Hollywood Spectator (1931)

August 29, 1931 5 ▼▼ The FIRST STEP that must be taken towards the rehabilitation of the financial structure of motion pictures is the return to first principles by the employment of music as a subjective aid to the assimilation by the audience of what is offered on the screen. With the gradual return of the camera as the principal story-telling medium — something that the Spectator has been urging for three years and the wisdom of which producers only now are recognizing — synchronized scores will become imperative. The more the camera is relied upon, the more silent scenes will there be in pictures, and it is hard to make impressive a scene that is shown in absolute silence. Then, too, if we have synchronized scores, the incidental chatter that would make my fight scene more impressive, could be eliminated without producing the flatness that characterizes a silent scene in a talking picture, as the music would serve as a substitute for it. Another consideration that makes imperative the universal adoption of synchronized scores as a part of screen entertainment, if we are to have less dialogue that the audience is forced to listen to, is the fact that the musical accompaniment will make it unnecessary for us to hear a great deal of incidental talking that is necessary to set scenes, but which does not play a part in telling the story. When there is no other sound coming to us from the screen, we feel that we must hear even the sweet nothings that the parties to a love scene breathe to one another; but if there were a musical accompaniment, we would be satisfied with merely viewing the scene without hearing what the characters were saying. The music, therefore, would make shooting easier as no attention would have to be paid to the dialogue in such scenes and no retakes of these scenes would be necessary because of flaws in the reading of lines. And much less dialogue would have to be written. ^ ▼ PRODUCERS TELL their writers that more action must be written into the scripts. Are they sure that their writers know what action is? Do they know themselves? I don’t think they do. If we can judge from what we see on the screen. the impression prevails that moving the characters about a room while the story is being told in dialogue is the proper method of applying action to talkie scenes. Anything moving on the screen is regarded as action. It isn’t. When what is being said in a scene is the matter of paramount importance to the audience, as it is in the majority of scenes in a dialogue picture, physical motion serves only to retard the real motion by distracting the attention of the audience from the matter of major interest. Such scenes would have more motion if the characters remained still while reading their lines. When we mention action in dealing with motion pictures, we do not mean physical action. In the successful picture every element must contribute to the one indispensable qual ity— the uninterrupted flow of filmic motion, the smooth progression of story interest. In a scene we see a man standing outside the room in which his wife is undergoing a serious operation. He is tense, rigidly still, his careworn face set as if carved in marble. Through such a scene the filmic motion progresses swiftly, much more swiftly than it would if he paced the corridor restlessly, waved his arms and tore his hair. Such physical motion would serve only to retard the filmic motion. Yet it is safe to say that in an effort to comply with the demand for more action, the majority of screen writers would consider they were doing it by making our suffering husband go through a routine of calisthenics of grief. Producers have many things that worry them: the lessening of dialogue, the increase of action, the proper place of music in screen entertainment, the trend of public taste, and other things that put wrinkles in the brows of our film barons. There is one order that they might issue that would settle all the troubles that beset them if they have in their employ people sufficiently intelligent to understand it and to carry it out — a terse order to their writers and directors: Learn your medium! Noise and Dreams ON MY WAY back from downtown Los Angeles I was held up at Seventh and Broadway while a screeching ambulance went by. I plowed through traffic to Wilshire and Western where a police car screamed its way across my path; then on to La Brea where my ears were assailed by the shrieks of an hysterical fire engine. More traffic .... its smells . . . . noises of all sorts .... unintelligible croaking of hoarse newsboys following me all the way. At Fairfax and Wilshire two cars collide. Farther on I pass a traffic policeman giving a ticket to a scared young girl. In Beverly Hills a woman signals for a right hand turn and turns left, and squirts hatred at me from her eyes when my brakes lock and I skid to her side. An advertising car emitting terrible music ... a dead animal in the roadway .... a speeding car misses me by — Sn The N ext Spectator We believe that it will be worth your while to read the next Spectator. The Editor, striving manfully not to repeat himself, surveys the present situation and presents some further arguments in favor of unit production. He also contends again that the story is not as important as the treatment accorded it. He devotes an article to the difference between physical action on the screen and filmic motion. He comments on other matters and reviews several pictures. Mr. Sherwood always can he counted upon to appeal to both the sense of humor and the intelligence of Spectator readers. Mr. Trumho will present some terse remarks and review ten or a dozen pictures. Among the reviews that will appear in the next issue will be those of the following pictures: Bought Skyline Transatlantic The Great Lover Monkey Business The Age for Love An American Tragedy Secrets of Silence Street Scene Sporting Blood Merely Mary Ann The Bad Hombre Football for the Fan Women Go On Forever a Secretary