The Moving Picture World (Apr-Jun 1913)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD • Peering Into the Future By Louis Reeves Harrison. 257 WHETHER high or low, nearly every jack in the game of life who is not a moral idiot is trying to improve. Even the money drudge realizes that those who are not after his gelt, the best people he can cultivate, care less for what he has than for what he is when they come to meet him socially, and he strives accordingly to purchase a character. I may therefore be excused for insisting upon progression and improvement in our picture plays, for applying the tonic of criticism so that they may meet the dominant sentiment of what is best in our times. The plays themselves are critical. The finest of them are commentaries on the passing show, and they must reflect ideals based on principles of justice and equity to attain success with our people. When photodramas are not governed by high principles they should be called to account for common financial interest to the ultimate benefit of the public. Criticism based on high standards is as inevitable as it is essential. Even to think of these photoplays is to judge them. It is essential that they keep pace with the times, and possible that some of them may strike out boldly as leaders of opinion, though the bare idea of adventuring into the future may get on the nerves of old showmen. Old showmen are timid for a reason. The natural drift of pictures is toward the drama, and theatrical men of other days are so constituted mentally as to go back into the past for their material, this being the line of least resistance. To the non-progressive spirit of those earliest in the game may be ascribed the present imitative mediocrity. Imitative mediocrity characterizes a large number of the unsatisfactory pictures thrown on the screen — pictures that would cause the whole business to collapse like a house of cards but for a few notable exceptions, and persistence in this wearisome quality is now keeping many away from screen exhibitions who would otherwise attend. Producers are willing to spend money, but they are almost unanimous in believing that they are addressing audiences of inferior quality, and this idea is fostered by exchange men and exhibitors themselves. The impression is a false one that people attending picture shows are lacking in sufficient intelligence to appreciate the best offerings ; that the condition of working people is that of eternal damnation in poverty and ignorance; that they cannot rise, or stay "risen" when lifted up. The difference between the highly educated and the indifferently educated is not one of intellect at all ; it is simply one of familiarity with the products of human achievement, a condition to be improved rather than fostered by moving pictures. If the past is of any particular use it should teach us what the future is to be. Every American of Colonial descent knows that his ancestors were mostly men and women who resented old world distinctions of classes and masses. Our plain ancestors rose to a control of social and national affairs that excited the admiration of thinking men all over the world, though they were considered abroad to be inferior to lords temporal and spiritual, just as motion picture audiences are lightly regarded today. Those who attend the picture shows because they cannot afford costly forms of entertainment may suffer from a form of social inequality not unlike the civil and political inequality of rebellious spirits who conquered and defended this country, but history has taught us that this form of disability is not inherent, nor is it beyond remedy. Modest workers who spend their dimes at the little shows are as far from being stupid as those who sit in the golden horseshoe at the Metropolitan are from being truly intellectual, and that is putting it strong. The educational value of moving pictures was pointed out and discussed in these columns years ago, and now every play that presents a figment of historical information, whether or not it is correct or worth disseminating as a matter of knowledge, is tabbed "educational." Meanwhile not a grain of information is offered on subjects engaging the attention of rich and poor in all parts of the world. Scarcely a suggestion is made as to the outcome of fascinating questions of the hour. Though thought rules the world, few of the highest and brightest ideas of this hour are ever set forth on the screen. The plain truth is that no people are more bitterly aware that our present social and political systems are faulty than those who suffer pain and humiliation from an unjust distribution of the fruits of achievement. They are more alive to the necessity of changed conditions and more ardent in the pursuit of new freedom than those who do not feel the need of it themselves and only once in a while regard it as essential to common welfare. There are hundreds of interesting problems presented by the struggle for greater opportunity, superior education and whatever is calculated to add to human wealth, power and happiness in equitable degree — problems which may be set forth in a thousand interesting ways — and any just presentation of these would go straight to the hearts of the average audience at motion picture shows. Moving pictures should be agents of civilization, no matter where they are shown. Men have found old ideas of morality and justice to be false. Men are beginning to think that our present ideas need improvement; they are beginning to regard whatever is degenerate in national and social affairs with more disgust than open crimes excite; they are beginning to distrust those who make and enforce laws, and we all realize that a nation which cannot retain its progressive spirit is on the road to decay. Moving pictures may be destined to provide the real literature of opportunity. The people are ready. They are quite capable of understanding and studying any problem presented clearly on the screen, and the first man to go before them with a vigorous plea for what is right and nearest the universal heart will fill the little places of entertainment to overflowing, and with thunders of applause. The question of whether the cowboy catches the Indian, or the tinstarred sheriff catches the villain, or the cop catches the burglar is not going to hold us much longer. "Tomorrow is the eventful thing for us. There lies all that remains to be felt by us and our children and those that are dear to us." One of the most brilliant writers of today, H. G. Wells, says: "We look back through the countless millions of years and see the will to live struggling from shape to shape, from power to power, crawling, then walking, now struggling to master the air; now creeping down into the deep; we see it reshape itself anew; we watch it draw nearer and more akin to us, expanding, elaborating itself, pursuing its relentless purpose, until at last it reaches us and its being beats in our brains and arteries, roars through our cities, sings in our music, and flowers in our art." Is this the end ? He answers, "It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, that all that is and has been is but the dream before the awakening, the twilight before the dawn."