Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

Talking Pictures had developed its own technique, stage plays were often photographed almost as they were written. Action which seemed striking on the stage was dull, too full of dialogue and too slow in forward movement on the screen. Today, in order to give the screen version the advantage of screen fluidity, stage plays are carefully altered before screen use. Students might well see the stage version and then the film version of Night Must Fall Even the veriest tyro in dramatic analysis can see where the alterations necessary for screen form created a more powerful dramatic onrush than that possible for the original stage play. For The Barretts of Wimpole Street the changes were by two stage craftsmen, Ernest Vajda and Donald Ogden Stewart, and a screen expert, Claudine West. The final script, in an effort to make the story adequately pictorial and yet retain all the charm which made the stage play successful, deleted some dialogue and added new scenes. One scene, with its dramatically mounting camera shots, its swift flashes back and forth between the faces of Mr. Barrett and Elizabeth, serves as an illustration. This is the sequence in which Mr. Barrett exerts his will to make Elizabeth fail in her brave effort to climb a long flight of stairs. Delightful added love scenes in the greenhouse of a London park are brilliant with atmospheric color. To create greater suspense, the marriage which starts the fourth act of the stage play is held to the end of the screen version. The plays of Shakespeare afford one great exception to this generalization concerning changes required to bring stage plays into the talking picture form. In the [ 64 ]