FilmIndia (1940)

FILM INDIA September 1940 subtly placed within the picture space. The subsidiary line of the arm both breaks the shadow and forms a secondary leading line up to the second oval. This space division and the shapes of the background and shadow areas are beautifully planned" and so and so forth. Every line, every tone all conforming to a set of established principles that are the basis of pictorial composition. The uninitiated unconsciously admire the results, little knowing of these rules, but the rules nevertheless exist — and it is with their help and yet another combination of them that will enable the creative artist to make another thing of beauty. So it is in this business of film-craft. INJECTING MOOD INTO THE AUDIENCE Emotions the world over are common to mankind, the ways and means of their expression may slightly differ from place to place. But the mode of making thern react to situations are fairly constant. And if we are conversant with them there can be no hit and miss method in our work. There has been a recent release that had been acclaimed by a favourable press as only a little short of the acme of perfection. The story by an acknowledged writer of almost international fame, was beyond criticism, and the performance iind direction both of established reputation and the technique was flawless. And yet the picture failed to draw the crowds of even a third rate production. I have always maintained even against the views of these acknowledged critics, that this particular production flouted the very elements of film-craft. The story dealt with the effects of the persecution and subsequent reactions of the heroine for a sin committed earlier by her mother. Throughout the picture the director has tried to count upon the audience for sympathy, ami for an understanding of those reactions the cause that led upto which he had failed to convey at all. The result was a total loss of appreciation and the picture failed to draw. How many of our directors realise for instance that before they start a story the audience must be initiated into its dramatic moods, after which they will easily accept all that you give them within that limited scope? Can I forget the opening scene of "Waterloo Bridge" and how unconsciously, without a single scene of war were we led into the spirit of wartime? This particular picture, incidentally, provides a wealth of opportunity for careful study. WHY NOT STUDY THE RIGHT WAY Of course many of our leading directors must have "studied" it, but with the slightly different viewpoint of how with certain modifications they could make an Indian version out of it. Brains must be hard at work even now devising substitutes for those situations that could not blatantly be adapted to Indian conditions. That is how at present our directors 'study' a picture. Instead, if only they went a little more deeply into a study of the principles that govern the art of motion picture production as exemplified in these masterpieces, and then sat down to apply them to their own work, the results would be certainly much more edifying. But a study of principles mean an admission of the fact that principles exist and that would be against the ethics of 'artistic' endeavour. For according to them, an artist knows no law except that which his brain may direct at the moment. And that is why so many of our 'artistic' directors give us their brilliant failures. Once in a while they certainly do give a thing or two of acknowledged merit, but does not the quack also occasionally cure his patient? Luck may even favour him in a succession of cures, but it is only the skilled physician, conversant with the principles that govern the detection and cure of disease, that can give us a much longer list of successes and with certainly much more ease and certainty. CAMOUFLAGE ART Is there a single director today (possibly with but a single solitary exception) that has given us a uninterrupted series of successful pictures? One failure hemmed in between successes may be due to a certain amount of chance, but a succession of them even when they come after a longer list of successes, is a sure indication that something is wrong. It olearjy i-.^ieates that this partic uiar d:rector has all along been relying upon chance and upon the fickleness of that ever accommodating jade Dame Fortune. Is it not time at this stage, when our industry has left behind its childhood and is certainly in the later stages of adolescence if not of complete maturity, for our directors to realire tre v^Iue of study as a means of improvement in their work? Should they not try and emerge from the protective influence of that veil of so-called art that they have so long built around themselves for the last 26 years? Must they not realise that the very emancipation of the industry lies in their appreciation and s-.udy of the principles that govern their work — principles whose • existence they cannot deny to-day? Will they not treat their work as an exact science, productive of exact results, and not as something indefinite ard •'arty' depending upon mere chance for its success? Perhaps it is because the word science conjures up in their minds the idea of machinery that they shrink hi applying it to their work. But machinery is merely one of the outcomes of science, and we admit machinery is cold, calculating, unemotional and can scarcely bear any relation to the higher forms of dramatic art. But science is not machinery alone — it is the fundamental and systematised form of any study of acknowledged principles. It is only when we do not understand something entirely that we designate it as Art — but tomorrow when we come to appreciate and systematise its study that we describe it as a science. And the Art of Direction to-day has definitely evolved itself out of the realms of chance and deserves to take its place among the acknowledged Sciences of the day. 56