Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1911)

272 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD ing a wish that some of our film makers, "who go in for this sort of thing," would realize, that here, too, quality alone can win in the end. A crowd of painted Indians, recruited from the Bowery, and tougher than any Indian ever dared to be, a few U. S. soldiers, wearing all sorts of fatigue uniforms, a "Mexican Pete," who has apparently abstracted all the hardware of a 5 and 10 cents store, rough riders and cowboys, who could not locate the West on a school map, do not constitute either a Western or a military drama, no matter how often "Gila Jake" saves "Juanita" from the horrible half-bred, and no matter how often the cowboys ride over the alkali deserts in pursuit of the indefatigable horse thief. Signs of a Harvest By IV. Stephen Bush. Unwaveringly the Moving Picture World ever since its first issue went into the mails has stood for the higher ideals. In season and out of season it has proclaimed the great future destiny of the motion picture. There was much ignorance and indifference to be encountered in the campaign for progress and uplift, and once in a while there were indignant and passionate, if rambling and illogical, pleas for the enthronement of the "Low-Brows." Time and again this paper has pointed out that the hope of the moving picture lay away from cheap comedy and cheap melodrama ; that to put it on broad and lasting foundations it must seek to gain the sympathy and recognition of the best and highest elements in our civilization. Especially have we emphasized the necessity of winning public opinion to our side. Often we had occasion to censure and deplore the flippant vulgarity of the daily press, which with far more complacency than wit chose to make the photoplay and the great art from which it takes its origin the target of silly jests and so-called paragraphic humor. It is therefore with unfeigned pleasure that wre observe of late a great reaction ; that the indications seem to point to a recognition of the moving picture by the serious and intelligent press of the country. An instance to the point is an article in "The Bookman," by Clayton Hamilton. The article is exceedingly well written, but there is little in it which The Moving Picture World has not at some time or other spread in its columns. Much that in these pages would look trite, because repeated so often, no doubt has all the gloss of newness to the readers of "The Bookman." The effort to give the photoplay sensible criticism in a magazine of standing must be a matter of congratulation among the friends of the art. The plea, made by the writer for intelligent criticism of the motion picture, is cleverly put and worth quoting in full. It says : The domain of criticism is co-extensive with the domain of art, and should naturally be broadened to include those new provinces which the inventions of science and the consequent inventions of art have recently discovered and annexed. It will not do for the critic to ignore a new art because it is new or because its basis is mechanical. All art arises from the application of a mechanism; and the hoariest of the traditional arts was new at some time in the history of mankind. The critic of architecture must accept the skyscraper; the critic of painting must consider the new art of photography; and it is surely not logical that the moving picture play should be ignored by our critics of the novel and the drama. A new type of narrative that has achieved such immediate and such wide-spread popularity as the moving picture play must certainly be worthy of serious criticism. If we should learn nothing else from a study of its materials and methods, we should at least succeed in clarifying our ideas concerning those pre-existent types of narrative from which it has derived its processes. Equally interesting and pertinent are the writer's observations relative to the basic structure of the photoplay : THE FILMS AND SOME CLASSICS. Even a casual study of the moving picture play will convince us of the soundness of that principle of contemporary criticism that nearly every good play has for its basis a good pantomime, and that dialogue — the purely literary element— while not the least important, is at any rate the least indispensable, of the many element-* which are compounded in that complex work of art, the acted drama. The kinematograph bereaves the drama of the spoken word; and it must be surprising to the literary theorists to learn how much is left — how vividly the essential elements of action, character, and setting may convey themselves by visual means alone. Pantomime has been recognized for many centuries as a legitimate type of drama; but it is safe to say that the variety and the extent of its adaptability as a means of story telling were never fully understood until the invention of the kinematograph demanded of it an unprecedented exercise. The author is fully alive to the advantages of the silent drama in the matter of settings over the conventional restrictions that must always hamper the stage of the spoken drama. On this subject he aptly remarks : Obviously, the most desirable narrative material for a moving picture play is material in which the elements of action and setting are paramount and the element of character subsidiary — in other words, a story in which incident treads upon the heels of incident and the action rushes heaalong through a hurried succession of objective events, set preferably out of doors. It will b» noticed at once that, whereas this definition utterly fails to fit the modern regular drama, it almost exactly fits the traditional romantic novel of adventure. If we revert to an illustration that has already been adduced, we shall observe that this definition of what is necessary in a moving picture play points directly to that traditional type of narrative that Stevenson revivified in "Treasure Island." In fact, a re-reading of Stevenson's "Gossip on Romance" will give us a very vivid sense of the sources of the interest and charm of which the moving picture play is particularly capable. What Stevenson says in praise of the romantic novel of adventure may be applied with equal justice to that new art which did not spring into existence till after he was dead. "The story," he says, "should repeat itself in a thousand colored pictures to the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we read so closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, troubled period of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, character and conversation, were but obstacles to brush aside as we dug blithely after a certain sort of incident, like a pig for truffles. For my part, I liked a story to begin with an old wayside inn, where 'toward the close of the year 17 — ,' several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast in a storm, with a ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. . . . One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read our storybooks in childhood, not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. . . . Conduct is three parts of life, they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal in life . . . where the interest turns . . . not on the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the nroblems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of life. With such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the serious theater exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing proof of the dissemination of human conscience. But it is possible to build upon this ground, . . . the most lively, beautiful and buoyant tales." Here, in the words of a great artist in narrative, we have a clear and comprehensive statement of the possibilities that lie open to the maker of the moving picture play. He cannot contend with the dramatist in working out those problems of conscience which confront the will; he cannot compete with the novelist in analyzing characters; but he may tell, with a vividness beyond the reach of their less visual expedients of appeal, "the most lively, beautiful and buoyant tales," in which the interest is centered not in "eloquence or character or thought" but in "some quality of the brute incident." It is evident, therefore, that the art of the moving picture play is not an art to be despised or ignored by serious criticism. It represents, in fact — to look upon it from the historical point of view — a reversion to an earlier and more perrenially refreshing mood of narrative than that which latterly has assumed dominion over the novel and the drama. The