Moving Picture World (Oct 1917)

360 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD October 20, 1917 affect exhibitors much. The tax on a five-reel feature would amount to about fifty dollars more to the producer on each feature, To cover this additional cost the pro rata charge to each exhibitor would only amount to a few cents on each feature. I cannot see how the producer can make any increase on the price of his product to exhibitors on account of the war tax." He did not count on waste and discard. Increase Prices and Avoid Bother. This exhibitor has a calculative mind. He has figured his expenses of overhead and investment to a minimized basis. He said : "It costs me seven and a half cents a day for every one of the seats in my theater, therefore I know just what income it is possible for me to derive from the number of seats I sell each day. To meet the tax on my seat sales I will have to increase the price of admission or collect the tax from the purchasers of seats. I would rather advance my prices and I believe the public would rather have me do it than be bothered with making change." Let Us Have Your Opinion. We shall be glad to give space in our columns to those in the industry who wish to express their opinions on how best to meet the war tax. All Settled Now By Sam Spedon. THE motion picture industry is expected to contribute by the tax on admissions and films $67,000,000 towards defraying the excess expenses of the war. The task has been placed before us and there is nothing to do but get down to brass tacks, buckle in and raise it. There is no use sulking and crying about it, the die has been cast and we can't avoid it. "Post mortems" will be a waste of time. The only way we can fight now is by doing our bit and help win the war as soon as possible. The more cheerfully we do it the .sooner and better we can do it. We will have to conserve our expectations, but this may lead to more efficient and broader business methods. We must not slacken our previous efforts to co-operate with the government, keep up the good work, prove our patriotism and unselfishness by grinning under the burden placed upon us by the war and help lighten the burdens of others as best we can. Our visit to Canada last month revealed to us the same conditions as we are now facing ourselves and yet we never heard a complaint nor sawany display of sorrow caused by loss of friends and relatives, much less the loss and sacrifice of money. If our neighbors and allies can so heroically and patriotically do their bit, we must not be found wanting in doing ours. The Government needs the screen in this hour of need. Good Will Follow. While in Washington last week we were informed by one who knows that the United States Government will eventually introduce motion pictures in all its departments for the dissemination of Governmental affairs and the education of the people in things that concern their welfare. Within the next six months we will see a great advance in the uses of the screen and the advancement of the industry, that will surpass the expectations of the most sanguine. The benefit to the industry by the establishment of the motion picture propagandas, brought about by war conditions, will result in greater business possibilities after the war as well as during its What the Screen Owes to the Stage By Edward Weitzel. IF the moving picture had a voice it would undoubtedly cry aloud with great earnestness, '"Will some one please save me from my friends?" With the best intentions in the world, every once in a while some supporter of the screen breaks into print and, after the fashion of a Tammany politician, "claims everything in sight" for the art. A favorite pastime of these zealous souls is to try to prove that the moving picture play never has and never will owe anything to the stage — that acting for the screen is a thing apart. Furthermore, when these persons refer to the stage they always exhibit it at its lowest estate, and invariably speak of the screen at its highest. They point to the bulk of the stage drama produced on Broadway as a criterion of the best achievement of the theater, and willfully, or ignorantly, ignore the influence of such writers as Dunsany and Synge. Anyone acquainted with "Riders to the Sea" is aware that during the fifteen years of the moving picture's existence it has never produced a play that excelled in depth of feeling this work of Synge's, or thrown on the screen an episode of more vital meaning than is contained in the scene where news is brought to a widowed mother that the last of her five sons has been drowned. The speech beginning "They're all gone now, and there isn't anything the sea can do to me," is masterly in its word painting and its expression of profound grief. Dunsany's plays, also, are full of wonderful and stirring passages. Some time ago a writer of scenarios, elated at receiving a record price for a serial, alluded, in print, to "the defunct spoken drama." It is true that the Goddess of Aristophanes and Sophocles has had some harsh treatment since her birth. It is also admitted that she nearly expired from calling for help the week that a stage play by this same scenarioist was produced at a Broadway theater, but has since recovered from the shock. Another screen adherent is responsible for the statement that "The best acting today is being done on the screen." Entirely correct, if the words "some of" begin the sentence. All that the screen knows of acting has come from the traditions of the stage, and the well equipped actor adapts his art to the slight divergencies of the screen in a fraction of time. Tyrone Power is an example of this. His first picture showed him serenely and notably proficient in every demand of his new medium. Briefly, there is not an excellence to be found in the moving picture that is not offset by an equal advantage in the drama of the stage, and the limitations of both differ in kind, not in number. Many of the screen's best actors and most skillful directors come from the stage, and the rapidity with which they acquired a command of screen technic shows how slight is the difference between the two. The attitude assumed by well-meaning but unwise partisans of the camera toward perfectly obvious facts has helped to strengthen the antagonism of those who profess to see but little good in the photoplay and is no more to be commended than are the published opinions of various high brow dramatic critics that confess to a dense state of mental blindness by trying to belittle screen drama on every possible or impossible occasion. Nothing that the moving picture now offers, or ever will offer, in the way of acting or visualization will express humanity in its manifold phases more convincingly than has been done on the spoken stage. To -accomplish a like result, with a universality hitherto unknown, i^ the province of the screen.