Hollywood Spectator (1931)

July 18, 1931 5 ing as a business, with the result that they have attained precious little art and now have precious little business. Everyone is trying his hand at diagnosing the ills of the industry and suggesting a remedy that will make it well again. “Hollywood’s greatest need is for good stories in sufficient quantity,” is B. P. Schulberg’s diagnosis; and his remedy: “This problem is being solved gradually through the acquisition of more outside material, such as best-selling novels and hit plays, and an alert seeking-out of capable story minds as they show themselves within or outside the industry.” ▼ ▼ The EFFICACY of a remedy depends upon the accuracy of the diagnosis. In this case the diagnosis is wrong. Never before in its history has the screen given us such good stories as it is giving us now; and now, as always, the supply of good stories is unlimited. Stories are important in the minds of producers only because they do not know what kind of business they are in. They think it is one of selling stories to the public, whereas its business is to sell motion pictures. There’s a vast difference. A motion picture is a work of art, and its story merely is one of the materials that enter into its composition. The success of the picture does not depend as much upon the excellence of the story as it does upon the quality of the craftsmanship revealed in the mastery of all the elements of which the creation is composed. Let me make one final effort to impress upon those who make our pictures the commercial significance of screen art and the importance of its application to their product. I approach the task with no hope of success, for the minds that were responsible for the present financial distress of the film industry, are incapable of grasping the reason for their failure. If they knew what is the matter with them, there wouldn’t be anything the matter with their business. However. let us proceed. ^ ^ I LIKE London. There is something there to cater to every mood. Many times I was impelled by an esthetic urge to walk from my hotel down the Strand and across Trafalgar Square to the National Gallery, where I would sit for a half an hour, or perhaps longer, before Constable’s Hay Wain, my favorite of all the landscapes painted by the great English artist. His extraordinary skill at handling light and shade to show us objects as he saw them, the house by the pond, the wagon and horses in the water, the trees in the left background, the sky in the right background, the walking dog in the foreground with its head turned towards its owner in the wagon — these, and a boat and shadows of tree trunks in the water, the marvelous coloring of the father of modern English landscape painting, combined to provide me with entertainment of which I never tired. Had I come across the farm that Constable painted, had I assembled the objects as they are assembled on the canvas — in other words, had I seen in real life the story that Constable tells within the frame of the picture — I can’t imagine that it would have held my gaze for even a moment, and if I remarked it at all, no doubt I would have thought it unattractive. ▼ ▼ It WAS NOT Constable’s story — every work of any art is a story of some sort — that held me, not the wagon and the horses, the dog, the pond, the trees and the sky. I feasted my eyes many times on that painting because there was exquisite pleasure for me in the contemplation of the art that Constable displayed, the way he made me see things as he saw them. One day in Milan I entered the refectory in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie to view Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. I wanted to see the original because in the Royal Academy, London, I had seen the finest copy in existence, that painted by Marco d’Oggiono, Da Vinci’s pupil, and had been fascinated by the extraordinarily expressive hands of the disciples. I was curious to see if they were as expressive in the original as in the copy. ^ ^ Does ANYONE suppose that in real life I would have gone out of my way to look at the hands of some quite ordinary-looking men? Again it was art that I was contemplating. If you were walking along a street in Amsterdam and encountered the men of the Night Watch grouped exactly as Rembrandt grouped them, would you stand spell-bound before them as you stand spell-bound before that great canvas? Of course not. You are not interested in the men. You are held solely by the art of the great Dutch painter. You admire the manner in which he makes you feel that you are looking at the real people. If the real people were put in front of you, however, you would have no interest in them. Constable did not gam his fame from a barnyard. He gained it by the skill with which he presented a barnyard. Corot has not sold tree-lined roads of France to the world; In the Next Spectator ▼ The Editor Discusses — What Makes Audiences Laugh? Music’s Place in Motion Pictures What the Box-Office Needs Picture Stocks As An Investment Mr. Sherwood Writes About — Dude Ranch in Hollywood Lubitsch — The Teutonic Gaul Don’t Mention the Weather Mr. Beaton's Literary Lumber The Sprayer of Flit Mr. Trumbo’s Subjects — A Review of Drinkwater’s Biography of Carl Laemmle Dialogue and Audience Disagreement Dramatic Values of Silence Are Writers Gentlemen? Reviews of Several Pictures — Among them A Free Soul, White Shoulders , Branded, Wild Horse, Man In Possession, Tabu, The Girl Habit, Big Business Girl, Chances, Public Defender, Three Who Loved, Night Angel. An Article by Monitor, entitled The Blue Horizon, announced to appear in this issue of the Spectator, unfortunately has been crowded out and will appear in the next number.