The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

*9 The Educational Screen been tired of it for some time, but the producers have just discovered what the trouble is. Watch yourself, and see how often your criticism of a picture is, "Oh, it was all right, but it was the same old thing." And notice your own surprised gratification when you see something dif- ferent. For the truth is that the public —you, that is—is letting producers know what it wants by the efficacious method of staying away from what it doesn't want. It has been a long time about the business, for it had first to make up its mind about what it liked, and during that time the producers handed out whatever ' they pleased. The point upon which the future of motion pictures hinges is, as I see it, the question of their "universal appeal." That, it strikes me, is one of the great- est bits of "hokum" in the entire business. No one picture can ever be expected to appeal alike to all classes, and yet that is the assumption upon which the picture makers have been proceeding for all these years. "Hokum," they reasoned, pleases everybody, and from the standpoint of box-office receipts, everybody must be pleased. But the box-office has for some time been registering a falling off of pa- tronage. Producers have been surprised and deeply puzzled, and picture produc- tion has been of late in a state of con- siderable confusion. Various writers, in attempts to clear up the situation, have insisted that the movies are a popular art—not a fine art, that they are the art Of the masses, that their appeal is purely a democratic ap- peal. One writer puts the movies vio- lently in their place with the implication that at best they are hardly fit for more than a twelve-year-old intelligence. The general conclusion seems to be that the motion pictures will be limited in their achievements, literary, artistic, and his- trionic, to. just what comes within the comprehension of the literal-minded mi die class which supposedly supports thei In other words, the motion picture mu be aimed at the average man; otherwi it is out of its class. If there were such a person as an ave age man, the theory would be workab! but it takes high and low to strike i average, and what suits the one can nev suit the other. Progressive picture men to whom I ha 1 talked are welcoming a change. A fe producers and directors who have se< the situation all along are seizing t! opportunity to try the public with som ^ thing different. And so we have had su» fine, earnest efforts as "The Fotar Hors men of the Apocalypse," "Miss Lu Bett," "The Conquering Power," to mei tion only a few. One motion picture man, in discussii the present trend, gave me as his id of the solution of the future of motic pictures, and the ever-present censorshi what he called "selective" production ai exhibition. He said the need now is fi pictures definitely designed to satisi certain demands, and advertised for wh they are. We need a condition amor producers and exhibitors which will pe mit the person who wants fine, seric drama to be satisfied without being c fended by having "sex" stories hurled him; which will allow the seeker aft' light entertainment to see what he wan without first having to tax his brain wi a problem play. The stage does it; wl not the pictures? The problem is the producer's. Tl public, after it has signified its approv or disapproval, can only sit back ai watch. But the fact that the produce realize that there is a problem, and a striving to meet it, should do much temper the public impatience with wh it terms the shortcomings of the movie