Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

Four More Authors (Continued from page 25) rights to what was left of the carcass when the edible meat had been extracted. The residue might make mighty good glue and shaving brushes and imitation ivory. In the case of my friend's novel, it had not a movie in it, and failed as such. The public did not even get good glue or shaving brushes. The author was the only one who got a benefit, handed to him on a silver platter, from the movie heaven — twice the amount he received for his story legitimately. This indiscriminate by-product industry that has grown up in the production of motion pictures is not particularly appetizing for the box-office public. If they can extract a savory bouillon, or beef -juice, from some beefy book, all well and good, but glue and shaving brushes do not belong in the great public dining-room at all. What the motion picture-hungry public need — and where are they not to be found today! — is a special kind of animal, born, bred and sacrificed for their screen table — that fits their tastes, their palate, their appetite and their needs. Some stories of some wellknown authors fill the bill of fare. Many do not. While many artistic motion-picture chefs — like Rex Ingram, for instance — can make a dish fit for the gallery gods out of a little fiction curds and whey ! VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ (Continued from page 25) Senor Ibafiez's secretary met me and told me that Ibaiiez had given instructions that first I was to be shown all over the place, no doubt so that I \should be prepared to tell the world about it. There is a little touch of Hollywood flourish about Senor Ibaiiez. Imagine a childish quality of pleasure as tho showing new toys and then ignite it all with his combustible Spanish temperament, and you will get an idea of Ibaiiez psychologically. Chiefly, was I taken to Ibafiez's own private motion-picture theater, just finished. Here is an ideal little movie theater that will seat about two hundred people. It is a separate concrete building and is as complete in every detail as the little theater around the corner in America to which you and I go once or twice a week — except for the familiar box-office. The walls were not decorated yet, with the exception of posters in English that announce "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," "Blood and Sand," "Enemies of Women," etc. The same posters that attracted you and me to the original productions. In this little theater, Senor Ibafiez will entertain his friends and guests with "personal" reels of his picture plays. "I like 'The Four Horsemen' best," he told me. "See," he said, leading me to the other end of his long study, "here it is in bronze !" On a stand he had built for the purpose, was a remarkable bronze group showing the terrible four horses overriding the world. A small plate announced it to be the "Gift of Rex Ingram, Director of 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.' " "The future of the cinema?" he repeated in very bad French. "Ah, who can say? It is limitless. But, it must come into the hands of the right people. Now — well, now it is not going ahead very fast. You see, there is no standard in the cinema — the American cinema. It is mainly in the hands of workmen and grisettes. There must come a school — a school of definite standards and a school of definite study to attain those standards and maintain them. Now, each man is for himself — and he has little idea where he is going unless he has great genius — like Rex Ingram, for instance. Most of the directors are following something that is being done over and over, year after year. I dont ask that there must always be something new, but I demand that there be something progressive. Here is a fine art being born! There is pain in all birth, so perhaps what is, is right. They always have the convention to sell the films — that is one side of it — they are not the artists, no. Why do the artists not get together and set up standards? It is just as important that we make good pictures as it is that we sell bad ones. In the cinema is a greater Art — ■ hidden. It is waiting for intelligent students and artists to unearth it. For that there must be a school, and standards, and generous co-operation." WILLIAM J. LOCKE (Continued from page 25) you will find that sentiment running strong thruout their length and breadth. There is something clean and joyous about them all. "I was last in Hollywood when there wasn't a camera in the place," he told me when I asked him if he had ever been in Hollywood. "Oh, one cant be too hard on the films, I suppose — no more than one can unjustly scold a child. They have done practically all my books at one time or another. 'The Beloved Vagabond,' of course, which is my favorite ; 'Stella Maris' was done by Mary Pickford, you may remember? 'The Fortunate . Youth,' 'Septimus,' 'Simon the Jester' — you may have seen some of them? I really dont care to go on record with my opinions as to the merits of the productions. I'll leave you and the audiences to judge for yourselves. "However, I do think that in another fifty years or so, pictures will be taken in such a manner that they will need no captions either to tell the story or even to assist in doing so. They will be more like an act in the theater instead of being chopped up into irritating bits. There is too much going backward and forward. I become confused even in following them about in some of those enormous rooms they always portray in the pictures, where one must get it in segments and sections — and, for the life of me, I can never tell whether or not we are still in the same room. There is quite too much galloping about in them as they are. But as I said, they are only in their infancy, aren't they?" In which you get a perfect sample of Locke's light, whimsical touch. W. B. MAXWELL (Continued from page 25) we sat before a blazing fire in his luxuriou London apartment in Kensington Gar dens. "I consider the film situation in Eng land tragic. That is about all one cai really say about it — both the best and th worst. And after that, there is nothini but the American film left. "I am convinced that all Englishmei take a personal delight in seeing a realh good film. Most certainly I do. However after seeing a really good one, when naturally return to the cinema expecting a repetition of the treat, I am almost sun to meet with something unutterably bad blankly stupid and unspeakably dull. Tha< makes me renounce the films for months ai a time. "I cant see why there should be thest frightful ups and downs in the merit oi the films offered to the public. I am well acquainted with many of the leading Amer ican potentates in the film world and j know very well that they are actuated by the highest motives and ideals. They want to make great and noble pictures and do not shrink from any expense in the pursuit of their object, which may be remunerative only in the event they achieve their worth} object and ambitious end. A cynic might say that they have already made so much money that they dont mind throwing it away, but personally I think that is vcrj far from the truth. "It seems to me that, in the American idea of making films, there is too much tendency to concentrate on big pictures, or super-films, and so disregard the requirements of the less ambitious work. And so it is usually the ordinary film that is so atrociously bad. "Personally — as I said in America once and have been saying ever since — I believe that in the divorce of the film from literature is where the trouble lies. The film as a vehicle for the transmission of letters to the multitude has really never begun to be tested. The opportunity to carry to even the masses of illiterate people the message of the great masterpieces thru the simple medium of pictures — that is the great point, pictures — in motion, is simply incalculable. From a literary point of view, then, I believe the possibility of the films is inexhaustible. "But I dont mean for a moment that I think authors generally— or most gifted literary people — would be able to write successfully for the films. Evidently the writing of continuity in the construction of film plays is a special and very difficult work, requiring a great deal of study and experience. Nor would it be worth the while nor the time of successful authors to attempt to acquire this art. But when their expressionistic existence is being translated into the film media they should be freely allowed to offer their invaluable advice, both in the preservation of the main theme and the method of its illustration, which is a secret that often belongs alone to them as its creator. "It is a dreadful thing to see a noble book murdered on the film, as so frequently happens !" You Cant Afford to be Without The MOTION PICTURE CLASSICthe Most STRIKING MAGAZINE of the SCREEN 66