There is much that is worth serious consideration in the above quoted opinion of one whose professional welfare depends upon the keenness of his judgment regarding the trend of public opinion in connection with the screen. Somewhat quaintly he gives expression to the conviction that the movie and its clientele react upon each other and that the general tendency of this mutual action and reaction has been toward the elevation of the screen and the enlightenment of its patrons. In this elevation of the screen the continuity writer has, of course, played a leading part. The time has gone by when he could recklessly substitute the Impossible or the Improbable for the Inevitable and retain his professional standing. That he has been guilty of sins of omission and commission, has shown at times a lack of imagination, and has frequently failed to conform to the axiom that a story, no matter through what medium it is told, must, to be effective, preserve to the end the element of suspense is undoubtedly true. The fact is that the ideal continuity writer is, as is the poet, born not made. The technique of scenario writing can be acquired by anybody with average intelligence but to employ it for the highest possible purposes of the screen is to show the possession of something akin to genius. Such being the case, the law of the survival of the fittest, working out in the studios, has decreed that though many are called to continuity work but few are chosen in the end to lead the film drama toward the heights to which it is destined to attain.
Suspense! Ah, there’s the rub! To tell a dramatic story by means of pictures to a miscellaneous collection of movie fans, wise in the niceties of this new method of narration, in such a way that the interest of the on-lookers is won at the outset, maintained throughout succeeding scenes, and intensified as the climax is reached, is to accomplish a feat requiring a combination of technical skill and imaginative inspiration that places a real triumph of the continuity writer’s art high upon the list of worth-while creative achievements.
That such a large percentage of picture-plays have failed to satisfy the demand of audiences for drama that stresses the Inevitable, conforms to the logic underlying real life, and preserves to the final screen-curtain the suspense that it is the mission of dramaturgic art to beget is not strange, therefore, when we take into consideration the natural and acquired powers demanded of the ideal continuity writer. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the scenario-maker has been, and will continue to be, blamed for shortcomings of the screen that cannot be justly laid at his door. He is more or less at the mercy of the director and the film-cutter, a victim frequently of exigencies against which his devotion to the underlying principles of dramatic exposition cannot prevail. A picture play that may be effectively complete when presented in a metropolitan theatre may be so eviscerated for provincial use that the continuity writer, lauded in the cities, is often forced to undergo unjustified suburban censure. But, as is suggested in another chapter, the comparatively new art of the continuity writer is bound eventually to overcome its earlier handicaps and, in its bestowal upon the race of a novel medium through which creative genius can manifest itself, will beget a type of super-scenario-maker to which the screen’s future splendid achievements must be, of necessity, largely due.
The meaning of life Man doesn’t know. Art is, and always has been, Man’s testimony to the fact that he believes that life has a meaning and that his quest for that meaning is not destined to be forever futile. Recently the race came into possession of what seemed to be at first a new toy, not to be taken too seriously, but worthy, as it presently appeared, of development as a most fascinating addition to our recreational resources. But of late the public has begun to realize vaguely that the screen is becoming something of more vital importance to mankind than merely a plaything that serves only as a time-killer. The fact to which the provincial manager above quoted called my attention, namely, that movie audiences are constantly emphasizing their demand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth possesses a significance that is entitled to the most earnest consideration. Is it possible that Man has come finally into possession of an art-form enabling him to come nearer to solving the riddle of the Sphinx we call Life than has been hitherto possible?
There will be those among my readers, I fully realize, who will feel that my inclination all through this book has been to take the screen too seriously, to overrate its psychical dynamics and to underrate its gross materialism, to prophesy for it a future that could be made possible only if producers became archangels and movie patrons pilgrims to a shrine where the soul of the race became no longer of the earth earthy. Well, so be it. Perhaps, as regards the subject in hand, I am allowing my naturally optimistic liver to dominate my habitually pessimistic brain. But neither I nor my critics will live long enough to know which of us was in the right. A conviction, nevertheless, has come to me of late out of which I am sure that I shall never be shaken—namely, that when Man recently found a way to stop living, now and then, that he might look at life, he took the greatest step forward that he has ever taken toward becoming a philosopher. He pauses periodically in these days before a screen and sees, as he never did before, what manner of creature he is. By so doing, he must eventually attain to a self-knowledge such as he has hitherto craved but has not known how to acquire.
CHAPTER IX
THE MOVIE IMPROVES ITS MORALS
War and Love Degraded—The Crook and the Vampire—Pursuers and Pursued—The Box-Office Finally Vindicates Dr. Jekyll—The Photoplay’s Marvellous Future—Booths and Barrymores Pass, Shakespeare Remains—Survey of the Screen as an Amusement Concluded.
CHAPTER IX