The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Among the Magazines 17 kithin the scope of the movies." (A some- k'hat rash phrase, for no one now living knows "the scope of the movies"). "The lubtle delineation of character which facial repression alone can never record, is left •arefully to one side, and the attention of jhe photographer is turned to the only re- liable actress in the motion pictures : Dame Nature. . . . The great ice jam is superb md thrilling, as when Eliza crossed, but the lramatic values, being equally objective and xternal, are hardly more significant in one han in the other. This half of 'Way Down last is magnificent, gigantic, if you will, but is art, it does not exist. As art, it is the ipotheosis of Drury Lane." The writer is willing to reason about it bit. "Survey the best scenes in it, and judge by ts heights rather than by those abysmal iepths sounded in the first part. The ice jam, then: a girl floating on a cake of ice, I lover struggling to her across the treacher- us floe, a rescue on the brink of the water- falls. Here is no call for great acting. The )iily essential element of drama here is sus- 3ense, and that element is carried by a :ataclysm of nature. Great acting and true drama develop in the all but subconscious relation between people, in the labyrinth of the brain, not on a piece of ice. . . . Duse, Bernhardt, Mrs. Fiske, have never essayed the part of Eliza to my knowledge, not only because of its innate incongruity, but be- cause they were too clever to appear in a play where the big scene was stolen from them by a natural phenomenon^ If there is no art in the acting and play, it must be in the photography. But "the very perils and haste of the scene do not permit the leisurely arrangement of lines, the grouping, the contrast, the chiaroscuro, the balance that contribute to the composition of a work of art. . . . The two greatest objective fac- tors in any art, selection and rejection, are lacking." Leaving the big film prostrate in this fashion, Mr. Barlow proceeds to a more :onstructive line of argument. To strengthen his suggestions he sometimes becomes dan- gerously superlative—as when he declares "the intimate drama, without exaggeration or buffoonery, confined within four walls, can never be screened"—but most of it is in- teresting, convictional, and some of it may prove prophetic. "Ibsen, perfect on the stage, becomes, in the movies, such an amorphous and dull spectacle as one of DeMille's sex triangles' or the cream pie farce. So long as the cinema deals with material which can bet- ter be handled on the stage, so long shall the cinema be without its own art. Unques- tionably artistic things have been done in the movies: Broken Blossopis, The Kid, irradiated by Chaplin's genius, Sentimental Tommy, where the most illusive of atmos- pheres have been caught in more than one scene. But the charm of these productions does not establish the art." There is an unfortunate implication in the last sentence. Isolated examples cannot "establish" but incontestably they can "promise." Mr. Barlow's anxiety to prove- that the movie of the future will work in different spheres from the movie of today inclines him to advocate complete abandon- ment of present lines of effort. This is in- conceivable and, in view of "artistic suc- cesses" which he names himself, would be absurd. The rest of the article, with its .note of sound suggestion and wholesome optimism, is worth extended quotation. "All producers should see, mark, and in- wardly digest the foreign films, Caliyari and The Golem. They are the first films not perverted from a novel, not enlarged from a play. They possess purely movie scenarios and develop along lines of absolute cinema technique. It dawned upon the European producers that movies are a matter of black and white. In Caligari the effects of per- spective and contrast are astounding. A grotesque and horrible story unfolds amid grotesque and horrible surroundings. There is complete unity. The Bedlam in the "Duchess of Main" alone can compare with