 | CHAPTER X The art of the moving picture, |  |
CHAPTER X
FURNITURE, TRAPPINGS, AND INVENTIONS IN
MOTION
The Action Pictures are sculpture-in-motion,
the Intimate Pictures, paintings-in-motion,
the Splendor Pictures, many and diverse.
It seems far-fetched, perhaps, to complete the
analogy and say they are architecture-in-motion;
yet, patient reader, unless I am mistaken,
that assumption can be given a value
in time without straining your imagination.
Landscape gardening, mural painting, church
building, and furniture making as well, are
some of the things that come under the head
of architecture. They are discussed between
the covers of any architectural magazine.
There is a particular relation in the photoplay
between Crowd Pictures and landscape
conceptions, between Patriotic Films and mural
paintings, between Religious Films and architecture.
And there is just as much of a
relation between Fairy Tales and furniture,
which same is discussed in this chapter.
Let us return to Moving Day, chapter four.
This idea has been represented many times with
a certain sameness because the producers have
not thought out the philosophy behind it. A
picture that is all action is a plague, one that
is all elephantine and pachydermatous pageant
is a bore, and, most emphatically, a film that
is all mechanical legerdemain is a nuisance.
The possible charm in a so-called trick picture
is in eliminating the tricks, giving them dignity
till they are no longer such, but thoughts in
motion and made visible. In Moving Day the
shoes are the most potent. They go through a
drama that is natural to them. To march without
human feet inside is but to exaggerate themselves.
It would not be amusing to have them
walk upside down, for instance. As long as
the worn soles touch the pavement, we unconsciously
conjure up the character of the
absent owners, about whom the shoes are
indeed gossiping. So let the remainder of the
furniture keep still while the shoes do their
best. Let us call to mind a classic fairy-tale
involving shoes that are magical: The Seven
Leagued Boots, for example, or The Enchanted
Moccasins, or the footwear of Puss in Boots.
How gorgeous and embroidered any of these
should be brought to play, without fidgeting
all over the shop! Cinderella's Slipper is
not sufficiently the heroine in moving pictures
of that story. It should be the tiny leading
lady of the piece, in the same sense the mighty
steam-engine is the hero of the story in chapter
two. The peasants when they used to tell the
tale by the hearth fire said the shoe was made
of glass. This was in mediæval Europe, at a
time when glass was much more of a rarity.
The material was chosen to imply a sort of
jewelled strangeness from the start. When
Cinderella loses it in her haste, it should flee
at once like a white mouse, to hide under
the sofa. It should be pictured there with
special artifice, so that the sensuous little foot
of every girl-child in the audience will tingle
to wear it. It should move a bit when the
prince comes frantically hunting his lady, and
peep out just in time for that royal personage
to spy it. Even at the coronation it
should be the centre of the ritual, more gazed
at than the crown, and on as dazzling a
cushion. The final taking on of the slipper
by the lady should be as stately a ceremony
as the putting of the circlet of gold on her
there are novel stories that should be evolved
by preference, about new sorts of magic shoes.
We have not exhausted Moving Day. The
chairs kept still through the Cinderella discourse.
Now let them take their innings.
Instead of having all of them dance about,
invest but one with an inner life. Let its
special attributes show themselves but gradually,
reaching their climax at the highest
point of excitement in the reel, and being an
integral part of that enthusiasm. Perhaps,
though we be inventing a new fairy-tale, it
will resemble the Siege Perilous in the Arthurian
story, the chair where none but the
perfect knight could sit. A dim row of flaming
swords might surround it. When the soul
entitled to use this throne appears, the swords
might fade away and the gray cover hanging
in slack folds roll back because of an inner energy
and the chair might turn from gray to
white, and with a subtle change of line become
a throne.
The photoplay imagination which is able
to impart vital individuality to furniture will
not stop there. Let the buildings emanate
conscious life. The author-producer-photographer,
personality some place akin to the House of the
Seven Gables till the ancient building dominates
the fancy as it does in Hawthorne's tale. There
are various ways to bring about this result:
by having its outlines waver in the twilight,
by touches of phosphorescence, or by the passing
of inexplicable shadows or the like. It
depends upon what might be called the genius
of the building. There is the Poe story of The
Fall of the House of Usher, where with the
death of the last heir the castle falls crumbling
into the tarn. There are other possible tales
on such terms, never yet imagined, to be born
tomorrow. Great structures may become in
sort villains, as in the old Bible narrative of
the origin of the various languages. The producer
can show the impious Babel Tower, going
higher and higher into the sky, fascinating and
tempting the architects till a confusion of
tongues turns those masons into quarrelling
mobs that become departing caravans, leaving
her blasted and forsaken, a symbol of every
Babylon that rose after her.
There are fables where the rocks and the
mountains speak. Emerson has given us one
where the Mountain and the Squirrel had a
"Little Prig." And then continues a clash
of personalities more possible to illustrate
than at first appears. Here we come to the
second stage of the fairy-tale where the creature
seems so unmanageable in his physical aspect
that some actor must be substituted who
will embody the essence of him. To properly
illustrate the quarrel of the Mountain and the
Squirrel, the steep height should quiver and
heave and then give forth its personality in
the figure of a vague smoky giant, capable of
human argument, but with oak-roots in his
hair, and Bun, perhaps, become a jester in
squirrel's dress.
Or it may be our subject matter is a tall Dutch
clock. Father Time himself might emerge therefrom.
Or supposing it is a chapel, in a knight's
adventure. An angel should step from the carving
by the door: a design that is half angel, half
flower. But let the clock first tremble a bit.
Let the carving stir a little, and then let the
spirit come forth, that there may be a fine relation
between the impersonator and the thing
represented. A statue too often takes on life
by having the actor abruptly substituted. The
actor cannot logically take on more personality
expression in a new channel. In the
realm of letters, a real transformation scene,
rendered credible to the higher fancy by its slow
cumulative movement, is the tale of the change
of the dying Rowena to the living triumphant
Ligeia in Poe's story of that name. Substitution
is not the fairy-story. It is transformation,
transfiguration, that is the fairy-story,
be it a divine or a diabolical change. There is
never more than one witch in a forest, one
Siege Perilous at any Round Table. But she is
indeed a witch and the other is surely a Siege
Perilous.
We might define Fairy Splendor as furniture
transfigured, for without transfiguration there
is no spiritual motion of any kind. But the
phrase "furniture-in-motion" serves a purpose.
It gets us back to the earth for a reason.
Furniture is architecture, and the fairy-tale
picture should certainly be drawn with architectural
lines. The normal fairy-tale is a sort
of tiny informal child's religion, the baby's secular
temple, and it should have for the most
part that touch of delicate sublimity that we
see in the mountain chapel or grotto, or fancy
in the dwellings of Aucassin and Nicolette.
producer, there lies in them the secret
of a more than ritualistic power. Good fairy
architecture amounts to an incantation in itself.
If it is a grown-up legend, it must be more
than monumental in its lines, like the great
stone face of Hawthorne's tale. Even a chair
can reach this estate. For instance, let it be
the throne of Wodin, illustrating some passage
in Norse mythology. If this throne has a
language, it speaks with the lightning; if it
shakes with its threat, it moves the entire
mountain range beneath it. Let the wizard-author-producer
climb up from the tricks of
Moving Day to the foot-hills where he can see
this throne against the sky, as a superarchitect
would draw it. But even if he can give this
vision in the films, his task will not be worth
while if he is simply a teller of old stories. Let
us have magic shoes about which are more golden
dreams than those concerning Cinderella. Let
us have stranger castles than that of Usher,
more dazzling chairs than the Siege Perilous.
Let us have the throne of Liberty, not the
throne of Wodin.
There is one outstanding photoplay that I
always have in mind when I think of film
chapter and chapter four, as well as many
others through the book. It is Griffith's production
of The Avenging Conscience. It is also
an example of that rare thing, a use of old material
that is so inspired that it has the dignity
of a new creation. The raw stuff of the plot
is pieced together from the story of The Telltale
Heart and the poem Annabel Lee. It has
behind it, in the further distance, Poe's conscience
stories of The Black Cat, and William
Wilson. I will describe the film here at length,
and apply it to whatever chapters it illustrates.
An austere and cranky bachelor (well impersonated
by Spottiswoode Aitken) brings
up his orphan nephew with an awkward affection.
The nephew is impersonated by Henry
B. Walthall. The uncle has an ambition that
the boy will become a man of letters. In his
attempts at literature the youth is influenced
by Poe. This brings about the Poe quality of
his dreams at the crisis. The uncle is silently
exasperated when he sees his boy's writing-time
broken into, and wasted, as he thinks,
by an affair with a lovely Annabel (Blanche
Sweet). The intimacy and confidence of the
lovers has progressed so far that it is a natural
and after hesitation knock at the door. She
wants to know what has delayed her boy.
She is all in a flutter on account of the overdue
appointment to go to a party together. The
scene of the pretty hesitancy on the step, her
knocking, and the final impatient tapping with
her foot is one of the best illustrations of the
intimate mood in photoplay episodes. On the
girl's entrance the uncle overwhelms her and
the boy by saying she is pursuing his nephew
like a common woman of the town. The words
actually burst through the film, not as a melodramatic,
but as an actual insult. This is a
thing almost impossible to do in the photoplay.
This outrage in the midst of an
atmosphere of chivalry is one of Griffith's
master-moments. It accounts for the volcanic
fury of the nephew that takes such trouble
to burn itself out afterwards. It is not easy
for the young to learn that they must let those
people flay them for an hour who have made
every sacrifice for them through a lifetime.
This scene of insult and the confession scene,
later in this film, moved me as similar passages
in high drama would do; and their very rareness,
even in the hands of photoplay masters, indicates
the main asset of the moving picture. Over and
over, with the best talent and producers, they
fail.
The boy and girl go to the party in spite of
the uncle. It is while on the way that the boy
looks on the face of a stranger who afterwards
mixes up in his dream as the detective. There
is a mistake in the printing here. There are
several minutes of a worldly-wise oriental dance
to amuse the guests, while the lovers are alone
at another end of the garden. It is, possibly,
the aptest contrast with the seriousness of
our hero and heroine. But the social affair
could have had a better title than the one that
is printed on the film "An Old-fashioned
Sweetheart Party." Possibly the dance was
put in after the title.
The lovers part forever. The girl's pride
has had a mortal wound. About this time is
thrown on the screen the kind of a climax
quite surely possible to the photoplay. It
reminds one, not of the mood of Poe's verse,
but of the spirit of the paintings of George
Frederick Watts. It is allied in some way, in
my mind, with his "Love and Life," though
but a single draped figure within doors, and
a mountain.
The boy, having said good-by, remembers
the lady Annabel. It is a crisis after the
event. In his vision she is shown in a darkened
passageway, all in white, looking out of the
window upon the moonlit sky. Simple enough
in its elements, this vision is shown twice in
glory. The third replica has not the same
glamour. The first two are transfigurations
into divinity. The phrase thrown on the screen
is "The moon never beams without bringing me
dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee." And
the sense of loss goes through and through one
like a flight of arrows. Another noble picture,
more realistic, more sculpturesque, is of Annabel
mourning on her knees in her room. Her
bended head makes her akin to "Niobe, all
tears."
The boy meditating on a park-path is meanwhile
watching the spider in his web devour
the fly. Then he sees the ants in turn destroy
the spider. These pictures are shown on so
large a scale that the spiderweb fills the end of
the theatre. Then the ant-tragedy does the
same. They can be classed as particularly apt
hieroglyphics in the sense of chapter thirteen.
of the Poe sort. It is the first hint of the Poe
hieroglyphic we have had except the black
patch over the eye of the uncle, along with his
jaundiced, cadaverous face. The boy meditates
on how all nature turns on cruelty and the
survival of the fittest.
He passes just now an Italian laborer
(impersonated by George Seigmann). This
laborer enters later into his dream. He finally
goes to sleep in his chair, the resolve to kill
his uncle rankling in his heart.
The audience is not told that a dream begins.
To understand that, one must see the film
through twice. But it is perfectly legitimate to
deceive us. Through our ignorance we share
the young man's hallucinations, entering into
them as imperceptibly as he does. We think
it is the next morning. Poe would start the
story just here, and here the veritable Poe-esque
quality begins.
After debate within himself as to means, the
nephew murders his uncle and buries him in
the thick wall of the chimney. The Italian
laborer witnesses the death-struggle through
the window. While our consciences are aching
and the world crashes round us, he levies blackmail.
becomes an armed sentinel. The boy fears
detection.
Yet the foolish youth thinks he will be
happy. But every time he runs to meet his
sweetheart he is appalled by hallucinations
over her shoulder. The cadaverous ghost of
the uncle is shown on the screen several times.
It is an appearance visible to the young man
and the audience only. Later the ghost is
implied by the actions of the guilty one. We
merely imagine it. This is a piece of sound
technique. We no more need a dray full of
ghosts than a dray full of jumping furniture.
The village in general has never suspected
the nephew. Only two people suspect him:
the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his
father. This gentleman puts a detective on the
trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph
Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim
is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the
second case of the thing I have argued as being
generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of
a private person, and which the considerations
of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. We
trace the innermost psychology of one special
citizen step by step to the crisis, and that path
The climax is the confession to the detective.
With this self-exposure the direct Poe-quality of
the technique comes to an end. Moreover, Poe
would end the story here. But the Poe-dream
is set like a dark jewel in a gold ring, of which
more anon.
