So, too, Mr. Lubitsch seems able to extract the maximum ability from his actors and actresses. He was an actor once himself and a good one and, contrary to an opinion, expressed earlier in this book, believes in showing his actors how to play their scenes. Indeed, they are told very little concerning the story but rely for all their inspiration upon Mr. Lubitsch.
In his more serious statements concerning picture directing, Mr. Lubitsch is mostly inclined to point out the faults of pictures and the difficulty of producing them, than to explain what he considers the finer points of directorial technique.
Mr. Lubitsch talked, through an interpreter, about the very weakness of his and others that has just been noted. “So many pictures that promise much in their early stages,” he said, “are in the end spoiled by a lack of the proper balance and blending of all the elements that go to make the picture. The work of the author is so often sacrificed for the pictorial effect of the director. The painter (scenic designer) so often has to give way to the importance of the dramatic scene.”
All of which is exactly right. The majority of American directors whose work has been considered in this book know just how to achieve proper balance in their pictures. They know where the work of the author ends and that of the scenic artist begins. No director worthy of serious consideration in an American studio today permits his dramatic scenes to be sacrificed to make way for masterpieces of pictorial background. Nor does he reverse the mistake and sacrifice pictorial background for dramatic scenes or anything else. He knows how to achieve the proper balance.
“I prefer to suggest ideas and situations in my pictures,” he continued, “rather than to load down a scene with nothing but the starkly realistic. I prefer my actors, too, to suggest an emotion rather than to register it obviously on the screen.”
Here, perhaps, more than in any other direction does Mr. Lubitsch's greatness actually lie. He uses scenes, exteriors, actors to subtly and powerfully suggest an effect, rather than to use the same properties merely to obviously point out such an effect. It is this method, too, that, as has also been pointed out previously, is Rex Ingram's forte. Mr. Lubitsch's art in this direction is exemplified in both “Passion” and “Deception” as well as in “The Loves of Pharaoh,” his most recent picture which he brought with him from Germany.
Mr. Lubitsch went on to say, and every other interviewer seized upon his words with enthusiasm, that he only cuts his pictures once. Some remarks have already been recorded on how important a part of picture making is the cutting and editing of the scenes after they have left the director's hands. It has been my privilege to see many of Mr. Lubitsch's pictures as well as a number of other German productions before they have been shown to the American public. The one great fault with those produced by Mr. Lubitsch is that they are far from properly cut and edited.
Hence, I am unable to rush into print to praise Mr. Lubitsch because of his statement that he only cuts his picture once. Rather, I will write here the sound advice that in future he cut his pictures eight, nine or ten times. After Mr. Lubitsch's single cutting of his pictures they run twice too long for the American public. A point which can be successfully communicated to an audience in a quick interchange of closeups by an American director will take Mr. Lubitsch the laborious interchange of ten or a dozen closeups, the last one differing very little from the first one.
The reason for this I am unable to account for. Mr. Lubitsch believes in the art of suggestion as he says. Then why does he drive home a minor point with so many hammers when a little touch from his index finger is sufficient to accomplish his ends? Clearly in these two respects Mr. Lubitsch is a direct contradiction of himself. Does he do this unwittingly or does he do it because his public (the German public) demands to have a point driven home with sledge hammer blows? In the light of no other answer, we must accept the latter conclusion and chalk the matter up against the stupidity of “continental” picture audiences which seems a bit harsh.
These words on Mr. Lubitsch seem so unsatisfactory on second reading that there is an inclination to discard them altogether. In the first place they have the flavor of 100 per cent Americanism, i.e. attacking or waxing unenthusiastic about the work of a German director merely because he is a German director. Which is not the case at all and for proof of which I ask you to turn quickly to the next chapter.