Motion Picture News (Jan-Feb 1923)

Motion Picture News Grooves ONCE upon a time (it was only last August), a certain picture came to New York — as many pictures do; and it was looked over by all the distributors — as many pictures are. And it was unanimously disapproved of and consistently turned down — by all the leading distributors. With this particular picture a sale was not urgent — as is generally and unfortunately the case with the occasional or independent producer. The last dollar hadn't been put into it and the producer was not standing helpless before a buyer and saying: " Please, gentlemen, take my picture." In fact the picture was waiting for one particular man — one of the few showmen in the show business — to return to this country and take it up. But in the meantime it was thought not a bad idea to let everyone look at it and talk about it. But the picture was talked down — not up, down and into retirement. Today the picture is running at a New York theatre and turning them away. Everybody is talking about it. Some say it's the greatest motion picture; others, the greatest show in town, etc. At any rate it's a whooping success. It's so good — that's the funny part about it — that all the distributor's customers — the picture houses of the country — can't get it, until it has been roadshowed. * * * This is not a criticism of distributors — their show sense and judgment. That's a ticklish matter. We have in mind a few exhibitors who would have grabbed the picture — or tried to. But, at any rate, it's far from simple to know just how pictures will go. This picture is different — that's why, probably, distributors shied at it. There's no star, director or story. Some camera men shot it at the constant risk of their lives; and instead of being somebody's fiction, it is the overwhelming thrilling truth of God's great realities. But it is different; yes, quite so. And we have a lot of sympathy with the distributors, because, if any one of them had taken over this picture he would have to make several thousand exhibitors believe that their public should see it even though it was — different. And that's another matter. But it does seem as though something were radically wrong all along the line when such pictures can't get easily and quickly into the machinery of the business and to an eager public. It is difficult to explain — to a child for instance — that the distributors thought this picture was too bad for exhibitors because it was too good for them — so good it had to be roadshowed. Perhaps, right here, is what is fundamentally wrong with pictures today. The public is surfeited with — just pictures, just movies, because the whole business, exhibitors included, is thinking of and planning and wanting and getting just pictures. Just pictures — stars, dramas, directors, gag situations, indoor stuff, outdoor stuff — all the ingredients that inevitably turn out a regular honest-to-God, garden variety of sixty per cent good picture. And the whole business is laid out in grooves to make and show — just pictures; in such grooves, in fact, that so great a picture as the one we speak of, or " Nanook," for instance, has a devil of a time to rit in anywhere. Last week we were one of an audience that sat flabbily through a feature — rated a good one; and we too joined in the universal gasp of relief and delight when a Baby Peggy picture came on. It was so different. The public is looking for something real; and the public hopes for something big from the motion picture. # • •* * A few new grooves won't hurt this business. And a good start could be made with the exhibitor to get his mind rid of presenf day grooves. The distributors, in general, won't change, can't change, till he does. Wm. A. Johnston. Vol. XXVII FEBRUARY 10, 1923 No 6