Also, in the mad “run to the rescue” in “Orphans of the Storm,” the main dramatic value of the story is sacrificed in order to have the mechanically produced excitement of horses galloping across Paris in time to save the beautiful Lillian from the guillotine. And who leads the headlong, melodramatic dash across the city? Why, Danton himself, leader of the Revolution! That’s putting it on pretty thick!
There is the whole trouble with our American pictures: in a single sentence they are willing to sacrifice too much, to “tell a good story.” For with our producers the “good story” means really the entertaining or exciting or pretty story, which is in the last analysis the most popular story instead of the really best story.
Roast beef and oatmeal are a better diet, in the long run, than candy. Candy tastes better, perhaps, for the moment, and more people will buy it—but in the end, too much of it makes you sick.
Our American motion-picture producers are specializing on candy, because—for the moment—more people want it. But they’re over-doing the thing. If they want to hold the world leadership in movie-making, they must turn out more roast beef.
And we must help them, you and I, by demanding something in pictures besides candy, and in learning to like and applaud the really worth-while films that we can turn out, when they come along.
Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation.
A “Western” Actor and His Favorite Horse.
Trick horses are always valued by “Western” heroes for cowboy work.
