Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1911)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD 271 The selection of subjects or rather of types of subjects, is another very great responsibility. Tragedy, pure and simple, except where it is derived from classic sources, to wit, Shakespeare and the Greeks, should be used very sparingly indeed. In the whole history of the world there have been but four men possessing the art and genius of playing with wholesome effect upon the deepest human emotions. Nothing, however, seems to attract the amateur playwright more quickly than the tragic drama, and nothing is more utterly beyond his power. The exhibition of human misery without an explicit or implied moral, is no part of the mission of the photoplay. The anatomy of melancholy has no place on the moving picture screen. The whole school of morbid and sensational pessimists, of which Zola, Ibsen, Sudermann, Shaw and Nietzsche have been, or still are, the chief exponents, should be forever banished from the studio of the film maker. These men have delighted in advertising corruption. They have, with infernal skill, torn the veil from the hideous things in life, "the noisome, creeping things, waiting on decay." Nature and the instinctive common decency of mankind have always left, and always will leave, these things to work out their own destruction in silence and darkness. We want no delineation of moral leprosy in the photoplay. It is well to pause here'usta moment and to remind ourselves, that we owe the evils of the pessimistic problem play, with its open sewers, largely to a public reaction and protest against the melodrama. Public intelligence and education, more widely diffused than ever before, have laughed and scorned the melodrama to death and it can scarcely be revived via the moving picture route. It is altogether too unreal to please this wise and inquisitive generation. Man is so constituted that he yearns for the truth and when it comes to a choice between vapid and mawkish sentimentality and repugnant, abhorrent, but real and actual features of life, he will prefer to look at the latter. The modern audience everywhere, but nowhere more so than in this country, loves the story, that pours a drop of balm into the heart, it likes to see the brighter side of life, it welcomes a portrayal of the latent possibilities of good in man or woman, it delights in pictures of the silent and hidden, but very real heroism of the every day life right around us. ". . . Let us then such a drama give, "Grasp the exhaustless life, that all men live. "Each shares therein, though few may comprehend "Where'er you touch it, there's interest without end." A little more than a year ago a certain film maker closely adhered to just about such a program, making the photoplay a vehicle for a sound and humorous optimism. The popular response was instantaneous and the demand for that kind of a film became universal. The mine, from which re drew is still at the disposal of every film maker with the right machinery in the gray matter. So arrange your story's action, so choose and draw your characters, that the last vibration of the audience's heartstrings answer the touch of Hope and Humor, of Pity or Admiration, of Love or Joy. "Then pluck up heart and give us sterling coin. "Let Fancy be with her attendants fitted, "Sense, Reason, Sentiment and Passion join, "But have a care lest Folly be omitted." There is a law in the final order of things, that he who will not accept his responsibility, is sure to iose 3iis power. Note — The quotations are from the prelude to "Faust." The Vogue of Western and Military Drama The vogue of Western and military dramas, which bids fair to continue for some time to come, is by no means to be deplored. Man is never more interesting than when far away from the conventions of an over-civilized society. We love to see the rude frontiersman, who facedangers day after day. We want to know how he looks and acts on his native heath. We like his free and breezy manner and our interest is continuous, because we can never exactly know what he is going to do next. We do not feel any such interest in the hackneyed types of the big towns and when we see the dude coming out of the night restaurant, we do not care what he is going to do or where he is going to go. He, and other figures all too common in metropolitan life, are too familiar and you know how easily familiarity with the real article in real life begets contempt. Instinctively we are attracted by a struggle of any kind whether it is the struggle of the pioneer with Nature and the red man or the fight of soldier with soldier. On the plains of the West or in the tented field the hearts of men are weighed and tested and it makes no difference whether their suspenders are crumpled or their neckties sit badly if they are sound at the core. We are almost tempted to envy the Indian for his lack of civilization. We feel that he is so much closer to nature and a suspicion steals over us that after all he is happier than we are. Less than a century ago this would have been impossible for Indians were then a constant source of real and horrible danger. Then we hated the red man and did him very scant justice. Our feelings toward the red man have undergone much the same change that came over the English in their relations to the Scotch highland clans. Up to the time of William of Orange, the English, suffering very real hardships from the border depredations of the highland clans, regarded them as little better than highway robbers. A war of extermination was begun against them. Then when all danger from them had passed and when, long afterward, there came a formal union, the English went to the other extreme and could not seemingly go far enough in their admiration and fondness for highland history, highland customs and institutions, until the once despised attire of the Hihlander was affected by the nobility, and even the royal family of England. Our Indians are no longer dangerous. We understand to-day better than ever that we have wronged them much and often, that we have misjudged and slandered them in the past. Now and for some years past, the reaction has set in and it is surely a curious phase of the white man's civilization, that his latest invention is helping to set the red man right in history and in his position before the American people. All of the more artistic Indian films exalt the Indian, depict the noble traits in his character and challenge for him and his views and manner of life the belated admiration of his white brother. In fact this tendency to do the Indian justice runs through all the pictures. In this way, if you will think it over, you may account for the continued popularity of Indian films. The military drama, so-called, supplies the most picturesque kind of action. Note the coinage of that word "picturesque." The battle of life is, to be sure, carried on everywhere, in the tenement as in the palace, among the young as well as among the old, but it is less "picturesque," less obvious than the battle of professional fighting men. We believe that both the Western and military features will continue their popularity, but cannot help express