Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

The Screen as a Repertoire Theah By KENNETH MACGOWAN (Twenty-tv. YOU hear very little today of the old battle of the stage versus the screen. Mrs. Fiske asserts that Charles Spencer Chaplin is a great artist, and Walter Prichard Eaton admits that Griffith knows his business. Also scenario writers, moving picture press-agents and too enthusiastic young critics have got over announcing the demise of the legitimate. The stage will recover. And so will th€ screen. But there is still a versus worth versusing — the organization of the stage versus the organization of the screen. It is worth thinking about, because the business organization of any art or any industry has its effect on the quality and price of the product. Thinking wont change these things. Economic forces will attend to that. But it never hurts to have an intelligent audience on the side-lines of evolution. There are two kinds of theater organizations — America’s and Europe’s. America’s is bad. Most of Europe’s is — or was — good, some of it perfect. America puts on plays in New York or Chicago for long runs. The cost of putting them on is multiplied by the fact that everything from actors and scenery to company managers and stage hands is hired or made for just that one production and discharged or scrapped if it is a failure. That means high prices for all these things — a sort of accident insurance. If the play is either gre?it enough or commonplace enough to appeal to about 200,000 New Yorkers, it lives and goes out on the road and makes money, lots of it. And all the other producers try to produce one like it. Nobody is making any money out of the play that only 50,000 of us want to see. Over in Europe, before the war, they had a kind of theater that served both publics, the wholesale and retail. It was the repertory theater — our old stock comp a n y with modern improvements. Actors and scenery and managers and stage hands all worked together, the whole season The movies often fall behind stai land’s methods. Screen-blight, for stance, is written all over the movi( star system. The stage keeps the m« personality in its place much better th it used to. The movies stick to the star. Th stick to it, tho Griffith and Tucker a: De Mille have shown that the phol play’s the thing. For the star is abc the only sign-post that the public fc yet learnt to recognize as a guide to t probable merits of any of the hundrc of fly-by-night films. It is unfortimate that the stock co: pany — the basis of the cheapness a expertness of the repertoire theate' acting — should have partially dUi peared from the studios. thru, in a single theater. They put on a dozen new pla that one theater, and kept a dozen old ones alive, at just half what we pay for a single “success” and three or failures. Audiences got to know their theaters and man and actors and were able to depend on them to always them a certain quality of entertainment. There theater: artists were as dependable as the old Triangle or Griffi Chaplin. Three or four nights in the week some big new cess was running. Another night was given up to some ard drama for the minority — Ibsen or Shaw. On a coup other nights Shakespeare or a play of three or four se; ago was to be seen. Each got its own audience and the others. There are advantages in all this — financia artistic — that we cant touch over here. Even our cialized “type” actor isn’t to be compared wit rounded player of the Continent who has had a different parts to play each year. What about the screen ? Well, at various tim( screen has come pretty close to a lot of the good of the repertoire theater. Different as it is in ciple — making a single film production and then ing copies all over the land — and badly worke as many phases of its business organizatioi are, the screen has, or may have, curious of resemblance to the best type of theater agement. The movies fall behind often enough — eve hind our Broadway methods. Screen-blig instance, is written all over the movies system. The stage keeps the mere perso in its place much better than it used to. rounded productions are apt to be th stage successes today, replacing the star of a few years back. The movies sti the star. They stick to it even tho GriffitI Tucker am You hear very little today of the old battle of t^e stage the screen. Mrs. Fiske asserts that Charles Spencer Chaplin is a . artist — and peace is in the air Mille have that the pi play’s the For the st about the sign-post tha {Continued page 71’