Hollywood Spectator (1931)

18 Hollywood Spectator v ▼ PRODUCERS ASSURE us that their greatest desire now is to get more action into their motion pictures, a desire which takes the form of an order to their writers. Anything that has to be inserted into a film creation upon someone’s order, does not belong in it. 7 he creation itself dictates the amount of action that should be in it. If when a story is prepared for shooting it does not contain enough action, the remedy, if the making of a perfect motion picture be the objective, is not to force action into it. The story should be discarded and the producer should select one that contains sufficient action without being tortured to take on more. V V v vJohn Gould Fletcher, an artist with an analytical brain and sound judgment, says this in a booklet which he entitles, The Crisis of the Film: “If some miraculous power could give . . . audiences the idea that what the screen was to give them was not a story at all, but only pictures — -that is to say, pictorial art — the whole motion picture industry would take a great step forward. The theme in itself is unimportant, the growth and development of it is practically all.” I am afraid I have tired Spectator readers with repetitions of the same thoughts. Fletcher’s conclusions are the only ones that can be reached by anyone who thinks in terms of the screen. T ▼ ^ ▼ Quite FREQUENTLY in American and foreign publications we see references to the fact that Hollywood is growing up mentally. Writers who visit us are impressed with the intellectual standard of our social functions. There always have been plenty of intellectual people in Hollywood. In the silent days they expressed themselves on the screen. Denied that outlet now, they express themselves in drawing rooms. It is there that visiting intellectuals encounter them, and the visitors are impressed by Hollywood’s brains while the outside world persists in refusing to be impressed by Hollywood’s pictures. ▼ T ▼ ^ WRITERS are struggling to keep down the amount of dialogue in their scripts. I tell the writers whom I am coaching that they must start with the assumption that all their characters are dumb and that the camera is their only storytelling medium. Anyone who starts off with that idea need not worry about the amount of dialogue a script will contain. He will be surprised to find out how much story can be told without the aid of audible speech. Writers, however, are not responsible for the fact that pictures have talked themselves to death. They wrote only what their bosses demanded. ▼ T ^ ^ PHILIP K. ScHEUER, Wilting in the Los Angeles Times: “Hergesheimer happens to be my own especial favorite; but the lost ecstasy, the bittersweet savor of vanished years which permeates his novels, is untranslatable (on the screen).” Anything is possible to the screen. It can accentuate anything that any other art can do. I do not agree with Philip. The screen can excel in its treatment of the very elements that he places beyond its powers. T ▼ ^ ▼ There IS disappointment in store for those who view Sob Sister in expectation of finding again the Jimmy Dunn of Bad Cirl. In the picture directed by Frank Borzage Dunn is a lovable, emotional human being who goes straight to our hearts; in Sob Sister, directed by Alfred Santell, he is just an actor speaking lines, quite an ordinary actor speaking ordinary lines. As the sob sister, Linda Watkins is equally unimpressive. The picture is not up to the new standard that Fox productions have set, principally because one can not imagine a girl of her sort doing the things that Miss Watkins does. T T ^ ▼ The FILM INDUSTRY attaches too much importance to box-office names. The theoretical perfect motion picture would need nothing but its own perfection to give it box-office value. The only value of a box-office name is that of a substitute for perfection in a picture. If a producer thought only in terms of the picture he was making, and cast it with regard only for its own welfare as a work of screen art, he would find that the desired box-office values would be attained automatically. T ▼ A. Jympson Harman meets most of the Hollywood stars who visit London. In the London Evening News he tells how they impress him: “Few of the famous Hollywood stars one meets impress one as being particularly clever people. A modicum of intelligence and a great deal of physical attraction go to the making of a star. The rest is photography, camera trickery, clever scenario-writing and able direction.” T T ^ ▼ I AM AN INV'ETERATE radio addict. An instrument whose tones I keep subdued, is within reaching distance of the chair in which I sit and do my writing. I would like the announcers to know that I am not curious about the copyright owners. As far as I am concerned radio orchestras can go ahead and play any old thing they like, whether or not they have the permission of the copyright owners. ▼ T ^ ▼ In RECKLESS Living Norman Foster bets two dollars on a horse at four to one. “If I had won, I would have had eight dollars, instead of two,” he tells his wife. The dialogue writer should take a course at Agua Caliente. If Norman had won, he would have had ten dollars. V T ^ ▼ An ENGLISH paper says that the novelty of the sound camera saved the film industry three years ago, and it wonders what novelty can be discovered to save it now. There is just one — the novelty of applying to motion pictures the fundamental principles of screen art. ▼ T We WERE quite comfortable at the beach all summer, but a condition arose which made it impossible for me to feel altogether satisfied: my pipe tobacco was too damp all the time. So we’ve moved to a hilltop in Hollywoodland. ▼ ▼ ▼ v I NEVER have seen anything more beautiful than the faces of children at a circus when the clowns are going through their antics. I don’t look at the clowns. T T ▼▼ The ONLY motion picture that can be a real financial success is one that tells its story with the camera. Twenty words — no more — no less.