Exhibitors Herald (Dec 1919)

EXHIBITORS HERALD VISITING THE ORIENT WITH EDGAR LEWIS A Little T rip to Japan and China Seeking Realism for His Future Film Productions "What's become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip? Chose land travel or seafaring, Boots and staff, or chest and scrip. Rather than pace up and down Any longer, London town?" —BROWNING OU remember in the poem. Waring, the most beloved group of workers in London — w r i t e r s , dreamers, doers — stole away from his friends and went sailing the seas to distinct lands, exploring strange worlds, enriching his life with new experiences, and above all, searching deeper and deeper into the hearts of his fellow men in every land and clime. Well, all last year, when we, the lonely ones who were left behind, met on the Rialto. we asked each other the question. "What's become of Edgar Lewis?" "You may depend upon it, he's busy doing something great." was the invariable answer. Whenever you do not hear of Edgar Lewis for a while, you may be sure that the result of his disappearance and silence will be another one of those motion picture masterpieces of his for which he is famous — those pictures that excite the interest, touch the hearts, and stir the imagination of the world in general, and revive our own particular faith in the permanency of the motion picture as a great factor in life. * * # We might have imagined him in Hawaii, or somewhere in the Southern Seas, searching for islands that lie enchanted in the moonlight, or perhaps off for a "long shot" of some glorious mountain range in the sunlight, or after any one of those wonderful thrilling scenes of beauty that we have come to expect in the Lewis pictures — but who ever dreamed that he would turn up in China — in Japan? How did we know that even while we were speculating about him he was alone with the Great Buddha at Kamakura, or standing, like some giant defender before the walls of the City of the Dead at Canton, or descending the steps before the temple at Yokohama? And yet, if we had but taken second thought we might have known that a man with the vision of Edgar Lewis sees no geographical boundaries to beauty and art, and that to bring these elements into the making of his pictures, there would be no effort too great, no land too distant, and no work too strenuous. It takes a man like Lewis to realize that wherever people love or hate, sorrow, rejoice or worship, there too will be found something to be expressed in song or story — or in motion pictures. And the making of motion pictures Lewis, perhaps more than any other one man. has labored sincerely and persistently to change from an industry into an art. We did not know of his agony on the shore of the Inland Sea — that sea whose very name suggests beauty and romance — when he found that an oriental edict forbade the use of the camera just at the spots where most of all he would haved loved to "shoot" — but he was comforted when he remembered that there was still Lake Champlain. the Rocky Mountains, and the prairies of the west — and after all, it was the life in the Orient he was after. * * * Being in the possession of stories, some of the scenes of which are lead in China and Japan, to him it seemed Edgar Lewis in the City of the Dead. Tanton, China (top) and on the temple steps at Yokohama, Japan (helow). the most natural thing in the world to go and study those countries — if the story is laid in China, those who see his pictures are straightway brought to the streets of Shanghai — if in Japan, then there are moving pictures of Japanese festivals, market scenes, processions of shinto priests, people going in and out of the temple, dancing girls — and all the pageantry of the orient. Ever a student and a searcher for still deeper secrets of the drama of life, Mr. Lewis spent much of his time studying the Chinese and Japanese theatres, and finds a point of similarity in the basic idea of oriental acting and in the requirements of motion picture acting, and that is the importance of pantomine and facial expression. The oriental actors are subtle pantomimists, and no maker of motion pictures could fail to be interested in the clever way in which, by means of pantomine, the actor conveys his thought to the audience. Much of the scenery and stage settings exist only in the imagination of the audience, who think they see them only because the actor pretends they are there. This is "playing" in very truth — creating an illusion so great as to stir the imagination of an audience into seeing what is in the actor's mind. Once in a while a sign or placard is carried on, Mr. Lewis says, "to designate some special place, which serves the same purpose that the "title" does in the motion picture. * * * In talking of this oriental trip, both Mr. and Mrs. Lewis felt that it would be impossible to stand in the presence of those fanes and temples over which so many centuries have brooded, without feeling impressed with their solemnity, and without gaining at least some gleam of understanding of the working of the oriental mind. But the Lewises by nature are not ancestor worshippers. They respect the past for what lessons it may contain, but it is with the future they are most concerned. "It is on the future." said Mr. Lewis, "that our eyes should be fixed, so that when it becomes the present, it will not surprise us — so that we will know what to do with it." Mr. Lewis came away from his visit to the Great Buddha at Kamakura. with one thought uppermost in his mind, and that was — patience, the virtue that in making a good motion picture is needed more than any other thing — to make good pictures and bring to them fresh inspiration, one must stop sometimes, take a breathing spell, and then do a little dreaming — like Buddha — but everything in the universe moves — the tide, the planets, the trees — effort means eternal progress — so after the dreaming there must come activity, then greater pictures— then more dreaming, and still greater pictures — and who knows what part motion pictures — says thousands of years hence — shall play in the destiny of this world, whose very existence depends upon — motion. 87