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The Blind Alley of the Movies
HE time has come, the walrus said, to talk of
many things ” chiefly the impasse, before
which, the movies stand apparently helpless. It is impossible to make a photoplay that will satisfy both the provinces — so called, and the sophisticated city dwellers. A certain intelligent New Yorker says, “I cant endure a De Mille (Cecil) picture!” And the small town mind says with rapture, “I adore them.”
Now only an overwhelming genius can reconcile those separate visions. And a movie, in order to pay for itself or net even a modest profit to its makers, must please everyone from the ages of seven to seventy. It must not offend the prude and it must satisfy the craving for excitement and glamor that obsesses the present day. The poor dull average mind must comprehend it, and the intelligentsia must find in it at least a modicum of that mental stimulus they feed on.
That this desideratum, with the rarest of exceptions, is impossible of achievement, has been demonstrated over and over again. Out of hundreds of examples there is John Barrymore’s ‘‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” A great author wrote the story. A great actor acted the title roles. It was admirably directed and beautifully photographed. The critics all acclaimed it. The movie magazines rated in among the few “best.” But it was a dead loss financially.
The provinces did not like it.
Now the answer to this — 1 the way thru the impasse — is a “little theater movement” for the movies.
Feed the voracious and indiscriminating masses what they want, Mr. Producer, but contribute what you have of brain and artistry to the making of movies for the limited audience whose intellectual appreciation must be reward enough. Stop trying to please everybody with one picture. You cant do it. Be content to make a photoplay now and then whose appeal is only to the artistic, the intelligent, the esoteric.
Some of the greatest dramas in New York had their humble beginning in some “little theater.” There is always the golden promise of the wider field. Actors contributed their services ; stage designers their sets ; property owners their buildings. Expense was reduced to the minimum. Here truly was art for art’s sake.
Why cannot the movies emulate this inspiring example? The cinema is too potent a factor in this twentieth century to lie prone under the intolerable indictment of — stupidity.
Let it command the respect of intelligent persons, and the appreciation of the artist. Let it furnish a response to a steadily growing intellectual demand. It has served the masses; now let it also cater to the discriminating few.
I