 | CHAPTER XIV The art of the moving picture, |  |
CHAPTER XIV
THE ORCHESTRA, CONVERSATION, AND THE
CENSORSHIP
Whenever the photoplay is mixed in the
same programme with vaudeville, the moving
picture part of the show suffers. The film is
rushed through, it is battered, it flickers more
than commonly, it is a little out of focus. The
house is not built for it. The owner of the
place cannot manage an art gallery with a circus
on his hands. It takes more brains than one
man possesses to pick good vaudeville talent
and bring good films to the town at the same
time. The best motion picture theatres are
built for photoplays alone. But they make
one mistake.
Almost every motion picture theatre has its
orchestra, pianist, or mechanical piano. The
perfect photoplay gathering-place would have no
sound but the hum of the conversing audience.
If this is too ruthless a theory, let the music be
played at the intervals between programmes,
the screen, the lights are on, and the people
coming in.
If there is something more to be done on the
part of the producer to make the film a telling
one, let it be a deeper study of the pictorial
arrangement, with the tones more carefully
balanced, the sculpture vitalized. This is
certainly better than to have a raw thing bullied
through with a music-programme, furnished
to bridge the weak places in the construction.
A picture should not be released till it is completely
thought out. A producer with this
goal before him will not have the time or brains
to spare to write music that is as closely and
delicately related to the action as the action is
to the background. And unless the tunes are
at one with the scheme they are an intrusion.
Perhaps the moving picture maker has a twin
brother almost as able in music, who possesses
the faculty of subordinating his creations to
the work of his more brilliant coadjutor. How
are they going to make a practical national
distribution of the accompaniment? In the
metropolitan theatres Cabiria carried its own
musicians and programme with a rich if feverish
result. In The Birth of a Nation, music was
Also the orchestra produced a substitute for
old-fashioned stage suspense by long drawn-out
syncopations. The finer photoplay values
were thrown askew. Perhaps these two performances
could be successfully vindicated in
musical policy. But such a defence proves
nothing in regard to the typical film. Imagine
either of these put on in Rochester, Illinois,
population one hundred souls. The reels run
through as well as on Broadway or Michigan
Avenue, but the local orchestra cannot play the
music furnished in annotated sheets as skilfully
as the local operator can turn the reel (or
watch the motor turn it!).
The big social fact about the moving picture
is that it is scattered like the newspaper. Any
normal accompaniment thereof must likewise be
adapted to being distributed everywhere. The
present writer has seen, here in his home place,
population sixty thousand, all the films discussed
in this book but Cabiria and The Birth of a
Nation. It is a photoplay paradise, the spoken
theatre is practically banished. Unfortunately
the local moving picture managers think it
necessary to have orchestras. The musicians
they can secure make tunes that are most
hoochey koochey strains are on the
air while heroes are dying. The Miserere is
in our ears when the lovers are reconciled.
Ragtime is imposed upon us while the old
mother prays for her lost boy. Sometimes the
musician with this variety of sympathy abandons
himself to thrilling improvisation.
My thoughts on this subject began to take
form several years ago, when the film this book
has much praised, The Battle Hymn of the
Republic, came to town. The proprietor of
one theatre put in front of his shop a twenty-foot
sign "The Battle Hymn of the Republic,
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, brought back by
special request." He had probably read Julia
Ward Howe's name on the film forty times
before the sign went up. His assistant, I presume
his daughter, played "In the Shade of
the Old Apple Tree" hour after hour, while
the great film was rolling by. Many old soldiers
were coming to see it. I asked the assistant
why she did not play and sing the Battle Hymn.
She said they "just couldn't find it." Are the
distributors willing to send out a musician with
each film?
Many of the Springfield producers are quite
photoplays is like asking the man at the news
stand to write an editorial while he sells you
the paper. The picture with a great orchestra
in a far-off metropolitan Opera House, may
be classed by fanatic partisanship with Grand
Opera. But few can get at it. It has nothing
to do with Democracy.
Of course people with a mechanical imagination,
and no other kind, begin to suggest the
talking moving picture at this point, or the
phonograph or the mechanical piano. Let us
discuss the talking moving picture only. That
disposes of the others.
If the talking moving picture becomes a reliable
mirror of the human voice and frame,
it will be the basis of such a separate art that
none of the photoplay precedents will apply.
It will be the phonoplay, not the photoplay.
It will be unpleasant for a long time. This
book is a struggle against the non-humanness
of the undisciplined photograph. Any film is
correct, realistic, forceful, many times before it
is charming. The actual physical storage-battery
of the actor is many hundred miles
away. As a substitute, the human quality
must come in the marks of the presence of the
brush-work. If we compare it to a love-letter it
must be in his handwriting rather than worked
on a typewriter. If he puts his autograph into
the film, it is after a fierce struggle with the
uncanny scientific quality of the camera's work.
His genius and that of the whole company of
actors is exhausted in the task.
The raw phonograph is likewise unmagnetic.
Would you set upon the shoulders of the troupe
of actors the additional responsibility of putting
an adequate substitute for human magnetism
in the phonographic disk? The voice
that does not actually bleed, that contains no
heart-beats, fails to meet the emergency. Few
people have wept over a phonographic selection
from Tristan and Isolde. They are moved
at the actual performance. Why? Look
at the opera singer after the last act. His
eyes are burning. His face is flushed. His
pulse is high. Reaching his hotel room, he is
far more weary than if he had sung the opera
alone there. He has given out of his brain-fire
and blood-beat the same magnetism that
leads men in battle. To speak of it in the
crassest terms, this resource brings him a hundred
times more salary than another man with
that leaves him drained at the end of the
show cannot be stored in the phonograph machine.
That device is as good in the morning
as at noon. It ticks like a clock.
To perfect the talking moving picture, human
magnetism must be put into the mirror-screen
and into the clock. Not only is this imperative,
but clock and mirror must be harmonized,
one gently subordinated to the other. Both
cannot rule. In the present talking moving
picture the more highly developed photoplay is
dragged by the hair in a dead faint, in the wake
of the screaming savage phonograph. No talking
machine on the market reproduces conversation
clearly unless it be elaborately articulated
in unnatural tones with a stiff interval between
each question and answer. Real dialogue goes
to ruin.
The talking moving picture came to our
town. We were given for one show a line of
minstrels facing the audience, with the interlocutor
repeating his immemorial question,
and the end-man giving the immemorial
answer. Then came a scene in a blacksmith
shop where certain well-differentiated rackets
were carried over the footlights. No one heard
straight at us.
The phonoplay can quite possibly reach some
divine goal, but it will be after the speaking
powers of the phonograph excel the photographing
powers of the reel, and then the
pictures will be brought in as comment and
ornament to the speech. The pictures will
be held back by the phonograph as long as it is
more limited in its range. The pictures are at
present freer and more versatile without it.
If the phonoplay is ever established, since it
will double the machinery, it must needs double
its prices. It will be the illustrated phonograph,
in a more expensive theatre.
The orchestra is in part a blundering effort
by the local manager to supply the human-magnetic
element which he feels lacking in the
pictures on which the producer has not left
his autograph. But there is a much more
economic and magnetic accompaniment, the
before-mentioned buzzing commentary of the
audience. There will be some people who
disturb the neighbors in front, but the average
crowd has developed its manners in this particular,
and when the orchestra is silent, murmurs
like a pleasant brook.
Local manager, why not an advertising campaign
in your town that says: "Beginning Monday
and henceforth, ours shall be known as the
Conversational Theatre"? At the door let each
person be handed the following card: —
"You are encouraged to discuss the picture
with the friend who accompanies you to this
place. Conversation, of course, must be sufficiently
subdued not to disturb the stranger who
did not come with you to the theatre. If you
are so disposed, consider your answers to these
questions: What play or part of a play given
in this theatre did you like most to-day? What
the least? What is the best picture you have
ever seen anywhere? What pictures, seen here
this month, shall we bring back?" Here give
a list of the recent productions, with squares
to mark by the Australian ballot system: approved
or disapproved. The cards with their
answers could be slipped into the ballot-box
at the door as the crowd goes out.
It may be these questions are for the exceptional
audiences in residence districts. Perhaps
with most crowds the last interrogation
is the only one worth while. But by gathering
habitually the answers to that alone the place
would get the drift of its public, realize its
bestowing the blue ribbons. The photoplay
theatres have coupon contests and balloting
already: the most popular young lady, money
prizes to the best vote-getter in the audience,
etc. Why not ballot on the matter in hand?
If the cards are sent out by the big producers,
a referendum could be secured that
would be invaluable in arguing down to rigid
censorship, and enable them to make their own
private censorship more intelligent. Various
styles of experimental cards could be tried till
the vital one is found.
There is growing up in this country a clan of
half-formed moving picture critics. The present
stage of their work is indicated by the eloquent
notice describing Your Girl and Mine,
in the chapter on "Progress and Endowment."
The metropolitan papers give their photoplay
reporters as much space as the theatrical
critics. Here in my home town the twelve
moving picture places take one half a page of
chaotic notices daily. The country is being
badly led by professional photoplay news-writers
who do not know where they are going,
but are on the way.
But they aptly describe the habitual attendants
photoplay, as at the base-ball grounds, is
neither a low-brow nor a high-brow. He is an
enthusiast who is as stirred by the charge of
the photographic cavalry as by the home runs
that he watches from the bleachers. In both
places he has the privilege of comment while
the game goes on. In the photoplay theatre
it is not so vociferous, but as keenly felt. Each
person roots by himself. He has his own judgment,
and roasts the umpire: who is the keeper
of the local theatre: or the producer, as the case
may be. If these opinions of the fan can be
collected and classified, an informal censorship
is at once established. The photoplay reporters
can then take the enthusiasts in hand and
lead them to a realization of the finer points
in awarding praise and blame. Even the sporting
pages have their expert opinions with due
influence on the betting odds. Out of the
work of the photoplay reporters let a superstructure
of art criticism be reared in periodicals
like The Century, Harper's, Scribner's,
The Atlantic, The Craftsman, and the architectural
magazines. These are our natural custodians
of art. They should reproduce the most
exquisite tableaus, and be as fastidious in their
examples of the other arts. Let them spread the
news when photoplays keyed to the Rembrandt
mood arrive. The reporters for the
newspapers should get their ideas and refreshment
in such places as the Ryerson Art Library
of the Chicago Art Institute. They should
begin with such books as Richard Muther's
History of Modern Painting, John C. Van
Dyke's Art for Art's Sake, Marquand and
Frothingham's History of Sculpture, A. D. F.
Hamlin's History of Architecture. They should
take the business of guidance in this new world
as a sacred trust, knowing they have the power
to influence an enormous democracy.
The moving picture journals and the literati
are in straits over the censorship question. The
literati side with the managers, on the principles
of free speech and a free press. But few of
the æsthetically super-wise are persistent fans.
They rave for freedom, but are not, as a general
thing, living back in the home town. They do
not face the exigency of having their summer
and winter amusement spoiled day after day.
Extremists among the pious are railing
against the moving pictures as once they
railed against novels. They have no notion
backwoods of our civilization, where its presence
is as hard to prevent as the rain. But
some of us are destined to a reaction, almost
as strong as the obsession. The religionists
will think they lead it. They will be self-deceived.
Moving picture nausea is already
taking hold of numberless people, even when
they are in the purely pagan mood. Forced
by their limited purses, their inability to buy
a Ford car, and the like, they go in their loneliness
to film after film till the whole world seems
to turn on a reel. When they are again at home,
they see in the dark an imaginary screen with
tremendous pictures, whirling by at a horribly
accelerated pace, a photoplay delirium tremens.
Faster and faster the reel turns in the back of
their heads. When the moving picture sea-sickness
is upon one, nothing satisfies but the quietest
out of doors, the companionship of the gentlest
of real people. The non-movie-life has charms
such as one never before conceived. The worn
citizen feels that the cranks and legislators can
do what they please to the producers. He is
through with them.
The moving picture business men do not
realize that they have to face these nervous
flatter themselves they are being pursued by
some reincarnations of Anthony Comstock.
There are several reasons why photoplay corporations
are callous, along with the sufficient
one that they are corporations.
First, they are engaged in a financial orgy.
Fortunes are being found by actors and managers
faster than they were dug up in 1849 and
1850 in California. Forty-niner lawlessness of
soul prevails. They talk each other into a
lordly state of mind. All is dash and experiment.
