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LESS SAUSAGE-MACHINE CELLULOID 345
America has invoked its Sherman anti-trust laws to bring about a cessation of the pernicious system of block booking pictures, and her exhibitors have a greater freedom of choice in what they show. The independent producer therefore has, in turn, a bigger chance than before of getting his productions screened.
His path is still beset with the one difficulty that has always obstructed independent production, namely finance. The big distributors will give him backing but all too often lay down conditions \\ liich are irksome, the condition that they must first approve story, star, and production methods. If he capitulates, the independent is lost in the vicious circle again. His hope lies in the fact that Hollywood is becoming increasingly aware that it must respect the independence of the independent producer or itself become entangled once more in miles of machine-made celluloid.
There are other revolutions going on in picture making which are of equal importance from the point of view of the film-goer who is in search of good screen entertainment.
Time was when stars were born simply on the strength of a new type of characterisation. Theda Bara hit the headlines because she created the " vamp," the femme fatale who was then something new in screen bad women. Theda's women were bad, but, unlike their predecessors, they were also seductive. William S. Hart became world famous because he combined the tough, stern-faced, twofisted, two-gun, tough guy of the Wild West with a comforting line in instruction in the scriptures as moral uplift. Douglas Fairbanks arrived to play the nice clean American young man whose muscles could extricate him from every situation, with the added charm of a smile and blink just to prove he was no mere thick-pated athlete, while the mysteriously aloof and chillingly beautiful Greta Garbo harped for many a picture on one theme — there is beauty in sorrow and sorrow in beauty.
For years the stars themselves, backed by the studio executives, would allow only minor deviations from these profitable " lines." Five years was then the average life of a star ; for five years the film-going public would pay to see its favourites just as it knew its favourites would appear. Now the public expects versatility. So do the stars themselves ; they seldom refuse a role to-day because a character is not sympathetic and may surprise their fans. The filmgoer so far from not wanting to be surprised, demands variety. He is beginning to lose his old loyalties to stars simply because they