 | CHAPTER II The art of the moving picture, |  |
CHAPTER II
THE PHOTOPLAY OF ACTION
Let us assume, friendly reader, that it is
eight o'clock in the evening when you make
yourself comfortable in your den, to peruse
this chapter. I want to tell you about the
Action Film, the simplest, the type most often
seen. In the mind of the habitué of the cheaper
theatre it is the only sort in existence. It
dominates the slums, is announced there by
red and green posters of the melodrama sort,
and retains its original elements, more deftly
handled, in places more expensive. The story
goes at the highest possible speed to be still
credible. When it is a poor thing, which is the
case too often, the St. Vitus dance destroys
the pleasure-value. The rhythmic quality of
the picture-motions is twitched to death. In
the bad photoplay even the picture of an express
train more than exaggerates itself. Yet
when the photoplay chooses to behave it can
reproduce a race far more joyously than the
stage. On that fact is based the opportunity
but the abstract theory of the Action
Film is based on the out-of-door chase. You
remember the first one you saw where the
policeman pursues the comical tramp over
hill and dale and across the town lots. You
remember that other where the cowboy follows
the horse thief across the desert, spies him at
last and chases him faster, faster, faster, and
faster, and finally catches him. If the film
was made in the days before the National
Board of Censorship, it ends with the cowboy
cheerfully hanging the villain; all details given
to the last kick of the deceased.
One of the best Action Pictures is an old
Griffith Biograph, recently reissued, the story
entitled "Man's Genesis." In the time when
cave-men-gorillas had no weapons, Weak-Hands
(impersonated by Robert Harron)
invents the stone club. He vanquishes his
gorilla-like rival, Brute-Force (impersonated
by Wilfred Lucas). Strange but credible manners
and customs of the cave-men are detailed.
They live in picturesque caves. Their half-monkey
gestures are wonderful to see. But
these things are beheld on the fly. It is the
chronicle of a race between the brain of Weak-Hands
by the chasing of poor Weak-Hands in and out
among the rocks until the climax. Brain desperately
triumphs. Weak-Hands slays Brute-Force
with the startling invention. He wins
back his stolen bride, Lily-White (impersonated
by Mae Marsh). It is a Griffith masterpiece,
and every actor does sound work. The audience,
mechanical Americans, fond of crawling
on their stomachs to tinker their automobiles,
are eager over the evolution of the first weapon
from a stick to a hammer. They are as full of
curiosity as they could well be over the history
of Langley or the Wright brothers.
The dire perils of the motion pictures provoke
the ingenuity of the audience, not their
passionate sympathy. When, in the minds of
the deluded producers, the beholders should be
weeping or sighing with desire, they are prophesying
the next step to one another in worldly
George Ade slang. This is illustrated in another
good Action Photoplay: the dramatization of
The Spoilers. The original novel was written
by Rex Beach. The gallant William Farnum
as Glenister dominates the play. He has excellent
support. Their team-work makes them
worthy of chronicle: Thomas Santschi as
Bessie Eyton as Helen Chester, Frank
Clark as Dextry, Wheeler Oakman as Bronco
Kid, and Jack McDonald as Slapjack.
There are, in The Spoilers, inspiriting ocean
scenes and mountain views. There are interesting
sketches of mining-camp manners
and customs. There is a well-acted love-interest
in it, and the element of the comradeship
of loyal pals. But the chase rushes past
these things to the climax, as in a policeman
picture it whirls past blossoming gardens and
front lawns till the tramp is arrested. The
difficulties are commented on by the people
in the audience as rah-rah boys on the side
lines comment on hurdles cleared or knocked
over by the men running in college field-day.
The sudden cut-backs into side branches of the
story are but hurdles also, not plot complications
in the stage sense. This is as it should be.
The pursuit progresses without St. Vitus dance
or hysteria to the end of the film. There the
spoilers are discomfited, the gold mine is recaptured,
the incidental girls are won, in a
flash, by the rightful owners.
These shows work like the express elevators
in the Metropolitan Tower. The ideal is the
not to be jolted into insensibility. There are
two girl parts as beautifully thought out as the
parts of ladies in love can be expected to be in
Action Films. But in the end the love is not
much more romantic in the eye of the spectator
than it would be to behold a man on a motorcycle
with the girl of his choice riding on the
same machine behind him. And the highest
type of Action Picture romance is not attained
by having Juliet triumph over the motorcycle
handicap. It is not achieved by weaving in a
Sherlock Holmes plot. Action Picture romance
comes when each hurdle is a tableau, when there
is indeed an art-gallery-beauty in each one of
these swift glimpses: when it is a race, but with
a proper and golden-linked grace from action to
action, and the goal is the most beautiful glimpse
in the whole reel.
