Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1914)

1064 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD Persistent Error By Louis Reeves Harrison NOW that everybody is writing drama, or writing about it, please take warning. One gentleman who has published several books on the subject says: "It would not be possible for anybody to devise an utterly new story for a play. The dramatic material in life is limited. According to certain critics, the number of dramatic situations is a little more than thirty ; according to others, it is a little less than twenty, but all are agreed that the number is extremely small." Last week I quoted from King Naram Sin of Chaldea, who said three thousand years before Christ was born, "We have fallen upon evil times." Now let me quote from a noted scientist : "Ignorance is comparatively safe. It is error that does the mischief, and the stronger the reasoning faculties working upon meager materials the more misleading and disastrous are the erroneous conclusions thus drawn for mankind. All the shores of the great ocean of time are strewn with these whitened skeletons of misguided thought. Truth furnishes the only real hope. It is truth that should be made attractive, alluring, contagious, to such a degree that it shall penetrate the whole mass of mankind, crowding out and replacing error that now fills the world." "Action depends upon the nature of world ideas. The principal quality of ideas as ailecting action is the relative amount of truth and error they embody. All progress in ideas has consisted in the gradual elimination of error and the substitution of truth, but most of the progress due to ideas is of that superficial kind which produces merely material civilization and does not penetrate the lower strata of society at all." It is obvious that moving pictures must eventually become a tremendous medium for the dissemination of truth or error — that seems to be their destiny — and that it lies in the power of all contributing to their production to materially further progress by scattering to all parts of the world the noblest results of human thought, those founded on judgment and knowledge, those growing from the rich soil of scientific truth. This is the highest purpose of the New Art, and all critics should have that purpose in mind in reviewing what is shown on the screen. One of the world's greatest playwrights says: "That fine spirit of choice and delicate instinct of selection is what perfects what the artist realizes for us in life. That subtle tact of omission is really the critical faculty, and no one who does not possess it can create anything worth while in art." The critic's mission may be a thankless one — it usually is — when his flaming sword is turned against the low products of vanity or cupidity, but he will gain confidence and respect in the end if he is a man of high ideals and has the courage to stand by his convictions. The one who panders will just as surely be hoisted by his own petard. Only the ignorant and the cowardly pander to what is base in human nature. They are drags on civilization, for error believed with sufficient force is terribly retrogressive in its effects. A very common error is that of reasoning by analogy, of inferring from a similarity in two or more things that they will agree in all other particulars, and this method seems to be the favorite one of those who do not write dramas but write about them, whereas scientists use it with extreme caution and assign it limited value. There may be analogical fitness, but there is no intellectual justification, for instance, in the statement that "the number of dramatic situations is little more than thirty." Certain great dramatists of other days treated old stories in a highly original manner, and this fact has been regarded as so significant that plagiarism almost came to be regarded as a dramatic essential. The same writer admits in the same volume that "it is impossible to measure the contemporary drama by critical standards that have been applied to the art of other ages." The trouble with him is that he has no other materials to work upon than his own limited conception of tdiat has been done. He would tag thirty plots, pigeonhole them, and have us believe there is no hope for the drama, that it and the life it is supposed to reflect are incapable of change, development and growth. And, then, the purpose of art has not dawned upon him. Bernard Shaw sees in the theater of today "an ni finitely powerful instrumentality for popular education and social enlightenment." Strindberg realized the dearth of creative genius, but he believed that the trend of dramatic composition was toward "recognition of the innermost meaning of life as an ordeal through which superior conditions are to be attained." Ibsen's effort was to rouse the world, "to open its eyes to a freer, richer future, to point out the need of ridding itself of false ideals." Hauptmann says, "action on the stage will give way to exhaustive consideration of the motives which prompt men to act." Perhaps Granville Barker's view is the broadest— "We must go on breaking new ground, enlarging the boundary of the drama, fitting it for every sort of expression." Maurice Maeterlinck, keen student of all the workings of the human mind, strongly opposes the "bloodshed and gaudy theatricalism of modern drama" and declares that "character in action" will be replaced by "action in character." These men have all put their fingers on the pulse of popularity and felt its responsive throb. They have solved the problem of fascinating audiences made up of all kinds of people, in producing an impression that all seen and heard fjy the people in front is something that really happened. They have succeeded in so fusing art with real life that the two seem one and the same thing All this does not mean that either stage or screen presentation is not to show how events are powerfully influenced by chance, circumstance and the pressure of external influence, such as are shown in stories of adventure. I have always advocated variety of performance, and this means the inclusion of what stirs the emotions by exciting incidents, but. in advocating that variety, there is revolt against monotony of melodrama, against a tiresome succession of violent scenes. A very large number of those who go to the picture shows are weary of what merely skims over the surface of sensational events and are more deeply interested in what is beneath that surface, in what is most vital to the struggle portrayed. The best description of what a motion-picture theater should be is possibly that applied by Shaw to the stage. He says it should be "a factory of thought, a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of social conduct, an armory against despair and dullness, a temple of the Ascent of Man." The shaft of light that is sent from the projecting machine to the screen would then become better than the cheering and healing one of radium, penetrating the depths of all that is mysterious in this life of ours and illuminating not only its truth and error but what is behind it all. J