Close Up (Jul-Dec 1929)

CLOSE UP scene. This was a play meant to be produced not mimetically but choreogTaphically, and moreover — as folk — to be stylized. It laid too much stress on a bad story, the songs were not intervalled with precision, and — most serious of faults — the diction was stereotype. This last, of course, has nothing to do with the production, it is the authors' weakness. The authors confess they did not take advantage of the original Gullah dialect because it would be incomprehensible to an audience not familiar with it. Should Synge have avoided the Gaelic on the same score? Synge exploited, and converted the difficult speech, suiting it to the language of his audience, which was his language-medium, and attained thereby a tremendous eloquence. Any author, intuitively gifted and philologically and rhythmically aware, could go to the documents and records of a Gonzales, a Bennett or a Reed Smith and re-create a diction at once original, relevant, convincing — and comprehensible. Yet Peterkin and the Heywards, operating in the very environment of the dialect, could do nothing with it but run away from it. These immediately foregoing words are full of meaning to the negro film with speech. Coming to the negro talkie, we can find no more complete entrance than by way of The Emperor Jones. In itself The Emperor Jones is not particularly negro. One may question the thesis of atavism which runs through it, as one may easily deny the too patent psychology. But it is excellent theatre, a theatre of concurrent and joining devices. It is, in fact, better cinema than theatre, for its movement is uninterrupted, the uninterrupted movement can be borne only by the film and screen, for the necessity of changing the sets obliges an 113