In the Action Picture there is no adequate
means for the development of any full grown
personal passion. The distinguished character-study
that makes genuine the personal emotions
in the legitimate drama, has no chance. People
are but types, swiftly moved chessmen. More
elaborate discourse on this subject may be found
in chapter twelve on the differences between the
Action Pictures are falsely advertised as having
heart-interest, or abounding in tragedy. But
though the actors glower and wrestle and even
if they are the most skilful lambasters in the
profession, the audience gossips and chews gum.
Why does the audience keep coming to this
type of photoplay if neither lust, love, hate,
nor hunger is adequately conveyed? Simply
because such spectacles gratify the incipient or
rampant speed-mania in every American.
To make the elevator go faster than the one
in the Metropolitan Tower is to destroy even
this emotion. To elaborate unduly any of the
agonies or seductions in the hope of arousing
lust, love, hate, or hunger, is to produce on
the screen a series of misplaced figures of the
order Frankenstein.
How often we have been horrified by these
galvanized and ogling corpses. These are the
things that cause the outcry for more censors.
It is not that our moral codes are insulted,
but what is far worse, our nervous systems are
temporarily racked to pieces. These wriggling
half-dead men, these over-bloody burglars, are
public nuisances, no worse and no better than
dead cats being hurled about by street urchins.
The cry for more censors is but the cry for
the man with the broom. Sometimes it is a
matter as simple as when a child is scratching
with a pin on a slate. While one would not
have the child locked up by the chief of police,
after five minutes of it almost every one wants
to smack him till his little jaws ache. It is
the very cold-bloodedness of the proceeding
that ruins our kindness of heart. And the best
Action Film is impersonal and unsympathetic
even if it has no scratching pins. Because it is
cold-blooded it must take extra pains to be
tactful. Cold-blooded means that the hero as
we see him on the screen is a variety of amiable
or violent ghost. Nothing makes his lack of
human charm plainer than when we as audience
enter the theatre at the middle of what purports
to be the most passionate of scenes when
the goal of the chase is unknown to us and the
alleged "situation" appeals on its magnetic
merits. Here is neither the psychic telepathy
of Forbes Robertson's Cæsar, nor the fire-breath
of E. H. Sothern's Don Quixote. The
audience is not worked up into the deadly still
mob-unity of the speaking theatre. We late
comers wait for the whole reel to start over and
the goal to be indicated in the preliminary,
The prize may be a lady's heart, the restoration
of a lost reputation, or the ownership of the
patent for a churn. In the more effective
Action Plays it is often what would be secondary
on the stage, the recovery of a certain
glove, spade, bull-calf, or rock-quarry. And to
begin, we are shown a clean-cut picture of said
glove, spade, bull-calf, or rock-quarry. Then
when these disappear from ownership or sight,
the suspense continues till they are again
visible on the screen in the hands of the rightful
owner.
In brief, the actors hurry through what would
be tremendous passions on the stage to recover
something that can be really photographed.
For instance, there came to our
town long ago a film of a fight between Federals
and Confederates, with the loss of many lives,
all for the recapture of a steam-engine that
took on more personality in the end than private
or general on either side, alive or dead.
It was based on the history of the very engine
photographed, or else that engine was given in
replica. The old locomotive was full of character
and humor amidst the tragedy, leaking
steam at every orifice. The original is in one of
in its capacity as a principal actor is going to be
referred to more than several times in this work.
The highest type of Action Picture gives us
neither the quality of Macbeth or Henry
Fifth, the Comedy of Errors, or the Taming of
the Shrew. It gives us rather that fine and
special quality that was in the ink-bottle of
Robert Louis Stevenson, that brought about
the limitations and the nobility of the stories
of Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and the New
Arabian Nights.
This discussion will be resumed on another
plane in the eighth chapter: Sculpture-in-Motion.
Having read thus far, why not close the book
and go round the corner to a photoplay theatre?
Give the preference to the cheapest one. The
Action Picture will be inevitable.
| CHAPTER II The art of the moving picture, | |