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THE ACTUAL
job. That job is his business and he manages it as such. That is where the Hollywood studio differs from the British studio. The American film man knows nothing whatsoever about the aesthetics of the film, its possibilities or its development, and he cares less. He is out for his daily money, and the making of movies happens to be the way he is doing it. He might just as well be engaged in a chemical factory or coal-mine, except that the movie life is a pleasant one. Cine-organisation of studio work, about which so much is written in the second part of this survey, has been carried to excess in Hollywood. Each studio v/orks according to its own plan. No fresh production is started without careful pre-consideration as to its type, the selling methods to be employed with the completed picture, and the mentality of the people to whom it is to appeal. A schedule of production for a year's output is the result of much deliberation. No reasonable period of time or amount of money is spared on a movie. Every official in every studio has his allotted time and a definite amount of money for his particular job. In fact, he is simply a cog in a highly-efficient organisation, manufacturing pictures according to formula. Moreover, the Americans are perfectly serious-minded in their movie methods. They thought of them; they developed them; and they have profited by them. That is quite sufficient.
The American film man is amazingly hard-working. His heart is thoroughly in his job. He understands the business so long as it remains business; as soon as it becomes something more, entailing appreciation of beauty, subtlety of wit, psychology of emotions, then he is as good as finished. He takes refuge in calling it modern, artistic and what is even worse, highbrow. The only highbrow films are those made by dilettantes and intelligentsia {e.g., the American Fall of the House of Usher; Florey's Loves of Zero; Len Lye's Tusylava). No pure film is futurist, avant-garde, highbrow, or precious. No Soviet film is advanced or 'artistic' or even difficult to understand. It is, on the contrary, made for the simple peasant mind. But the Hollywood film man would call October or Mother an art film, for the reason that they are a more natural state of cinema than the sophisticated movie to which he is accustomed. The Last Laugh was an example of the primitive use of cinematic technique, yet the film man of Hollywood and Elstree will avoid discussing it. He is afraid of it. So also is the average film critic. If he sees any new film which he
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