FilmIndia (1940)

JACK WARNER main uiriits progressiue pigtures Warner's The Studio With A Social Conscience An Example Indian Producers Should Emulate * * * HARRY WARNER Warner Brothers and their allied concerns — Vitaphone, First National, Cosmopolitan — have many memorable screen achievements to their credit. One of the earliest motion picture pioneers in America, the Brothers Warner were the first to introduce sound films, the first to produce a 'musical' ancf the first to produce a colour film. For their initiative and enterprise no doubt they have been amply rewarded. Today they own and control the premier production and distribution concern in Hollywood, a chain of 400 theatres all over U.S.A., dozen* of leading musical publishing firms and many other allied organizations. They are millionaires — or, perhaps, billionaires. THEY ARE DIFFERENT To us, however, what is important is not the commercial success o f Warners, not how much they have made out of the show business, but what they have given to us through their pictures — the ideas and the ideals that they have propagated on the screen. And it is because we feel that among American producers, the Warner Brothers alone have a consistent record of producing the largest number of socially significant and progressive pictures that we in India have learnt to honour and respect their name. That is why we hold up the example of Warner Brothers and their pictures for the inspiration and guidance of our Indian producers. According to a writer, "Warner's is the only major studio that seems to know or cares to know what is going on in America besides sex dalliance, pearl-handled gunplay, PAUL MUNI and the giving of top coats to comedy butlers." In other words, it is the only studio acquainted with the life of the common people realistically and in the words of Upton Sinclair, "the only Democrats among the motion picture magnates.'' THE PROOF Take a look at these titles picked at random from several hundred Warner pictures released during the last seven years — "I Am A Fugitive From The Chain Gang", "Bordertown", "They Won't Forget", "The Life of Louis Pasteur", "The Life of Emile Zola", "A Child is Born". "Crime School", "Angels With Dirty Faces", "Marked Woman", "White Angel", "Dust Be My Destiny". "Each Dawn I Die", "Confessions of a Nazi Spy", "Juarez". "Dr. Erhilch's Magic Bullet'' and "We Are Not Alone." You would immediately see that there is a streak of social consciousness running through all these pictures. In each of them there is a plea, obvious or subtle, for social justice, for better human relationships, for decent moral standards, for peace and the brotherhood of man. It can't be an accident. There must be a design in this crowd of purposeful themes, a reason why Warner Brothers studios specialize in controversial and progressive pictures instead of producing charming but meaningless boy-meets-girl romantic melodramas. FATHER WARNER WAS A COBBLER To my mind, the reason lies in the fact that the Brothers came from the common people. Their father E. G. ROBINSON GEORGE RAFT was a cobbler, and they have forgotten neither their origin nor the hardships they had to endure on their way up, the battles they had to fight with usurers and monopoly capitalists. And they have not forgotten the simple code of decency that thenpoor and honest parents taught them in their childhood. It is the same code that now governs their selection of themes for motion pictures. "T h e motion picture", says Harry Warner, "present right and wrong. By showing both right and wrong we teach the right.'" THEMES AND THEIR IMPORTANCE Take any of the above-mentioned pictures— and they are only a few out of many — and you find this ideal of Harry Warner illustrated. Among them you will find certain trends and cycles which profitably may be analysed and studied — even though only a brief mention can be made here. The most outstanding contribution of the Warner Brothers is the series of screen biographies that they have presented. Biographies with a difference and with a purpose. Not s pectacular biographies of kings and conquerors but of fighters liberators JAMES CAGNEY of humanitarians, social justice, of idealists. Pasteur, Florence Nightingale ("The 45 for and