Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Talking Pictures they are written beautifully, are insufficient in forward pictorial action to be effective on the screen. As examples, episodes of David at school and a number of scenes at Yarmouth concerned with David, Steerforth, and Little Em'ly were not included in the picture. In such instances, a shrewd screen writer preserves in his script a skeleton framework of the intent of the omitted scenes, and when one sees the picture he gets the illusion that he has seen everything he has read. A number of people have been asked, "What episodes of David Copperfield were left out of the screen version?" The stumbling answers proved the high efficiency which screen writing has attained in making deletions and condensations. On the other hand, comparatively few changes had to be made in the screen version of A Tale of Tvoo Cities. In this classic there are fewer central characters, and fewer dramatic situations than in David Copperfield. It is written with broad, bold strokes, rendering its translation into screen form a comparatively simple task. Mutiny on the Bounty presented a problem because for picture purposes the story "breaks wide open" at its climactic point. Direct physical pictorial conflict is a requisite of the photoplay form. In Mutiny on the Bounty, Christian and Midshipman By am are separated from Bligh at the time of the mutiny. Shortly afterward, Christian leaves Byam at Tahiti and sails on to remote Pitcairn Island. To restore dramatic connection between the characters, the scenarists made their first major deviation from the story. To bring Bligh and the midshipman into [62)