Look at the advertisements in the
leading moving picture magazines. They are
like the praise of oil stock or Peruna. They
bawl about films founded upon little classics.
They howl about plots that are ostensibly from
the soberest of novels, whose authors they blasphemously
invoke. They boo and blow about
twisted, callous scenarios that are bad imitations
of the world's most beloved lyrics.
The producers do not realize the mass effect
of the output of the business. It appears to
many as a sea of unharnessed photography:
sloppy conceptions set forth with sharp edges
and irrelevant realism. The jumping, twitching,
cold-blooded devices, day after day, create
do with the questionable subject. When on
top of this we come to the picture that is actually
insulting, we are up in arms indeed. It is
supplied by a corporation magnate removed
from his audience in location, fortune, interest,
and mood: an absentee landlord. I was trying
to convert a talented and noble friend to the
films. The first time we went there was a
prize-fight between a black and a white man,
not advertised, used for a filler. I said it was
queer, and would not happen again. The
next time my noble friend was persuaded to
go, there was a cock-fight, incidental to a
Cuban romance. The third visit we beheld a
lady who was dying for five minutes, rolling her
eyes about in a way that was fearful to see.
The convert was not made.
It is too easy to produce an unprovoked
murder, an inexplicable arson, neither led up
to nor followed by the ordinary human history
of such acts, and therefore as arbitrary as the
deeds of idiots or the insane. A villainous
hate, an alleged love, a violent death, are flashed
at us, without being in any sort of tableau logic.
The public is ceaselessly played upon by tactless
devices. Therefore it howls, just as children
governess tries the very thing the diplomatic
governess, in reasonable time, may bring about.
The producer has the man in the audience
who cares for the art peculiarly at his mercy.
Compare him with the person who wants to
read a magazine for an evening. He can
look over all the periodicals in the local bookstore
in fifteen minutes. He can select the
one he wants, take this bit of printed matter
home, go through the contents, find the three
articles he prefers, get an evening of reading
out of them, and be happy. Every day as
many photoplays come to our town as magazines
come to the book-store in a week or a
month. There are good ones and bad ones
buried in the list. There is no way to sample
the films. One has to wait through the first
third of a reel before he has an idea of the
merits of a production, his ten cents is spent,
and much of his time is gone. It would take
five hours at least to find the best film in our
town for one day. Meanwhile, nibbling and
sampling, the seeker would run such a gantlet
of plot and dash and chase that his eyes and
patience would be exhausted. Recently there
returned to the city for a day one of Griffith's
was good to see again. In order to watch this
one reel twice I had to wait through five others
of unutterable miscellany.
Since the producers and theatre-managers
have us at their mercy, they are under every
obligation to consider our delicate susceptibilities
— granting the proposition that in an ideal
world we will have no legal censorship. As to
what to do in this actual nation, let the reader
follow what John Collier has recently written in
The Survey. Collier was the leading force in
founding the National Board of Censorship. As
a member of that volunteer extra-legal board
which is independent and high minded, yet
accepted by the leading picture companies, he
is able to discuss legislation in a manner which
the present writer cannot hope to match. Read
John Collier. But I wish to suggest that the
ideal censorship is that to which the daily press
is subject, the elastic hand of public opinion, if
the photoplay can be brought as near to newspaper
conditions in this matter as it is in some
others.
How does public opinion grip the journalist?
The editor has a constant report from his
constituency. A popular scoop sells an extra
fifty subscriptions. People come to the office
to do it, and say why. If there is a piece of
real news on the second page, and fifty letters
come in about it that night, next month
when that character of news reappears it gets
the front page. Some human peculiarities are
not mentioned, some phrases not used. The
total attribute of the blue-pencil man is diplomacy.
But while the motion pictures come out
every day, they get their discipline months afterwards
in the legislation that insists on everything
but tact. A tentative substitute for the letters
that come to the editor, the personal call and
cancelled subscription, and the rest, is the
system of balloting on the picture, especially
the answer to the question, "What picture seen
here this month, or this week, shall we bring
back?" Experience will teach how to put
the queries. By the same system the public
might dictate its own cut-outs. Let us have
a democracy and a photoplay business working
in daily rhythm.
| CHAPTER XIV The art of the moving picture, | |