Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1912)

1154 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD • Plays of the Hour By Louis Reeves Harrison WHO shall say what is written in the hearts of men? We can tell pretty nearly what is going on in the breasts of those aldermen, State legisIegislators and members of Congress who are _ responsible for the special privileges granted corporations and private individuals of little or no conscience. The degradation of representative assemblies may not in itself furnish high dramatic material, but how about the gradual change visible in a man who enters politics with expressed good intentions and emerges in the tragedy of disgrace or the farcial security of wealth accumulated from the vilest sources? The temptations to which he is subjected lead to situations of suspense and can be presented in a form fascinatingly sensational. The grinding of all sense of honor into the suffocating dust of corruption between an upper and lower legislative body in the course of their compromises would be highly entertaining as well as educational to the people who put men into office for better purposes. If vice has come to be inevitable in our form of government why not lay it bare on the screen that the millions of people who go to the little theaters may know what we are up against. The interest in such plays would be deep-seated if they were presented with sincerity and power, especially to the great masses who have been ineffectually striving for equal justice with special privileges to none. Every lesson that the newspapers are enforcing editorially in commenting on conditions that exist and in striving to stimulate a better spirit in legislation can be thrown on the screen in powerful dramatic presentation with far-reaching effect. The hypocrisy in law-making and the idiocy in law enforcement offer hundreds of interesting subjects to the playwright and would stir the bosoms of millions in whom the resentment of injustice is burning. Wrongs stand unrighted and big crimes go unpunished before our very eyes, while litigation has become so costly that it is a luxury to be indulged in only by those who have the price of attorneys and their unlimited greed to expend without personal destruction. This binds the poor tighter than ever to their poverty, enslaving them in a condition more pitiable in its contrasts than that so often shown of Russian serfdom. There is pathos a-plenty in the arbitrary destruction of all that industrious and honest men and women can save. Throw light on it. A play of my own was rejected because I pictured a priest as a man, as a human creature. The story was simply a revolt against the medineval estimate of man that depicted him as supernaturally good or helplessly corrupt and was actuated by the spirit of the modern age in its more enlightened valuation of human character, but I was told that it might offend a certain sect. Sects are permitted rather than authorized for whatever worth and goodness they possess. We turn our backs upon no faith that conforms with the best aspirations of human kind, our people may seek light according to their light. but religion, like man, is subject to change and growth — I could not help seeing that blind reliance on dramatic tradition was at the bottom of such bigotry. Literature clear back to the bible itself and inclusive shows man in his upward struggle between two inner forces, priests along with the others. The humanizing play may openlv deal with the contest between practice and profession without lowering any of our ideals — no reason exists why we should follow false lights. The priest in the photoplay fell and rose again in the course of action, the effect being more powerful because of his cloth, and the motive was ennobling. Sense the motive in selecting any play. Its ultimate significance is more important than plot or characterization. Spiritual freedom may be only a dream, but it is a dream that is universal. It may only be constrasted poetically with the recent discoveries of science or in extreme farce comedy. It is now claimed that our souls are mere chemical resultants. Great opportunity for roaring comedy ! Equally great for mysterious tragedy on the lines of Stevenson's famous novel, "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Some recent scientific discoveries afford the richest kind of veins of comedy, and those who do not like to strain their minds with actual study need not go further than the Sunday supplements for data. Other discoveries furnish materials for stories of deep interest if they are not strictly educational. An Edison director of ability remarked the other day that "scenario writers" — it is thus that men furnishing the initiative are ignominiously dubbed — should give closer attention to constructive requirements after making a careful study of plays thrown on the screen, and no one questions the honesty of his statement, but there is a painful lack of incentive for those who already understand the construction of photoplays to write scenarios. If directors who are fairly well paid to visualize what authors write would display some fraternal generosity in urging just compensation for original scripts of telling motive characterization and plot the dearth of good plays might be transformed to opulence in the twinkling of an eyelash. Plays of the hour are not to be had for the asking. Given anything like the incentive afforded those who act in and direct the conduct of photodramas, the "scenario writer," merely the man who meets with the high creative requirements of a timely and perfectly constructed screen story, may range politics, religion and science for new and strong themes, he may invade the radiant fields of modern philosophy and adorn his creative work with poetic beauty, but his physical elimination at present rates would only be a matter of days unless he had some other means of feeding the furnace of thought. We need rarely expect these plays of the hour from men directing their full energies to production. Questions of showmanship and craftsmanship are now becoming involved in all departments. Moving pictures have worked slowly backward from the mere exhibition of motion, through amateurish presentations, to professional direction and stage management of men and women capable of accurate impersonation to the tiny fountain head of the drama, and the rivers bid fair to run dry from lack of unfailing springs. The exhaustion of these means fatally uninteresting exhibitions lacking in vigor and variety. Believing sincerely that the play of the hour will be the result of composite effort I may be pardoned for standing out for the principles involved. There is a business end to the marketing of photoplays, there is an intervening selective taste to be exercised, the director has to do with the thousand and one things that make a play go, stagecraft is an essential, and the end must be an effect originally conceived in the mind of a capable author. We must not only be interested and entertained, but we must get something of value from the photodrama of the hour.