Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood more often in a combination of the two, reality fading into miniature so subtly that it is quite impossible on the screen to perceive the junction between the two. A movie play is not like a play in the theatre. It has no first, second, and third acts with appropriate set scenes and costumes. Let us take Ornitz's film played in and about a house in a Viennese suburb. Working through the scenario, the artist had to conceive the house of the director's dreams in its entirety. Then in the huge stage building he had to construct it. It had to be exact to Viennese models, for as likely as not the play would be shown in Vienna itself during its career. Recently a film representing Switzerland so caricatured the country that it was hooted from the movie houses there. The house must be furnished all through in proper style : drawing-room, dining-room, kitchen, cooking-pots, stairs, as in reality. And alongside there was the upper floor, plucked from its real position and laid on the ground. The artist had to imagine this house not only to make interesting photographic backgrounds from every possible angle, but also that these backgrounds should be emotionally suitable to the story. The photographers must be far enough away from the actors, the electricians must handle their huge lights in the rooms, and, lastly, not a foot more of the house than necessary must be built. The result stood open like a sad relic of the War stripped of its front by gunfire. But whatever the house may be, it is not only a house ; essentially it is also the husk of the drama. It is an assemblage of backgrounds. Every corner must be one that will assist the director in the development of his play. The communicating passages, the glimpses from room to room, from rooms to passage, up or down the stairs, and so on, must be thought out as things of pictorial value. Then they have to be fitted together as one coherent house. The artist behind [180]