Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1912)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD Factory Or Studio? 1 1 S3 W. Stephen Bush WE have a right to be optimistic regarding the future of our great invention. The history of the motion picture from its early beginnings to the present time is a record of unparalleled progress and prosperity. Is this good fortune still on its upward course? On the surface of things there is much to encourage an answer in the affirmative. In its battle with the theater, the motion picture came, saw and conquered. It has made the fanatics and "reformers" with their furious onslaughts against the industry look like so many cheap reincarnations of Don Quixote, rushing his battered lance against the mills driven by the wind. No amusement is to-day half as firmly entrenched as the motion picture. We must not take it for granted that this state of affairs will continue and that lean years are impossible in the future. Indeed the lean years may be nearer at hand than many of us think. We are constantly in the presence of a most exacting judge, to-wit: the public, on whose support depends the life of the industry. To watch this public, to observe its taste, its intelligence, its likes and its dislikes is not the least important function of moving picture journalism. Long continued and careful observation emboldened the writer of these lines to say that the products of many manufacturers have distinctly declined within the last six or nine months and that this decline is well and unfavorably known to the millions of Americans who make up the audiences in the electric theaters throughout the land. The chief causes and most apparent symptoms of this decline are monotony and dreary repetition. In the plants of some manufacturers the studio seems to be more of a factory. In a factory, "goods, wares and merchandise are produced by mechanical process or the skill of the human hand." In the studio art is the dominant factor. Either the studio is built for the factory or the factory is made for the studio. As soon as the making of pictures is reduced to a more or less mechanical function, art flees from the studio and the result is a film which just about reaches to the level of the "nickel-in-the-slot" standard. There are a few moulds or types from which there is never any real departure. Plays are made up much like the dishes on a cheap menu and instead of scenarios we get a sort of dramatic formula of recipes, as for instance sixty per cent, pathos, twenty per cent, of "pure weeps," twenty per cent, of American flag, "curly headed child," etc. A good many pictures which have been recently turned out by manufacturers of established reputations seem to revive on the screen all the stupidities of the melodrama which we have helped to laugh out of existence. , Worse than all there is an almost total absence of genuine humor in a very large percentage of recent productions. It is painful even to remember some of the stuff that has recently been inflicted upon the public and which manufacturers have unblushingly labelled "comedies." The motion picture in order to live and prosper must constantly rise and strive with never lagging zeal for originality. We know that throughout the country scores of theaters have adopted motion pictures as their steady programme in place of regular theatrical attractions. We know that within the last year there was a great dearth of paying attractions and that hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost in big amusement enterprises. The real cause of all this disaster must eventually be sought in the inability of the managers and producers to gauge public taste. The public will not take whatever is offered 'to it and no theatrical trust will ever succeed in forcing the public to feed upon what it chooses to give. It would: be well for us to profit by the losses recently recorded, in the theatrical world. The public will not pay unless we are able to please it. The moment the pictures begin to get tiresome the public will desert the picture theaters. The time to avert the evil is right now while the remedy is easy of application. An inferior or medicore production has a tendency to drag others in the same industry down to its own level. Exhibitors all over the country are keenly aware of' this situation. It happens altogether too often that patrons leave the theater long before they have seen the entire programme because the offering of to-day fatally resembles the attraction of yesterday. Even the children down in front are able to guess with deadly correctness the development of the average plot and the exact details of the finish. They only have to see the first two hundred feet of the film to foretell the middle and the end. Scarcely less numerous are the instances where the plot is obscure and complicated and the picture fails to arouse any emotion except impatience, disgust, annoyance and exasperation. There are altogether too many pictures in which the appeal is made to the lowest intelligence. An' attempt to force the sympathy of an audience by making, a little child suffer hardships or perform deeds of heroism cannot be condemned too severely. The average intelligent audience turns from such antics wi|h a feeling of physical nausea. This "child-business" is overdone so badly that we often have to watch three or four of these "chee-ild" reels in one evening. This is more than human nature can endure. No sane person can be induced to permanently part with ten cents for the privilege of looking at impossible infantile heroics. There are other stereotyped figures fully as objectionable but.it would exceed the space alloted to this article nor would it add anything to the comfort of either the writer or reader to delineate them in all their horrors. Enough has been said to make the meaning plain to those manufacturers who offend most. It takes neither money or brains to produce these kind of films and the manufacturer who makes them is always sure of at least a little return on his money. The existence of these films, however, works a distinct hardship and injustice on the exhibitor. Of course we do not in the least doubt the vitality of the motion picture as such. No one judges the quality of wax by the impressions which are made upon, it;. The, impressions disappear, but the wax remains, ready to/ receive any impression. In England it is a common saying that in America everything is "the largest in the world." This exaggeration, or boast, seems to have been made good, according to Pathe's Weekly No. 30, which shows "the largest flag in the world." Of course, it is the "Stars and Stripes,' 'and is described as weighing 800 pounds, and measuring 135x75 feet. Is this a defiance for some other country to surpass? Young America everywhere will want to see and applaud this flag; what a volume of sound if all would be heard at once. Perhaps the subject most interesting to this page is that of the unveiling of the statue erected to the memory of the explorer, Champlain, which is another incident of importance to the history of that beautiful part of New York State, and which also is of interest to the whole country.