Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug-Dec 1913)

Literature and Filmland By WILLIAM LORD WRIGHT »¥ HAVE been making it a habit to J_ visit public libraries during my travels, and I find a rapidly increasing demand, on behalf of patrons of those libraries, for works of history and for the world's best fiction. Now, I think this is an important finding. It means that juveniles are turning from ''Harry Castleman," ''Captain Mayne Reid" and "Oliver Optic" to other and maybe more uplifting paths of literature. It means that the young lady is foregoing the temptations of the "six best sellers" for classic authors. It' means that a majority of readers have become interested in world history, and wish to read up on Hannibal, Napoleon, Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth. No, it is not unaccountable, after all. There is a reason. Librarians tell me that the reason the dust has been brushed off standard works of poetry, history and fiction is traced by Boards of Library Trustees directly to the Moving Pictures. "After the Odyssey was shown at the picture theaters, we had to purchase extra copies of Bullfinch's Greek Mythology in English," asserted one librarian. Another says he has a constant run on Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, not counting Stevenson and others. He says also that the Dickens vogue in Moving Pictures has popularized Dickens among many thousands of new readers. And so it goes. First the literature is filmed in the Moving Picture theater, and then comes the call at the public libraries for that literature. Doesn't this prove that Cinematography is doing an important work? I read a cleverly worded article the other day in which the writer scored "the present-day tendency to resort to the literature and drama of the Darker Ages for inspiration." He urged the Moving Picture producer to "turn to present-day problems and not be forever rattling the skeleton of the past. ' ' I agree with the writer in his advocacy of visualizing presentday problems, but I assert that the present-day tendency to resort to the production of standard and classic literature is a good tendency. There is not enough of this "literature of the Dark Ages" correctly depicted. Present-day problems should be presented convincingly, particularly the problems of the every-day sort of people. Present-day problems, however, do not include the adventures of "fascinating criminals," and the deadly triangle is surely a problem of the past as well as of the present. The works of Thackeray, Collins, Dickens and Scott, when filmed, lead those never having access to these books to turn to the public libraries, and -thus unconsciously study that which has chflracter and worth. Poe, Washington Irving, Longfellow, Whittier, James Fenimore Cooper, and other American authors of that period, did not deal with the then "present-day problems" so ably described by Chambers, Glynn, McGrath, and the rest, but they wrote good, enduring stories, and stories that will live when some of the writers of present problems are forgotten. One thing I have admired, and that is the policy of The Motion Picture Story Magazine in urging the filming of the world's best literature. There cannot be too much of it. The books of the masters of the past have been only lightly touched. Cinematography will be know^n — is known — by its output. Who shall say that the filming of classic literature has not tended to elevate and to dignify the Moving Pictures which have so much to contend with? Who shall assert that hundreds of thousands who never have had an opportunity to read the poems of Dante, or the works of Shakespeare, are not benefited by the depiction on the screen of the works of these and other authors? 117