Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

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V ^ \ A W WITH this issue Photoplay presents Mr. Burns Mantle to its readers as head of the department of review and criticism known as The Shadow Stage. His soundness of judgment, brilliancy of style and clarity of expression have earned for him an enviable and distinctive place in the ranks of leading American dramatic critics; and his opinions and comments on matters theatrical; have made him, not only a metropolitan, but a national figure. To the screen, in addition to his vast lore of theatrical knowledge, he brings a broad vision of the possibilities of the photoplay; its great mission as America's greatest recreation; its responsibilities and potentialities as the supreme moulder of public opinion; and withal a sympathetic understanding of the difficulties which beset producers in their effort toward perfection in a still adolescent art form. THE EDITOR The Shadow Stage Keg. U. S..Pat. OH. A Review of the new pictures hy Burns Mantle and Photoplay Magazine Editors BURNS THE editor, being an inquisitive person when he is nursing an idea, wanted to know how much I knew about pictures. It took me a full minute and a half to tell him, the extra minute being wasted on an effort to be polite. "But," I said, producing the familiar alibi, "I know what I like." That's the curse of being original. It invariably leads to something. "Write it," said he, as one accustomed to command. "Write what?" queried I, as one eager to dodge work. "Write what you know about pictures — and what you like," said he. "Does that imply that I also can write about those I don't like?" "It does," said he, turning back to the consideration of serious matters. "If I'm not here, leave your stuff in the mailbox. Good-by and may the 'fillum' gods be with you." Which is by way of explaining how it happens that you find me this day sitting in where the gifted Julian Johnson formerly sat — Mr. Johnson having moved on to those wider fields of endeavor in cinema land toward which many men struggle, but where only the elect arrive. For a long time I had been conscious of being gradually moved into the movies. If I tried to keep track of the actors in whose careers I was most interested I was obliged to follow them to the screen. If I wanted to familiarize myself with the history of the newer playwrights I had to trace them through the scenario departments of a film concern. The managers I used to know, and hke — because occasionally you do meet a likable manager — I gradually lost track of, because, I discovered, they were all in the movies. Finally, I found myself growing unpopular with the family and with the neighbors. I knew something about the theater, but did I know anything about Lillian Gish? No. I could remember when Richard Mansfield first played the Baron Chevrial, but did I know what had become of the old Biograph stars? Or how Griffith started? Or that Mae Marsh was living in Forest Hills? Or that Thomas Meighan had become infinitely more resourceful and a more finished actor on the screen than he ever was on the stage? Did I know that Theodore Roberts, far from giving up acting, as I suspected, was doing more acting that ever in front of the camera? Or that Elsie Ferguson had even a larger and more loyal following in the movies than she had commanded in the drama? Or that my old friend, Doug Fairbanks, who, as a boy in knickers, had proudly recited "Antony's speech" in my parlor years and years ago, had acquired milhons of new friends by jumping over the world? No! In sheer self-protection I realized that something would have to be done. So I started for the movies. "Why do you go, if you don't have to?" Z' "To hear the music," I explained, a little sheepishly. / For a time that was true. Still is true, to a degree. , Then, ever so gradually, because feature pictures were still By MANTLE pretty bad in spots, I found myself acquiring a fondness for parades, and waterfalls, and the thrill of war pictures and the sight of the boys going overseas on that grand crusade, and coming home as conquering heroes. Then I came to know, and to like, the Charhe Rays and the Mary Pickfords, the Gishes and the Alice Joyces; and to rediscover the Barrymores, and the Farnums, the Fergusons, and the Nazimovas. And to applaud the Tourneurs, and the Hugh Fords, and the Tuckers, and the deMilles, and the struggling young Griffiths. Until — well, here I am. And I am going to start right in by quarreUng with David Wark Griffith. Not as a captious critic, because I admire him beyond all other leaders of this expanding art. But because he is a leader and seems, to me, to be forgetting the responsibilities that go with the job. I have long considered the advisabihty of writing him an open letter. And dismissed the suggestion when I realized that he knows so much more of his business than I do. In that letter I was going to ask him if he really thought it necessary to inject into every picture drama he made an ugly assault upon the heroine? Or frequent scenes of such sheer brutality that they sadly minimized when they did not completely undo the fine effect of the picture as a whole? Granting that there would have been no story worth the screening in "The Birth of a Nation" if the little sister had not been pursued by the negro until she was forced to leap from the cliff to save herself; and that "Hearts of the World" would have lost its "punch" if the German officer had not been an utter brute, was it necessary to drag In the incident of the seduction of the little English girl in "The Great Love," or send an audience shuddering out of the theater with memories of the excessive brutality to which Battling Burrows subjected the pathetic Lucy in "Broken Blossoms" uppermost in their minds? I heard any number of people say that they would not think of letting their children see this, in other respects, truly wonderful picture because of those horrifying incidents. And many an adult declares that, remembering them, he (and more frequently she) was through with the movies for weeks to come. Was it necessary to play so strongly upon the attempted assault of the heroine in "Scarlet Days," and to make the wanton mother quite so physically and morally and fleshly repulsive as she was made? Or to add the rape scene to the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in "Intolerance"? Surely there was enough thrilling and holding drama in these stories without this overlay of bestiality as it was developed by the director. And particularly by a director who is so wonderfully capable in the development of those contrasting scenes inspired by the best and truest of human impulses. It isn't, I contend, fair to the movie-going public to play so persistently upon these baser themes, and certainly it is demoralizing in its effect upon those hundreds of younger directors who consciously or subconsciously take Mr. Griffith as their model. How many of them, do you suppose, have said to them 63