The Film Renter and Moving Picture News (Apr-Jun 1922)

§ THE FILM RENTER & MOVING PICTURE NEWS. A NOVELIST ON Alfred Ollivant, the Author of ‘Boy Woodburn,” FILM PRODUCING. discusses the film and the novel in the light of personal experience. ; T hes A house on the Northern heights, the nearest approach in the London district that be has been able to get to the Swiss Alps, whieh have done so much to raise him from hig invalid’s bed, Mr. Alfred Ollivant, the author of that wonderful study of animal life, “ Owd Bob?” and other novels, whose “ Boy Woodburn ”’ was trade shown in London last week, accorded an interview to a representative of Tim I'tum RENTER. Mr. ALFRED OLLIVANT, VIEWS ON ‘‘ BOY WOODBURN.” Asked for his observations on the film, Mr. Ollivant said: “* It was an excellent film. I’ve no doubt it is the best racing film that has yet been shown on the screen. I say that without prejudice, for the scenario is Mr. Guy Newall’s and not mine. = And it is more than a racing film. There is poetry in it and pathos. The scenes on the Downs, at Putnam’s, amid the animals, are idyllic. It was the first film seen by my little daughter aved six. She sat engrossed from start to finish, only an occasional little chuckle at my side telling me she was alive at all. “ Miss Ivy Duke made a beautiful Boy Woodburn, She was athletic, fierce, gracious, and tender in turns. The only criticisin I have to make of Mr. Guy Newall as Jim Silver is not one usually made of a kinema star who is also a producer—he was too self-effacing. © We could well have done with more of him. A smaller man would have thrust himself more forward. Mr. John Alexander's Monkey Brand was perfect. Whenever he was on the screen I was in chuckles. THE NOVELIST’S PART. “The one criticism I have to make is general. It applies not to Boy Woodburn and Mr. Guy Newall, but to the film industry at large. I speak as a novelist, Digitized by Gor gle though not for other novelists. I feel that the film industry hiais got into a bad tradition. In my view stories by living novelists can never be perfectly expressed cn the film until the man who created the story, the characters, the atmosphere, is commissioned by the producing company to write what [I may call the basic scenario, The ordinary novelist has not, I admit, the expert knewledge to write a technically perfect scenario; but he could and should write a basic scenario. Indeed, ii my view, the only man capable of re-creating a firstrate book on the film is the man who wrote that book. And when a producing company calls in the author to help in this matter then we shall get films of an artistic end literary merit undreamed of heretofore. ARTIST AND PRODUCER. “What To oam pleading for is that the literary man should do the literary work where his own books are concerned. When he has supplied the basic scenario by all means let the producing company shut the door on him, and hand his scenario over to their scenario editor to alter with scissors and paste as his experience dictates. “ T think that any novelist who was well off enough to be able to refuse any offer which did not suit him, should refuse to sell the film rights of any novel of his, except on the condition that he wrote the scenario upon which the film is to be built. The present scheme does not, and cannot work. The creation of an artist cannot be successfully filtered through the mind of another man, however good that man may be. WHERE THE CRITICS ERR. “Tsay all this, because I find that critics are on the wrong tack when they talk about the matter. The ‘Times’ critic the other day congratulated Mr. Rafael Sabatini on having the self-respect to write a scenario of one of his novels, * The Recoil,” and asked) why other novelists could not be equally keen and_ self-respecting about their work. That is a totally wrong conception. All that self-respecting authors should ask from the producer is to be allowed to do the work which they alone can do as it should be done, “ With regard to the presentation of a story, my feeling is that the novel is—at the present time, whatever the future may hold—a more potent instrument than the film, given the type of mind that can assimilate beauty through the written word. Nevertheless, as Lord Ashfield, I think, said the other day, many people imbibe from pictures what they could never imbibe from books, und thus, of course, pictures fill lacunae which literature has not filled. There is no doubt that ‘ pictures ’ quicken the vesthetic sense in millions formerly dead to the appeal of the traditional forms of Art.”’ Original from NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY