Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

ENEMIES of moving pictures fall — or stumble — into two groups: I — Those who think they are highbrows. 2 — Some highbrows. In the first group are those semi-erudite gentlemen who write snappy pieces for the popular magazines, alternating between horrifying disclosures and personal plaints. The horrifying disclosures are to some such effect as that the movies are all wrong, because the author saw one in which a man bent an iron poker with his bare hands, a feat which (the author assures his open-mouthed readers) is humanly impossible. The personal plaints are that the moving picture producers do not summon these observant authors and offer them much moneys to remedy the screaming evils. Believing in their childlike blandness that they have discovered something previously unknown to everyone else, like the youth of sixteen who has just fallen in love, they grow violent over the trivial, profound over the superficial, ponderous over the imponderable. Their argument is always centrifugal, beginning with themselves as the centre of the universe, and whirling outwards with a swish of words, until it is lost in mere sound and fury. In the second group are those really erudite gentlemen who write solemnly for the academic journals, lamenting that the moving picture makes no attempt to visualize their favorite classics, the Iliad, the ^neid, or the Odes of Horace. Many of these gentlemen have taken their scholarly reputations in their hands and descended for a day or two into the Avernus whence come scenario and finished celluloid, but they carefully conceal their disgrace by writing about the horrid experience anonymously. Their argument is always centripetal, beginning with the outskirts of the universe and working inward toward themselves as the centre thereof, until it is lost in mere whisperings and esthetic musings. The common characteristic of both classes is the same curious inability to recognize a fact as big as a house. They see individual bricks, object to their color, size and shape, but fail to perceive that the whole is a solid edifice. So recently has it been erected, the scaffolding is not yet entirely removed, the debris of the builders still litters the dooryard, paint and patches of cement are needed here and there. Yet these critics point to the ancient House of Literature and the elderly House of Painting across the way as models of what the House of Moving Pictures should be already. This is not to be a demurrer that the moving picture is still in its infancy, a plea made too long and too often. The virility of the art itself refutes that statement. The main fact to be pointed out to these enemies of the moving picture is that the house was not built for them in the first place, and nobody invited them to the housewarming. They are like the bad boys who were not asked to the party, peeking in at the windows, declaring it isn't much of a party anyhow, and stealing the ice cream freezer off the back porch. Dealing first with the attacks of these semi-erudite, let it be admitted that in moving pictures there are to be found numerous inconsistencies of plot apd perhaps many of character. Is this confined to moving pictures? Is no other art guilty of such lapses? How many novels have you read in which you cannot put your finger upon a certain point in the story and declare that it was utterly inconsistent? Not only in the movies are pokers bent in a manner humanly impossible. The popular magazines of today owe their millions of circulation to their superhuman heroes, who with dynamic brains and herculean bodies nimbly outwit omniscience, surmount the insurmountable, and get the girl in the last chapter. But these writing boys are smart, and quick to employ the 42 Enemies of natural advantages their craft offers them, advantages denied the producer of pictures. Take for example our friend the bent poker. Let us suppose the feat to be impossible. By hocus pocus and the use of a rubber poker, let us say, the director of the picture shows the thing accomplished, and those who know snicker. But note how the deft author can cover it up with a flux of words, making capital out of the very impossibihty: "He gripped the poker in his two great strong hands. His whole body became tense. The muscles of his wrists and forearms stood out like whipcords and the veins showed blue and vivid against the tan. Beads of perspiration came out on his forehead. Annie watched, half horrified, half fascinated, unable to repress her admiration even in that moment of terror. The thing she knew could not happen transpired before her eyes. She had read in a magazine that no man could bend an iron poker in his bare hands, and yet there it was. In Hugo's giant grip the poker was lending. And so on and so on." You've all encountered it. Though I'm very far from clever I could write like that forever. But you can't do that in pictures. The statement is brief and final. The thing goes on before your eyes, and the more exciting, the more impossible it is to halt for titles explaining the seeming inconsistency. But even after a novel is written, accepted by a publisher, and in type — yes. even