Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

The Screen as a Repertoire Theater {Continued from page 22) ublic has yet learnt to recognize as a aide to the probable merits of one of le hundreds of fly-by-night films. But even in the star, the screen has le tremendous advantage over the age. Everybody sees him. Keokuk oesn’t have to be content with a "num:r two company” of inferior players in Rialto or Strand Theater screen suc:ss. If the screen was organized like le stage, Tom Ince would have to make le production of “Breed o’ Men,” with ill Hart, for New York, and then get gether another bunch of wild Westerns, probably with Roy Stewart or Harry arey in the lead, and make the same ing all over again for Keokuk. And dess Ince did this about half a dozen nes, Pasadena wouldn’t see “Breed o’ en’’ with any sort of company at all ltd 1921. It .seems unfortunate that the stock idupany, the basis of the cheapness and .pertness of the repertoire theater’s actg, should have partially disappeared om the studios. In the early days the ily way the screen could get reasonably lod actors at reasonable salaries was to re them for a comparatively long pe3d. But as more and more stage play|S flocked to the studios and producpns grew longer and took weeks instead I days to make, the producers began to op the stock company and fall back on dividual engagements. . Even here, [wever, the studios are wise enough to tain certain actors, minor and major, r a number of ])roductions, and the P’ers themselves know that the length their em])loyment is not dependent on s success or . failure of a particular liicle. This means that, tho the player ly ha\'e to make his wage cover a sort insurance against involuntary vacans between productions, he can work r less than when he hires out in the ^oadway guessing contest. In some ways the distribution of films, ce they are made, is inferior in busies efficiency to the routing of Broad•ly successes over the touring systems the “legitimate.” There is no control, r instance, of over-production. But £ fact that the local theater manager in p movies has still some control over -lat he .shows to his patrons, even in ite of “.star series” contracts, gives !:h man the chance to make his house I dace of distinctive and dependable enItainment. By. careful choice and some led expense, he can make his house in ny senses a true repertoire theater. : can play quality always. He can >w the obviously popular film and the .r with the great name for a longer h and he puts in good but less “touted” hs for shorter terms. And he can ike his theater a repertoire theater by Hving the cheaprental reissues of old 1 ces.ses. If course, the matter isn’t really quite 1 simple as that. The theater manager ijiself doesn’t always appreciate his op ' (Seventy -one) portunities and the movies are too young to have produced a real body of screen classics which can stand revival. Fox’s I)ress-agent once got out a blurb about tbe million-dollar library of films which his employer was planning to present to New York City. As a matter of fact, tliat library is coming some day. But equally^ as a matter of fact, there wouldn’t be a great deal to put in it if it were here now. There would be something, of course, and there are certainly a lot of interesting productions that the theater manager can sandwich into his regular bookings. He does sandwich them in, as a matter of fact. There were the Biograph reissues of a cou]3le of years ago, some of the splendid work that Griffith did in the early days, things like that Pueblo romance in which Mary Pickford played a little Indian girl with an art that she hardly touched again till she did “Stella Maris.” Nowadays the “W. H. Productions" take the place of the Biograph peddlings. Hart in two reels and Chaplin and Normand and Conklin make up the stock of popular reissues today. The Hart dramas mostly seem as crude as the Keystones .seem good. But they are worth seeing for all' that. They bring back pleasant memories. They have sentimental associations. They certainly demonstrate the jirogress of the screen. Why does no enterj)rising theater manager preface his new showings of Hart with one of these reissues and a little, well-worded message on the progress of the old favorites? y\nybody who thinks there is both entertainment and incentive to progress in the revival of old plays, old books and old films must regret that the two-reel drama had so short a life, that it died before screen art came to its present perfection. (Comedy, thank fortune, still comes in small packages, and old Keystones can still rejoice the ventripotent.) The difficulty of re]3ertoire now — and more so for the future — lies in the shortage of the short. A theater manager may — and I think should — revive fivereelers as the principal feature of his program ; he should revive Griffith’s best film production, “The Avenging Conscience,” and .such photoplays as “The Escape” and “The Midnight Stage” and a well-edited and well-printed “Cabiria.” But in ten years, unless fashions change, he will have a difficult time to find short fillers to show again. We aren’t making them. We are too hopelessly wedded to the standard-length, five-reel picture. The short story of the screen is gone and the only chance that the future manager will have of filling up his program with a short reissue is the chance that some astute company will edit down a lot of our puffed-up and padded-out “features” to the two-reel length so many of the stories deserve. 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