Moving Picture World (Jul - Aug 1918)

August 31, 1918 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD t25f most suited for the purpose intended. An attractive feature of the new department is the manner in which it is put together. It will be noticed that all advertising in any way associated with music is assembled in the department. We believe that this innovation will appeal to the advertisers of instruments and compositions as the best place in which to place their product before musicians. * * * REGARDING the list of motion picture men who have signed up for the war, just mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, we desire to emphasize the fact that it contains probably one-tenth of the total number. We want the rest of them, and would thank all our readers to send us the names of those not already mentioned. Look the list over and then get busy. There are a lot of theatre men who could not be reached, but the list is not closed, so get them in for the next installment. It will be a matter of record. * * * IT has been definitely settled by the directors of the Motion Picture Exposition Company that there will be an exposition of the trade in New York in October next Something more than $30,000 in contracts are already in hand and a full representation of the industry is assured. Many interesting and instructive features are promised, so that the public will be given a real treat. The meeting at which this decision was reached was one of the most enthusiastic gatherings of picture men that has been held in some time. Sardou and the Screen By Edward Weitzel. SARDOU has not fared well at the hands of the adaptors for the screen. The qualities that were the French dramatist's greatest asset have been almost wholly deleted from his plays ; and the newer generation, that is not familiar with his works in the original, are wondering how he won his past reputation. In spite of the sneers of that clever stage novelist and fountain-head of smart small talk, George Bernard Shaw, the man who wrote the Porte St. Martin dramas for Sarah Bernhardt knew his business and could put more thrills, not dependent upon physical action, into a play than any other man of his time. And it is the thrill that is the supreme achievement of the theatre, whether the appeal be emotional or intellectual. The subjective has no place in the scheme of the dramatist. "Fedora" is the latest of the Sardou plays to be photo-novelized. In "La Tosca" the physical action of the last act — the execution of Mario and the death of Tosca — kept the dramatic tensity at the right pitch. The scene of the killing of Scarpia, which is played almost entirely between two people, was not sustained and brought up to its proper climatic force. "Fedora," which contains but little physical action in the original, but possesses a wonderfully built up mental conflict, has proved a greater stumbling block for the present method of screen adaptation. The pictured interpretation is on the same level as are the efforts of a mechanical piano-player. All the points are brought in, but there is no skilled arrangement of incident, no mountain peaks of dramatic strength, to thrill the beholder. When screen fiction first came into being an attempt was made to transfer stage dramas to the screen without changing their construction. The result was anything but satisfactory. A new method of drama construction was required for the new med ium of art expression. Then came the screen tiotcI that carefully — sometimes, painfully explained eack incident of the plot, and had only occasional Aasboi of the suspense that is the soul of real drama. Suspense Means But One Thing. And suspense means but one thing— keeping ahead of the spectator's ability to anticipate the action. In the stage play of "Fedora" the sordid and COM monplace situation of the illicit relations between Fedora's intended husband and the wife of Lork Ipanoff is explained in a few, brief words ; and almost the entire action is devoted to the consequences of Fedora's vow to bring to justice the one who killed the man she loved. The picture version gives onethird of its length, at the opening, to relating the details of the intrigue, and the artistic balance is completely destroyed. Novelizing the Stage Play. The photo-novel has its rightful place on the screen. But why take dramas that depend entirely upon mental action for their thrill and turn them int» screen novels that are only weak imitations of the spoken plays ? The demand for the thrill that should accompany all true drama will eventually force the writers for the screen to evolve a technic that will develop a form of pictured story worthy to be called a photoplay. When this very important advancement in the art of the motion picture is an assured fact the screen will be much nearer its highest form of expression ; and physical action, now its most useful and impressive factor, will be relegated to the production of melodramatic themes. The motion picture will come into a loftier sphere of artistic endeavor when it formulates its own process of climax and suspense, and gives birth to a drama that is as skillfully articulated as are the plots &f "Othello" and "Macbeth." Game, Square and White By E. T. Keyser. IN THE last issue of the Moving Picture World *»e published the names of eight hundred and fifty moving picture men who had thrown their business to the winds at the call of Uncle Sam. The list was far from complete, but such information as we acquired was literally dragged out by the heels. The general attitude of the picture trade was that it was all in the day's work and nothing out of the ordinary to do what they could to make as good a showing in men as they had in contributions of time, money and publicity to the public cause. When the moving picture industry raised millions for the three Liberty Loans and over a million in the New York district alone for the Red Cross nobody, outside of the contributors, had anything but a vague idea as to the amount contributed, and when it became evident that some rapid and graphic medium was needed to reach out to each nook and corner of the country with Liberty Loan and W. S. S. appeals the producers and exhibitors joined forces and put over * campaign of popular publicity such as the world had never before seen. And what the picture industry has refrained from doing is almost as much to its credit as is its already long list of patriotic accomplishments. The shoes that formerly cost three and four dollars now sell for five, six and seven ; when the Government increased the internal revenue on tobacco the five-ce*1: