The Kinetophone consists of a series of films projected from a booth like an ordinary motion-picture film, and of a large electrically operated phonograph, with six-minute records, set on the stage or behind the screen and synchronized with the film by means of tiny stout black cords running over pulleys attached to the walls or the ceiling of the intervening room. As ours could not be thrown from the same projecting machine as the voiceless films, the usual process was to set up our special apparatus in the same booth with the other, if there was room, cutting a second opening in the front of this to “shoot through;” otherwise we required a special booth to be built for us alongside the regular one. Our outfit consisted of fifteen films and their corresponding phonograph records. First of all, on every program was an explanation of the new invention and a demonstration of its power to reproduce all kinds of sounds, a film specially made to order in Portuguese, with the flag of Brazil, the president’s picture, and other patriotism-stirring decorations in the background. The only other film in the native tongue was a dialogue called the “Transformation of Faust,” in which two Portuguese youths, who had somehow been enticed out to the Edison factory, ranted for six minutes through a portion of Goethe’s masterpiece. But there were extracts from five popular Italian operas and three Spanish numbers, all of which took well with Brazilians, and though the remainder were in English, they were musical and comical enough to win interest irrespective of language.
The Kinetophone requires two operators, one in the booth and the other at the phonograph. Thus I was not only manager, auditor and “concessionary,” but obliged to run the stage end of the performance. Fortunately we did not furnish the entire program, our part of the bill consisting of the “Portuguese Lecture” and two other numbers, filling one-third of the hour constituting a “section” and leaving the rest of it to ordinary films or whatever form of entertainment the local manager chose to supply. Every hour, therefore, from one in the afternoon to eleven at night, seven days a week, I had to be on hand to put on the first of our records, jump out to the edge of the audience and signal to “Tut” in his special booth, spring back again and touch off the phonograph at exactly the right instant, repeat this with the other two records, thrust these back into their special trunk, lock it—and spend the next forty minutes, other duties willing, as I saw fit. Never during those eleven hours a day did I dare go far enough away from the theater to get a real let-up from responsibility. The most I could do was to snatch a lunch or stroll down to one end or the other of the Avenida, to see the ships depart or, on windy days, to watch the sea pitching over the sea-wall of the Beira Mar, wetting even the autobusses—and then hurry back again for our part of the next “section.”
Besides running the films, “Tut” had to rewind them after each performance, so that his leisure time was ten minutes less to the “section” than mine. I soon found that he was not only a highly efficient operator, but that he had just those qualities needed to make a long companionship agreeable. Honest and genuine as gold coin in war time, easy-going, optimistic, unexcitable, wholly ignorant of foreign languages, temperaments, or customs, yet pleasant with all races and conditions of men, he was an ideal team-mate, having large quantities of that patience so much needed in tropical and Latin lands, and of which I have so scanty a supply. Thanks to “Tut,” the Brazilians got better Kinetophone performances than most Americans have heard. The novelty did not take particularly well in the United States, though for no fault of its inventor. The essential and all important thing with the Kinetophone is perfect synchronization. If the character on the screen speaks or sings exactly as he opens his mouth, the illusion is remarkable; let there be the slightest interval between the sound and the lip movements and the thing becomes ludicrous. When the invention was first shown in the United States there was perfect synchronization, and a consequent rush of orders for machines and operators. There being no supply of the latter on hand, they had to be trained in a hurry. Many were ill prepared for their duties, with the result that when they were hurriedly sent out on the road they frequently gave distressing performances. Gradually, therefore, the invention was withdrawn, with the promise to perfect it further and make it “fool proof,” so that by the time Linton had taken the concession for Brazil, “Tut,” the expert who had trained others, was available and the new form of entertainment made a much bigger “hit” in Brazil than in the land of its origin.
I had only one serious fault to find with “Tut,” one that added materially to those of my managerial duties which had to do with keeping on pleasant terms with the somewhat sour manager of the “Cinema Pathé.” Less fond than I of strolling the downtown streets during our breathing spells, “Tut” usually spent them with an American novel or magazine in the unoccupied second-story anteroom of the theater. There the “Pathé” had stored its extra chairs, and from them “Tut” was wont to choose a seat, place it at the edge of the stone balustrade of the balcony, where he could look down upon the crowd surging up and down the Avenida, and pass his time in reading. But the chairs, as is usual in South America, were of the frail variety, and “Tut,” a generous six feet in height and by no means diaphanous in weight, had the customary American habit of propping his feet on a level with his head—with the result that at more or less regular intervals “crash!” would go a chair. On the day when the manager, his eyes bloodshot with rage, requested me to visit the second-story anteroom with him, during “Tut’s” absence, the wrecks of eleven chairs were piled in one corner of it. After that I never had the audacity to go up and investigate, but crashing sounds were still heard during the half hour devoted to the silent films.
The “Companhia Brazileira” advertized extensively, and the Kinetophone was well patronized from the start. Brazilians take readily to novelties, especially if they can be made the fashion, and our audiences of the second day included both priests and “women of the life,” which is a sure sign of popular success in Brazil. As our doubled entrance fee of two milreis was high for those times of depression, also perhaps because the “Cinema Pathé” was considered a gathering place of the élite, we entertained only the well dressed, or, perhaps I should say, the overdressed. They were blasé, artificial audiences, never under any circumstances applauding or giving any sign of approval; they always gave me the impression of saying, “Oh, rather interesting, you know, as a novelty, but I could do much better myself if I cared to take the time from my love-making and risk soiling my spats and my long, slender, do-nothing fingers.” But as they continued to bring us as our share of the receipts more than a conto of reis a day, it was evident that they found the performance pleasing.
The moving picture might be a real educating influence on the imaginative and emotional Brazilians, were it not that those who manipulate this business see fit to put their faith in an intellectual bilge-water which gives chiefly false notions of life in the world beyond their horizon. The same “Penny Dreadfuls” in film, concocted of saccharine sentimentality, custard-pie “comedy,” and a goodly seasoning of the criminal and the pornographic, that add to the weariness of life elsewhere, are the rule in the Brazilian capital. Here even the élite, or at least the well-dressed, flock to see them. This is partly due to the lowly state of the legitimate stage in Brazil and the atrocious performances given by nearly all the “actors” who seek their fortunes in South America. Though some Latin-American playwrights, and a few of the players, have done things worth while, the stage depends almost entirely upon “talent” imported from Europe, entertainers of Spanish (or, for Brazil, of Portuguese) origin, with the crudest notions of histrionic art, or superannuated discards from the French or Italian stage, mixed with youthful hopefuls who have crossed the Atlantic to try it on the dog. These misplaced porters and chambermaids, mere lay figures dressed to represent certain characters, romp about the stage in their natural rôles, their eyes wandering in quest of friends in the audience, whom they give semi-surreptitious greetings and seek to charm by “grandstand plays,” making the while the mechanical motions they have been taught and automatically repeating what they are told to say by the prompter. It is strange that the often artistic Latin races will endure the prompter, instead of insisting that actors learn their parts. It is a rare experience to find a place in the house where one can hear the play and not hear the prompter snarling the lines five words ahead, so that any semi-intelligent person in the audience could repeat them after him more effectually than do most of the louts behind the footlights. As is the case with literature, the theater in South America is mainly designed to appeal to the male. Respectable women are rarely seen at the average playhouse, not merely avoiding the “casino” with its “specially imported blond artistes” of not too adamantine morals, but even what corresponds to our vaudeville, where the audience sits smoking with its hat on and the boxes are graced by demimondaines. In fact, the stage and respectability have no connecting link in the Latin-American mind. All over South America, and especially in Brazil, “actress” is synonymous with less complimentary terms; nor is it possible to convince a Brazilian that such is not universally the case elsewhere. Rarely anything better than stupid and salacious appeals to men, it is small wonder that the living drama has been nearly ousted from South America by the cinema, with its easily transportable, international form of entertainment.
The motion-picture having come after all the business part of Rio was built, there was no room to erect “movie palaces” which have elsewhere followed in the train of Edison’s most prostituted invention. All the cinemas along the Avenida Central are former shops, without much space except in depth, and as the temperature quickly rises when such a place is crowded, the screen often consists of a curtain across what used to be the wide-open shop door, so that one on the sidewalk may peep in and see the audience and even the orchestra, though he can see nothing of the projected pictures within an inch of his nose. Alongside the “movie” house proper another ex-shop of similar size is generally used as a waiting-room. Here are luxurious upholstered seats, much better than those facing the screen, and some such extraordinary attraction as a “feminine orchestra specially contracted in Europe.” For the waiting-room is of great importance in Rio. It takes the place in a way of a central plaza and promenade where the two sexes can come and admire one another, and it is often thronged immediately after the closing of the door to the theater proper, by people who know quite well they must sit there a full hour before the “section” ends. In fact, young fops sometimes come in and remain an hour or two ogling the feminine charms in the waiting-room and then go out again without so much as having glanced at the show inside. In contrast, many cinemas have “second-class” entrances, without waiting-room and with seats uncomfortably near the screen, where the sockless and collarless are admitted at reduced prices.
It does not require long contact with them to discover that Latin films are best for Latins, for both audience and actors have a mutual language of gestures and facial expressions. The lack of this makes American films seem slow, labored, and stupid, not only to Latins, but to the American who has been living for some time among them. It is a strange paradox that the most doing people on the earth are the slowest in telling a story in pantomime or on the screen. What a French or an Italian actress will convey in full, sharply and clearly, by a shrug of her shoulders or a flip of her hand, the most advertised American “movie star” will get across much more crudely and indistinctly only by spending two or three minutes of pantomimic labor, assisted by two or three long “titles.” The war quickly forced the “Companhia Brazileira,” as it did most of its rivals, to use American films; but neither impresarios nor their clients had anything but harsh words for the “awkward stupidity” and the pretended Puritanic point of view of those makeshift programs—with one exception, Brazilian audiences would sit up all night watching our “wild west” films in which there was rough riding. Curious little differences in customs and point of view come to light in watching an American film through South American eyes. For instance, there is probably not a motion-picture director in the United States who knows that to permit a supposedly refined character in a film to lick a postage stamp is to destroy all illusion in a Latin-American audience. Down there not even the lowest of the educated class ever dreams of sealing or stamping a letter in that fashion. An American film depicting the misadventures of a “dude” or “sissy” was entirely lost upon the Brazilian audiences, because to them the hero was exactly their idea of what a man should be, and they plainly rated him the most “cultured” American they had ever met. Bit by bit one discovers scores of such slight and insignificant differences, which sum up to great differences and become another stone in that stout barrier between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon divisions of the western hemisphere.
On Thursday came the customary mid-weekly change of bill, and we were thankful for a new program after hearing the old one more than thirty times. Also the “music,” which the cinema orchestra ground out incessantly during every moment when we were not giving our part of the show, changed, though hardly for the better. We were a godsend to the musicians of that orchestra, especially to the player of the bass-viol. Hitherto they had been required to play unbrokenly from one in the afternoon until nearly midnight; our advent gave them ten or eleven twenty-minute respites during that time. This they usually spent lolling around the room behind the screen, about the phonograph and our trunks, where they frequently fell asleep. Particularly the anemic quadroon who manipulated the largest stringed instrument seemed never to catch up on his sleep. Barely did our part of the program begin than he stretched out in such comfort as he could find in the improvised green-room and went soundly to sleep, so soundly that no noise under heaven could wake him—save one. When it came time for them to return, his companions would shout at him, jostle him, sometimes even yank him erect; nothing had the slightest effect on his somnolence. But the instant the first strains of their never-varying “music” were heard in the orchestra pit outside, the sleeper would awake with a flash, make one spring through the door, and be automatically scraping off his part with the others by the time they had reached the second or third note.
Sunday is the big theater or “movie” day in Brazil, for then the families of the “four hundred” turn out in full force. On our seventh day they were standing knee-deep in the waiting-room most of the afternoon and early evening. The congestion increased that part of my duties which had to do with auditing, for the head of a family often paused to shake hands effusively with the door-keeper, after which the entire family poured boldly in, and it became my business to find out whether there had been anything concealed in the effusive hand, and if not, why the box-office had been so cavalierly slighted.