Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

FEBRUARY, 1946 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 21 fought tooth and nail to prevent its inclusion in the script. 3. And this is an over-all must. When the producer is in a good frame of mind and likes the way things are going, always refer to the team in the first person singular, such as: “I think,” or “I did,” or “I will do.” When the producer is irritable and disgusted with the progress that is being made, always refer to the team in terms of “We think,” or “We did,” or “We will do.” It would be dandy if, in the latter case, we could indicate our collaborator and say, “He thinks,” or “He did,” or “He will do,” — but that is rather too obvious for practical usage. In conclusion, I want to say that I am well aware of the almost certain reprisals which this article will evoke. You are probably overcome v/ith admiration for my courage in writing it. The fact is, I didn’t write it. My collaborator did. John Lardner, who was once a film reviewer for The New Yorker, in an article called “Last Word,” continues the campaign of The Screen Writer against the incompetence of most movie reviewers. Says Mr. Lardner : Theodore Strauss, a critic turned screen writer, wrote morosely about the New York reviewers in the first issue of this magazine. The trouble with Mr. Strauss’s piece is that it did not go far enough. There is no hope for film reviewing in New York or any place else as it is presently constituted. * * * Mr. Strauss wrote that the lowgrade critics — Daily News, Hearst, etc. — were no good. He said that the high-toned critics — the double-talkers— were no good. He was in the groove up till then, but he mistakenly went on to speak words much too gentle for what he called the center group. Maybe this is because he used to be a Times man. Times men have a special kind of myopia toward the distinctive, nay, spactacular, defects of the Times. There was a good writer on the Times once, name of Johnson, and there is another now, name of Berger. That about covers it. Guy Endore, who is a novelist and researcher as well as a screen playwright, in “Inflation, Please !” bewails the pover ty of many screen writers. Says he : “One third of our active screen writers are really little guys whose income is somewhere between that of a waiter and that of a barber.” “Indeed,” said Junior. “In fact, one out of every ten of our members earned absolutely nothing.” ★ ★ ★ Arch Oboler, one of radio’s most distinguished playwrights, who has lately turned to motion pictures as a writer, director, and producer, continues the discussion started by Ranald MacDougall in the September issue of The Screen Writer on improving sound elements in movies. Says Mr. Oboler : Having recently completed a picture in which I attempted, in a degree, to bring radio’s sound consciousness to the cinema medium, I feel that I can realistically discuss Mr. MacDougall’s theoretics. All through the writing of the screen play I was tremendously conscious of particularities of sound effect and music that I wanted myself, the director, to put into the final product. Intimacy of sound in intimate scenes, background sound effects to create mental images beyond those incited by dialog and photography, the use of sound effects to heighten, where possible, the dramatic effect of the words and action, and the musical use of the “sting” chords and dissonances and musical dissolves about which Mr. MacDougall wrote so fluently — all these were indicated in my script. At the most, five percent of the critics made even the slightest reference to the sound track; not a single critic made any comment about what Ranald thinks would be most noteworthy— the variation of sound levels, from scene to scene, in key with the setting. Even as the critics failed to note these nuances of sound, so, too, I believe were they ignored by the audience. In the two-dimensional medium of motion pictures, the photographic image is the primary one and as long as the sound track is kept at an optimum level of mechanical excellence, the movie-goer obtains complete satisfaction. As a craftsman I enjoyed the work in sound, but I cannot truthfully say that all this meticulous soundtrack polishing made any appreciable difference in the over-all values of the picture. ★ ★ ★ Contributors to the January, 1946, issue of The Screen Writer include Scenarists Howard Koch, F. Hugh Herbert, Alvah Bessie, and Arthur Strawn. In “The Historical Film — Fact and Fantasy,” Mr. Koch presents a paper on the shortcomings of historical and biographical photoplays. Says Mr. Koch : A writer in the historical field must find himself faced with one primary question — to what extent must the factual record of actual characteis or events determine the characters and events he is recreating ? This problem presents itself to the screen writer in an even more stark foim than to historical novelists, because of the necessity for simplifications in a film. Whereas the novelist may spend paragraphs explaining a particular action of the characters so that all its implications and shadings are manifest, the screen writer can only let the characters and actions speak for themselves. * * * Cecil DeMille, you may remember, was commissioned to put together a picture that would telescope the significant portions of the history of America into a single performance. I did not see the film as it was edited then, but of course we have all seen many of the pictures whose parts were spliced together into this typical De Mille colossus, entitled Land of Liberty. An observant critic who attended the performance told me that the whole dreary panorama failed to produce one single human being or one substantial historical sequence. I suppose it can be regarded as another demonstration that the whole can be no better than the sum of its parts. On a somewhat different historical level is a Civil War picture made a few years ago that became one of the world’s most popular films. Gone With The Wind deserves a more concrete analysis. The first portion of the film effectively dramatized the impact of war on a stratum of Southern society. Several characters, notably Scarlett