With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

Goldwyn, and Famous Players, and later on, First National, definitely went in for better-class films. With Goldwyn, the effort, while not altogether successful, was so sincere that it more than once came close to endangering the future of the entire organization, through putting out “class” pictures ahead of their time. “Milestones” is an example of the kind of picture that as yet has not really found its own audiences, and so presented a pretty big problem to its producers from the box-office standpoint. It tells three stories in one, of how, in three successive generations, the young people follow up their own ideas with new inventions, and marry as they want to, before they find themselves growing old and conservative and advising against the very things they made a success of when they were young.

Of the existing companies, Famous Players has done even more to bring along the day of class pictures and divided audiences, and has so far remained far ahead of Goldwyn in the actual number of truly artistic pictures produced.

But let us get a step closer to this business of putting out “better pictures,” such as we may expect to have in larger proportion to-morrow. We can do so by noting what particular “better films” have done.

“Humoresque,” made by Cosmopolitan Productions, and distributed by Paramount, may fairly be classed as a “better picture.” It was also a popular picture. The returns on the film ran to tremendous figures—said to be well over a million dollars. It told the story of a Jewish boy, the idol of his mother’s heart, who gave up his opportunities to become a great violinist to enlist when the United States entered the War. People really wanted to see flesh-and-blood characters on the screen, instead of just noble heroes and beautiful heroines. Dug and Henry and I—and likely you, too,—enjoyed the little boy and the little girl and the big little family where on birthdays there “came a meanness” into the house.

“Humoresque” made a big step towards the “better pictures” day that is coming, by showing such queer things as the real-life little slum girl finding a dead cat in an ash-barrel and loving it—because the producers made a big profit on the film.

Wherever better pictures make money, other producers will imitate them; again, that’s where it is for you and Henry and Dug and the rest of us to keep away from poor films and find and pay admission to those we really like.

Another picture: “Broken Blossoms.” That was a tragic story of a little girl of the London slums who was befriended by a Chinaman after her brutal father had given her a terrible beating. It ended with almost as many deaths as Hamlet, but it was so beautiful, artistically, that American critics hailed it as the most wonderful movie ever made.

Now, tragedy is never very popular in America. We like to have our stories end at a pleasant turn of the road—an engagement, or a wedding, or a successful culmination of the search for treasure, or what you will,—instead of stopping only when the people of our story finally die, or quarrel, or give up the search for the gold. And because “Broken Blossoms” did not have this popular appeal—the happy ending—Mr. Griffith, who made it, had to take it and exploit and exhibit it himself, in order to secure a hearing—or a “seeing”—for it.

This was the result: The picture was hailed as so wonderful that millions went to see it, because of its reputation. Of those millions, hundreds of thousands, perhaps, were not able to like it, because it was so tragic. Other movie producers, watching the result, noticed this, so that although the picture helped the movies along artistically, it didn’t convert other producers to that sort of effort. “People don’t want that sort of stuff,” they said in too many instances. “Look at ‘Broken Blossoms,’—they really don’t want better pictures.”

Another famous film was “Over the Hill.” That picture helped movies along because it didn’t cost much to make—relatively speaking—but brought in as much for the producers as other films costing far more. The story, of a devoted mother who was neglected or abused by all but one of her children when she needed their help and love, was far better than the average movie, and had a big, and healthy, emotional appeal. Any fellow who could watch it without resolving to be better to his own mother would be pretty worthless.