a few strings of those pathological sausages that pass for poems in these days : and let him leave the concoction of screen-material to us little, obscure, gag-situation-bright-line merchants, who have the face to call ourselves writers and make ourselves members of the Incorporated Society of W hatnots, Whatnots and Whatnots. Putting it! at its highest, the motion picture is a method of presenting the dramatic conceptions of the fanciful before the widest attainable audience. It is simply a method of staging, created by and suitable to modern urban civilisation. A play may be staged that is a work of art : the staging may be artistic : but the staging-ol-the-play is not a work ol art. A play or book may be filmed that is a w ork of art : the film may have its artistic aspects: but it isn't in itself a work ot art. At any rate, the script certainly isn't: being a bundle of extensive notes for a composition in celluloid. Therefore, the script-writer isn't an artist, he's just a skilled artisan : and the artisan may be the salt of the modern earth, hut he's by no means the vital force that sets it spinning. Examine the script-writer's duties, and, in this conne< timi. we needn't trouble ourselves with the "Original, " as being so unusual as to be manna from heaven rather than daily bread from the baker. He is handed a boo]; or a play. He reads it and assesses its film-values according to his opinion, probably planning a line of attack as he drops off to sleep that night, or fights the daily duel with himself in the morning with razor for one and iodine for a hundred. He keeps an appointment with the Producer who, in due course, renders his own idea ot the treatment in the form of a concerto with an accompanying orchestra of interruptors, human and electrical. In a brisk opening passage, the solo performer shatters the writer's enthusiastic conception to fragments : the orchestra intervenes with a magnificent contrapuntal passage, during which the writer attempts to reassemble the fragments, play the man, and turn the subsequent performance into a double-concerto. But it won't do at all : the result is a bedlam of discords. No, no : we must change our metaphor and the scriptwriter his attitude. Not only must lu interpret the intention of the novelist or dramatist in the language of thi' films: he must translate that intention after its ex (Continued on page 37)