Let us dwell upon the confession. The first
stage of this conscience-climax is reached by
the dramatization of The Tell-tale Heart
reminiscence in the memory of the dreaming
man. The episode makes a singular application
of the theories with which this chapter
begins. For furniture-in-motion we have the
detective's pencil. For trappings and inventions
in motion we have his tapping shoe and
the busy clock pendulum. Because this scene
is so powerful the photoplay is described in this
chapter rather than any other, though the application
is more spiritual than literal. The
half-mad boy begins to divulge that he thinks
that the habitual ticking of the clock is satanically
timed to the beating of the dead
man's heart. Here more unearthliness hovers
round a pendulum than any merely mechanical
trick-movements could impart. Then the
merest commonplace of the detective tapping
in vain to ignore it — increases the strain, till
the audience has well-nigh the hallucinations
of the victim. Then the bold tapping of the
detective's foot, who would do all his accusing
without saying a word, and the startling coincidence
of the owl hoot-hooting outside the
window to the same measure, bring us close to
the final breakdown. These realistic material
actors are as potent as the actual apparitions
of the dead man that preceded them. Those
visions prepared the mind to invest trifles
with significance. The pencil and the pendulum
conducting themselves in an apparently
everyday fashion, satisfy in a far nobler way the
thing in the cave-man attending the show that
made him take note in other centuries of the
rope that began to hang the butcher, the fire
that began to burn the stick, and the stick that
began to beat the dog.
Now the play takes a higher demoniacal
plane reminiscent of Poe's Bells. The boy
opens the door. He peers into the darkness.
There he sees them. They are the nearest
to the sinister Poe quality of any illustrations
I recall that attempt it. "They are neither
man nor woman, they are neither brute nor
with the architectural dignity that the
first part of this chapter has insisted wizard
trappings should take on. Now it is that the
boy confesses and the Poe story ends.
Then comes what the photoplay people
call the punch. It is discussed at the end of
chapter nine. It is a kind of solar plexus blow
to the sensibilities, certainly by this time an
unnecessary part of the film. Usually every
soul movement carefully built up to where
the punch begins is forgotten in the material
smash or rescue. It is not so bad in this case,
but it is a too conventional proceeding for
Griffith.
The boy flees interminably to a barn too
far away. There is a siege by a posse, led
by the detective. It is veritable border warfare.
The Italian leads an unsuccessful rescue
party. The unfortunate youth finally hangs
himself. The beautiful Annabel bursts through
the siege a moment too late; then, heart
broken, kills herself. These things are carried
out by good technicians. But it would have
been better to have had the suicide with but
a tiny part of the battle, and the story five
reels long instead of six. This physical turmoil
psychic momentum acquired through the previous
confession scene. The one thing with intrinsic
pictorial heart-power is the death of
Annabel by jumping off the sea cliff.
Then comes the awakening. To every one
who sees the film for the first time it is like
the forgiveness of sins. The boy finds his
uncle still alive. In revulsion from himself,
he takes the old man into his arms. The
uncle has already begun to be ashamed of his
terrible words, and has prayed for a contrite
heart. The radiant Annabel is shown in the
early dawn rising and hurrying to her lover
in spite of her pride. She will bravely take
back her last night's final word. She cannot
live without him. The uncle makes amends to
the girl. The three are in the inconsistent but
very human mood of sweet forgiveness for
love's sake, that sometimes overtakes the bitterest
of us after some crisis in our days.
The happy pair are shown, walking through
the hills. Thrown upon the clouds for them
are the moods of the poet-lover's heart. They
look into the woods and see his fancies of
Spring, the things that he will some day write.
These pageants might be longer. They furnish
parallel and contrast with the ghoul-visions
that end with the confession to the detective.
They wipe that terror from the mind. They
do not represent Poe. The rabbits, the leopard,
the fairies, Cupid and Psyche in the clouds,
and the little loves from the hollow trees are
contributions to the original poetry of the eye.
Finally, the central part of this production
of the Avenging Conscience is no dilution of
Poe, but an adequate interpretation, a story
he might have written. Those who have the
European respect for Poe's work will be most
apt to be satisfied with this section, including
the photographic texture which may be said to
be an authentic equivalent of his prose. How
often Poe has been primly patronized for his
majestic quality, the wizard power which looms
above all his method and subject-matter and
furnishes the only reason for its existence!
For Griffith to embroider this Poe Interpretation
in the centre of a fairly consistent
fabric, and move on into a radiant climax
of his own that is in organic relation to the
whole, is an achievement indeed. The final
criticism is that the play is derivative. It is
not built from new material in all its parts, as
of Poe to get its ultimate flavor. But in reading
Poe's own stories, one need not be a reader
of any one special preceding writer to get the
strange and solemn exultation of that literary
enchanter. He is the quintessence of his own
lonely soul.
Though the wizard element is paramount in
the Poe episode of this film, the appeal to the
conscience is only secondary to this. It is
keener than in Poe, owing to the human elements
before and after. The Chameleon producer
approximates in The Avenging Conscience
the type of mystic teacher, discussed in the
twentieth chapter: "The Prophet-Wizard."
| CHAPTER X The art of the moving picture, | |