Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

CLASSIC The March of the Photoplay (Cominued from page 17) they seem mere comments and interjections. The story is always arranged so as to flow as much as possible without their help. The whole effect may be melodramatic, because the stories are violent and the method pushed to extremes. But the Sullivan dramaturgy is, after all, not unlike the Ibsen dramaturgy in its definite, tight structure. Perhaps Henry Bernstein, building on Ibsen, is the best parallel. To keep up what may be extreme comparisons, the other distinctive school of the photoplay, which grew up beside Ince in the studio of Griffith, is in the Hauptmann vein of naturalism. The master himself. Frank Woods, and the directors like Allan Dwan, were largely responsible for it. Jolin Emerson and Anita Loos, for all their individual flavor, are products of it. Whatever we see today that bears the initials “D. G.” or has passed thru the hands of one of Griffith’s old directors, has that priceless quality of naturalness and humanness which, as an end, is worth all of Sullivan’s splendid theatricalism. You may wonder, however, if the plausible reality of a picture of the Griffith school couldn’t be got by a little neater work, a little less waste of space, a little less tendency to ramble. So far as Griffith himself goes, [ have to confess that I am very tired ndeed of the one piece of theatrical jnechanism — the rescue by some form of bhase — which he has lugged into every oicture since “The Birth of a Nation’’ to ,jet that sure-fire pep which Sullivan gets )y a careful and workmanlike developnent of whatever plot he has in hand, .n spite of valiant belief in humanness, [ begin to think I prefer Sullivan. At liny rate, Sullivan’s methods can be used or Griffith’s ends. Of course, there are other schools, or lit any rate, classes, in the development ff the photoplay. The propaganda play, rom Eustace Hale Ball’s “Traffic in Souls’’ to the late.st products of Lois vVeber, is not to be sniffed at. Mack fiennett and Hamilton Del Ruth have ontributed a distinct method of their iwn. As for Chaplin — well, who wants 0 see a better screen story, better told, han "Easy Street”? There has even liieen a school which might better be decribed as an academy — a five-foot shelf f the world’s classics — an Encyclopedia Iritannica of stories. I mean the prodcts of Paramount during its first four ears. Since Griffith and Ince joined the Uyrmidons of Zukor and Lasky, things Lre different and better. But what a lltrange collection of famous novels and lays and Broadway failures the Paralounters gave us to match against the riginal and screen-wise products of the Id Triangle ! They began with yarns lat didn’t fit the screen, and they told lem with continuities that seemed to ave no conception at all of screen posbilities. They did one splendid thing, pwever. They demonstrated the ab■xrdity of taking stories as shaped by (Seventy-one) the needs of other mediums instead of going to the root of the stories themselves— human beings. There ought to be a law against the screening of plays and a severe penalty for any continuity writerwho doesn’t throw overboard three-fifths of every novel. If we had seen to it these last five years, where might the prodigious art of the photoplay not be today ? Just where the credit for a screen progress belongs is always more difficult to say than where the blame ought to rest. It is easy to .sec that if a scenario editor starts by buying a stujiid play, his co-laborers are never going to be able to make it into a good photoplay. But when a really decent product is on the screen, it isn’t so easy to determine just who did the trick. Aside from acting and lighting and photography, the genius in the treatment of the story may lodge in at least five places — or, as is more likely, in a single dominating one. There may be a good plot to begin with — maybe an original, maybe the leav ■ ings of a novel. Then there is the synopsis. At that point a writer may vastly enrich a story, give new directions to it and supply all .sorts of valuable suggestions. Next, the continuity. If the continuity is bad, it can ruin evei’}'thing that has gone before. If it is good, it can almost remake a story by its utilization of minor possibilities of action. After that the director can enrich the continuity or ruin it. Finally, along comes the film editor to spoil the work of all four or to salvage an almost hopeless production. The recipe with Ince seems to have been a dominating personality, always intensively but creatively critical, surrounded by men of first-class ability, who react to that dominating personality and stand out by that reaction. Griffith seems to be more a great personality that never bothers to have very much to dominate. He does the whole job himself. Film editing, directing and continuity writing are his regular tasks, as those who have read of his making of “The Birth of a Nation” know. But it is further true that Griffith is frequently the creator of the idea, the builder of the synopsis. There was once a certain “Granville Warwick,” unknown to studio directors but prominent on the credit titles of many Triangle productions. Not infrequently the scenarios he wrote bore interesting resemblance to earlier yarns, yarns from the old Biograph knitting-bag. There was “Diane of the Follies,” for instance — just “Oil and Water” done over. When David Wark Griffith dropped out of Triangle, “Warwick’’ dropped with him. And until Griffith came back from Europe, “Warwick” was silent. Just the other day he turned up as author of Griffith’s “Greatest Thing in the World.” Perhaps he is a relative of the mysterious Monsieur Ga.ston de Tolignac, who has been “suggesting” or “conceiving” other European-born Griffith products. 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