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The Film Drama Versus Life
Frederick Van Vranken Is Amused By Several Iron Clad Rules Of the Screen
Illustrated by Eldon Kelle>>
VERY person has his own pet answer to the query: What's the matter with the movies? But
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J there is one point which, it seem to me. has re ceived far too little attention. In my opinion, the besetting sin of the motion pictures today i the way in which the average screen drama clings to rigid, cut-anddried ideas.
Director have accumulated, from Heaven knows where, a whole set of weird and fantastic laws, conventions, formulas and precept to which they adhere with
Of ro-urse, all burglar in this cynical old world dont throw away their tools and join the Christian Endeavor every time a child mistakes them for Santy Claus
know that everything i going to end in a not i if joj and flooded with sunshine. In real life, ^\ course, we dont know . But the law of the movies is that, come what may. the harassed lovers will eventu.'illy he silhouetted against a full moon, bestowing upon each other a rapturous, ante-nuptial bliss.
Then there i t Inlaw that no young gentleman — however inherently pure and perpendicular — can hope tu win the
affections of a chaste young virgin, if he has ever stolen a kiss from a cutie, played penny-ante, chewed tobacco, told a fib, used a cuss-word, gotten mildly soused, or spent a night out with the boys.
If it should appear that, during some loose and unthinking moment in his salad-days, he has committed any one of these heinous and unforgivable crimes, it musl lie clearly brought out that the accusation is a base fabrication. Concocted by the villain out of whole cloth.
( Itherwise he is not permitted i'' lead the -weet young thing, with the curls and the dimples, up to the hymeneal altar.
The law of the movies is that, come what may, the harassed lovers will eventually he silhouetted against a full moon, bestowing upon each other a rapturous, ante-nuptial bliss
grim and dogged tenacity, as tho in-tant death were the penalty for deviation. Instead of patterning their production on life itself, they have created a strange and unfamiliar universe of their own. wl inhabitant act. think, dres and make love in a manner wholly bizarre and unique.
Regard, for instance, a few of the more general laws of life which govern motion-picture drama-.
The fir-t and most obvious of these laws i that all adventure and love-affair happily. Tl known a the
Pollyanria complex: and its chief symptom i the delusion that every cloud has a -olid platinum, diamond-studded lining. Ah. how ineffably lovely, how benignly — and how intolerably -tupid — the world would he. if this were really -o !
But, luckily, it isn't so; for all the pense, intere-t. anticipation, hope, a-piration, excitement, surpri-e and pleasure are immediatelv eliminated from life when we
I \cm if ili> in in -li< lovea i impended over ■ precipice and -In bai but to promise the
villain U) m.irr> linn, in order lo MVe li'-r
lover from being hurled to death, the heroine i not permitted to make the
promise and lirejk it
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