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THE AMERICAN FILM
film director constructs his work. The pace of the American movie is not the pace of film. It is in the construction of the film, in the best use of the resources peculiar to the cinema, in the employment of the properties and the attributes of the screen, that the Americans fail. They have no knowledge of the rendering of their material. They are unable to contrive its assembling, its relationship, its meaning with any degree of sincerity. In the filmic treatment and composition of this rich material the American allows business to overcome the proper functions of the cinema. For this sense of filmic representation, for this real use of the cinema, it is imperative to turn to other countries whose traditions and culture make possible a better understanding of the values of the film as an instrument of expression.
Of the dialogue film period I do not propose to write at length for three logical reasons. Firstly, because the medium of the film as understood in this survey does not allow the reproduction of spoken dialogue in conjunction with the visual image of the speaker; secondly, because I do not believe that the dialogue film has any permanent value in the development of the film; and thirdly, because the dialogue movie will be superseded by the sound-and-visual-image cinema, of which there is yet no actual unified instance. In the general interests of this book, however, the events and brief tendencies of this illegitimate phase of the cinema may be mentioned.
The dialogue film became an actual commercial certainty when the Warner Brothers' producing concern, on the verge of financial collapse as a result of the failure of their silent programme, decided to exploit the Vitaphone, a talking film apparatus on the disc method for which they held the rights. The whole affair was a matter of chance, a shot in the dark, with a well-known variety artist as the box-office appeal. The gamble succeeded. To the general surprise of Hollywood, who had little faith in the dialogue film, the public of America received the novelty of the speaking and singing entertainment with open arms. It offered a reaction to the machine-made movie. Immediately a stampede took place among the producing firms for within a short time Warners were making tremendous profits out of their venture. There was a rush by the companies to secure equipment, to convert their silent studios into sound-proof ones, to build new stages, to find suitable subjects, to test the voices
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