The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

Page Four we are perpetuating the stupid standard. We are selecting our new ones from among those who best can perform the tricks of the old ones. There is nothing the matter with the kind of stories that are being written for the screen. The treatment that they receive after they are written is responsible for the discontent of the public. A change in the mode of production is needed. If producers can not be persuaded that they should strike a new note to serve their art, they surely can see the wisdom of doing it to serve their pocketbooks. There is nothing the matter with the screen art that a little variety will not Who's to Blame for Public's Indifference? WHAT, after all, is the difference between such a picture as The Patriot and The Man Who Laughs? Emil Jannings, the star of the first, has told me himself that Conrad Veidt, the star of the second, is a great actor; they are about equal in story value, and both were given fine productions. The Patriot is the most perfect picture ever made and the other is an indifferent production solely on account of the treatment each received. Rarely, if ever, do we find a picture with weaknesses that can be traced to the author or the actors. Almost every story selected has merit in it in its original form, and the merit disappears before it reaches the screen. Relieving authors and actors of responsibility for the devitalizing process, brings us to scenario writers, directors and supervisors. We can get rid of the poor scenario writer simply by replacing him with a good one, so we may eliminate him, leaving us only directors and supervisors, who, as all Hollywood knows, are to blame for the fact that the public thinks pictures are getting worse. There are perhaps a dozen directors who understand stories sufficiently to be of assistance when a script is being prepared, but all the others think they do. I can not see on the screen any evidence of the fact that we have in our midst one supervisor who is qualified thoroughly for his job as his job is conducted now. In the last analysis, of course, the supervisor is responsible for all the ills of the screen, but I will be generous with him and place a portion of the blame on the director. Between them they are entitled to all the blame. The director may be able to handle scenes and sequences with ability, and the supervisor may have talent for organization, but they fall down. Why? Because they are trying to tell a story, and they are not story-tellers. The man who could tell one — who did tell one — the author, was forgotten the moment he sold his story, and a director and a supervisor, neither of whom has had any experience in writing stories, gravely begin the task of telling this one on the screen. A Lubitsch and a Borzage can get away with it, but we make seven hundred features a year and get less than a dozen Patriots and Seventh Heavens. The externals of the rest of the seven hundred generally are satisfactory. Casts are capable and the settings adequate, but stories fail to entertain because they are not told in an entertaining way. In any other industry a parallel condition could not have continued as long as this condition has persisted in pictures. In any other industry the weak spot would have been located and eliminated. There is no evidence of the imminence of its location and elimination from pictures. THE FILM SPECTATOR May 12, 1928 That is possibly the queerest thing about the business. All its customers are complaining of the lack of a specific quality in its products, the reason for the lack can be determined, and year after year the industry continues to ignore the reason and to tolerate the system that perpetuates it. The producers, the men who hire the directors and supervisors, make the great mistake of believing that they themselves understand the business they are in. The most successful business man I know is John B. Miller, whose brain and personality built up the Southern California Edison Company, one of the world's greatest purveyors of electricity. Ask Miller a question about the technical side of producing electricity and he will ask you to wait while he buzzes for someone to answer your question. He has built two great departments: one to make electricity and the other to sell it, but he makes no bones about the fact that he himself can neither make it nor sell it. But he never interferes with those to whom he has entrusted both jobs. * * * "IVhen an Executive Is Not an Executive THE difference between John B. Miller and our production chiefs is that the latter can not be persuaded that they do not know all about pictures. It is another of the queer things about the business. If Miller and Louis B. Mayer swapped jobs, I have enough respect for Mayer's business sense to believe that he would acknowledge that he knows nothing about electricity, and that his concern would be only to preserve the fine organization that his predecessor built up; but if Bliller ran true to the form of his new job and did not violate all the traditions of the picture business, he would begin at once to tell an author exactly how a longshoreman would behave when he discovered that his bride of a month had run away with the son of the waterfront banker; he would tell his costume designer how the beads should be sewed on an evening gown, and he would illustrate to the heavy exactly how a Turkish diplomat would enter a Bulgarian drawing-room. He would be so busy doing these things that there would be no efficiency in his organization and his pictures would cost him twice as much money as they should. No one can dispute successfully the fact that for every dollar spent legitimately in Hollywood on the production of a motion picture, another dollar is wasted. Perhaps half of this wasted dollar could be saved with but a slight disturbance to the business. Only a revolution would save all of it. As long as producers think, and encourage those under them to think, that the picture business is unlike all other businesses, just that long will a dollar continue to be wasted every time another dollar is spent wisely. If ever they could be brought to a realization of the fact that the conduct of the film industry should be patterned after that of every successful industry, they would find that they had made a start towards not only increased profits, but towards better pictures. If the executives would become such in fact, instead of only in name, as at present, the situation would improve amazingly. Chart the organization of one of our big producing concerns and you will have a diagram of an efficient machine. On paper the organization is perfect, but when performing it grinds and creaks and gets its bearings heated because every man on the payroll knows that the