Pastiche and prejudice

by Arthur Bingham Walkley

THE SILENT STAGE

The spoken drama and the silent stage. I came across this dichotomy in The Times the other day, not without a pang, for it was a day too late. It is not a true dichotomy. It does not distinguish accurately between the story told by living actors to our faces and the story told by successive photographs of such actors. For the “silent stage” would cover pantomime, a form of drama, and a very ancient form, acted by living actors. It is not true, but it is for practical uses true enough. In life we have to make the best of rough approximations. I would have used this one gratefully had it occurred to me in my moment of need. But it did not.

Let me explain. One of our more notable comedians (I purposely put it thus vaguely, partly out of discretion, partly with a bid for that interest which the mystery of anonymity is apt to confer upon an otherwise matter-of-fact narrative, as George Borrow well knew)—one of our most notable comedians, then, had asked me to accompany him to a “cinema” rehearsal wherein he was cast for the principal part. I eagerly accepted, because the art of the “cinema” is becoming so important in our daily life that one really ought to learn something about it, and, moreover, because the cuisine of any art (see the Diary of the De Goncourts passim) is a fascinating thing in itself. Our rehearsal was to be miles away, in the far East of London, and the mere journey was a geographical adventure. The scene was a disused factory, and a disused factory has something of the romantic melancholy of a disaffected cathedral—not the romance of ruins, but the romance of a fabric still standing and valid, but converted to alien uses.

Our first question on arrival was, were we late? This question seems to be a common form of politeness with notable comedians, and is probably designed to take the wind out of the sails of possible criticism. No, we were not late—though everybody seemed to be suspiciously ready and, one feared, waiting. They were a crowd of ladies and gentlemen in elaborate evening dress, all with faces painted a rich café au lait or else salmon-colour, and very odd such a crowd looked against the whitewashed walls and bare beams of the disused factory. The scenery looked even more odd. It presented the middle fragments of everything without any edges. There was a vast baronial hall, decorated with suits of armour and the heaviest furniture, but without either ceiling or walls. There was a staircase hung, so to speak, in the air, leading to a doorway, which was just the framework of a door, standing alone, let into nothing. It seemed uncanny, until you remembered the simple fact that the camera can cover just as much, or as little, of a scene as it chooses. Great glaring “cinema” lights—I had not seen them since the Beckett-Carpentier flight—cast an unearthly pallor upon the few unpainted faces. The crowd of painted ladies and gentlemen hung about, waiting for their scene with what seemed to me astonishing patience. But patience, I suspect, is a necessary virtue at all rehearsals, whether “spoken” or “silent.”

And that distinction brings me to the producer. It was for him that I should have liked to have thought of it. For he fell to talking to me about his art, the art of production, and of cinematography in general, and I found myself forced to make some comparisons with what I had, up to that moment, always thought of as the “regular” stage. But evidently, as Jeffery said of Wordsworth’s poem, this would never do. The producer might have thought I was reflecting upon his art, about which he was so enthusiastic, as something “irregular.” At last, after deplorable hesitation, I found my phrase—the “other” stage. Dreadfully tame, I admit, but safe; it hurt nobody. Even now, however, I have an uneasy feeling that the producer was not quite satisfied with it. I ought perhaps to have accompanied it with a shrug, some sign of apology for so much as recognizing the existence of “other” stages of anything else, in short, than what was, at that moment and on that spot, the stage, the “silent” stage, the stage of moving pictures. It was like speaking of Frith’s “Derby Day” in the presence of a Cubist. Artistic enthusiasts must be allowed their little exclusions.

If the producer was an enthusiast, there was certainly a method in his enthusiasm. His table was covered with elaborate geometrical drawings, which, I was told, were first sketches for successive scenes. On pegs hung little schedules of the artists required for each scene, and of the scenes wherein each of the principals was concerned. Innumerable photographs, of course—photographs of scenes actually represented on the “film,” and of others not represented, experiments for the actual, final thing. For it is to be remembered that the producer of a “film” is relatively more important than the producer of a “spoken drama.” He is always part, and sometimes whole, author of the play. He has to conceive the successive phases of the action in detail, and to conceive them in terms of photography. Even with some one else’s play as a datum he has, I take it, to invent a good deal. For while the “spoken drama” can only show selected, critical moments of life, the “silent stage” aims at continuity and gives you the intervening moments. On the one stage, when a lady makes an afternoon call, you see her hostess’s drawing-room, and she walks in; on the other stage you see her starting from home, jumping into her Rolls-Royce, dashing through the crowded streets, knocking at the front door, being relieved of her cloak by the flunkey, mounting the stairs to the drawing-room, etc., etc. Indeed, this mania for continuity is a besetting sin of the “silent stage”; it leads to sheer irrelevance and the ruin of all proportion. My enthusiastic producer, it is only fair to say, was far too good an artist to approve it.

“At the first whistle, get ready,” shouted the producer, “at the second, slow waltz, please.” And then the baronial hall was filled by the crowd of exemplary patience and they danced with unaffected enjoyment, these gay people, just as though no camera were directed on them. The heroine appeared (she was the daughter of the house, and this was her first ball—indicated by a stray curl down her back), and her ravishing pink gown, evidently a choice product of the West-end, looked strange in a disused East-end factory. Of course she had adopted the inexorable “cinema” convention of a “Cupid’s bow” mouth. Here is the youngest of the arts already fast breeding its own conventions. Surely the variety of female lips might be recognized! Women’s own mouths are generally prettier, and certainly more suitable to their faces, than some rigidly fixed type. It would be ungallant to say that the leading lady’s “Cupid’s bow” did not become her, but the shape of her own mouth, I venture to suggest, would have been better still. And where was my friend the notable comedian all this time? Rigging himself out in evening clerical dress for the ball (he was the vicar of the parish), and evidently regarding his momentary deviation into “film” work (for the benefit of a theatrical charity) as great fun. Will the heroes of the “silent stage,” I wonder, ever deviate into “spoken drama”? It would be startling to hear Charlie Chaplin speak.