Screenland (May–Oct 1927)

SCREENLAND 79 dthdl'l^ Continued from page 35 mighty mountains and frozen plains — for grass. They were the first white men ever to make that migration. This they did alone, unassisted, with no quarter being given them by any man. Here was a price less scenario which unfolds twice each year when these tribesmen with their wives, children and flocks, ford icy rivers and fight through glacial barriers to get to — GRASS. This was what those boys called life. They knew if they could translate it to the screen they would have the perfect picture. And they did almost. It was a glorious long-shot. But it did not have that close-up of hero and heroine in actual struggle. That is what we want to see when we go to a picture for that is what our every day lives are. Their picture GRASS was a tribal effort rather than a personal conflict. Together they took their picture to Jesse Lasky; explained to him just how they had missed in Grass the personal element. They unfolded to him an even greater effort. And so high did their own belief run, so vividly did they describe their dream that Lasky made it possible for them to attempt a realization of it. And this time they have come home with the greatest pictorial _ epic of modern times, the picture "Chang". Look on your map at Siam. It seems just a meager little lemon colored square stuck on the Indo-China peninsula. Why do you suppose Cooper and Schoedsack picked this spot out? Because millions of years ago, when the earth first stirred — the Jungle was. And to-day the Nan country of north-east Siam is just as it was then — at the first crack of creation. This Nan country is the last out-post of civilization, untouched by modernity, undominated by the white race. Alone, accompanied by no ' expensive movie entourage — with no electricians, costume designers, musicians, property men, scenarists or carpenters, Cooper and Schoedsack got on the boat at New York and headed for Marseilles, France. There they took a smaller ship which carried them — '({Barbara Kent in "Flesh and the Devil" established herself forever. This is one of the famous scenes. after many days — to Singapore, that famous city of India. Again they transshipped, and finally reached Bangkok, the capitol of Siam. Bangkok is the little Venice of the east, built as it is on an alluvial plain with thousands of tiny picturesque waterways, winding through the ancient city. Strangers in a strange land, these boys entered this old town. But they were welcomed — and given most cordial permission by the prime minister to proceed into the interior to make their picture. Siam is governed by a king, Rama the Seventh, and it is one of the last three absolute monarchies in the world. Abysinnia and Afghanistan are the other two. Rama the Seventh, is a charming cultivated man with high ideals regarding his duties to his people. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and has visited in this country which he admires enormously. In one of his elaborate palaces — Dusit by name — the Rama received Mr. Cooper. As Cooper entered the palace he found it surrounded by guards with halberds. Then the Chamberlain, escorted by an officer, came out. Cigars, cigarettes and soda water were served by court attendants — on their knees. A few moments later Mr. Cooper was taken in to the Rama himself who received him alone. With the King's good wishes following him, Cooper got on a Pullman — yes a real compartment train, built by the Germans — and travelled four hundred miles on a single track railway to the interior — to the little town of Meng-Prae. Schoedsack had gone on before. Here the railroad ends. The telegraph ends. The mail service ends. Here the world ends. And that cruel, throbbing, mysterious jungle begins. From Meng-Prae to Nan proper — a distance of over a hundred miles, Cooper and Schoedsack had to travel on ponies, with thirty or more carriers transporting their materials. This trip consumes six or seven days in the dry season and is over mountains and across hills. Treacherous rivers must be forded and tortuous rapids must be ridden. When night fell, these boys camped — as do all travellers — in the Buddhist temple — the Wat it is called — in whatever village they happened to be. After their army cots were set up, they calmly tied their mosquito nets to a mud, gilt or plaster Buddha and dropped off to sleep. Finally Nan was reached. And there in the bush — separated from the world by every known means of modern communication— these men started their picture. The first thing they had to do — and it is something we amateurs never understand — was to learn the* ways of the Jungle people and the Jungle animals. Before you can tell a story pictorially you have to know what you are "shooting" about. So from the village clearing Cooper and Schoedsack went into the Jungle-: — trapping, shooting, studying, watching. Day in and day out, week in and week out they "shot" these experimental pictures. And at the end of four months the stage was set, the actors were ready. Here for thousands upon thousands of years the forefathers of these three hundred Jungle actors had been working out their strange destinies and surviving in the warmth and wonder of the sun. In addition to the actors themselves there were hundreds of animals and reptiles and birds: tigers, leopards, bears, snakes, lizards, deer, goat, dogs, pigs, monkeys, and last of all C[ Ted Wells a new sombrero boy. In "A Made to Order Hero" he will show his stuff. from three hundred to five hundred Chang. And enveloping everything, like the loveliest of multi-colored mists, millions of butterflies. Imagine this picture if you can ■ — two sun-burned, heat-wrinkled men in the secret fastness of a lush world — where the blood in life's arteries runs cruel and hot and fast. Tall, spare Schoedsack — blinking with malaria, sometimes almost in delirium ■ — crouches behind his camera. Red-headed Cooper stands at his side with a highpowered rifle always at his shoulder. Much depends upon that rifle. One bad shot on Cooper's part and the chances are the leading man and a dozen or so extras would be lost forever — to say nothing of the two Americans themselves. But this Cooper's fire is as sure as everlasting life. Over all, sapping all, is that terrible tropical sun with its temperature of one-hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. The difficulties of directing this picture were almost insuperable. The natives knew nothing of film technique, never so much as having heard of a movie in all their lives. Added to this was the fact that all orders had to be given through an interpreter. These people speak a dialect of Siamese, a tonal language of five tones. And naturally neither Schoedsack nor Cooper had had time to familiarize themselves with this method of communication. Nevertheless, the drama which these boys have brought back to us is drenched with romantic beauty, passionate lusts, primitive hatreds, and saturating all is that never' ending combat which has existed from the time of the first inhabitant on this earth — MAN against NATURE. It isn't fair to tell you the story so I will give you just a hint of how the picture goes. The hero, Kru, is a courageous, clever, quick-witted native of this Nan country. He lives with his wife, Chantui, and his three children in his native village. But the pioneer spirit is calling him. He wants his own place, his own rice field, his own home. Like our pioneer grandfathers — those glorious men who started out in their covered wagons to conquer our wilderness of the west — Kru leaves his village and goes out into the Jungle to carve himself a home. Carve is the right word. The vegetation in this Siamese Jungle is so superabundant that no sooner have you cleared yourself st tiny fragment that the Jungle closes in on you. But Kru — real pioneer — with the ability of the Jungle man to adapt himself