Charles Chaplin, greatest comedian in the world and his own director gives evidence in each of his pictures, mute, grand evidence of the sufferings, the sacrifices, the little joys and triumphs of the days of his youth when he had nothing.
And so does every great director today show in his pictures, whether he knows it or not, the experiences in his emotional career.
And let it be said also that the less great display a remarkable lack of experience.
It must be reiterated here that these chapters are not to be taken in the light of a text book. The writer would have a holy horror of having on his mind a happily married family man, who tossed up his business and his bank account to sleep on a park bench, and who tossed up his wife and children to enter upon one illicit love affair after another, just to complete his arc of emotional experience, because it has been stated here that the fullest arc produces the best results.
Such experiences must come naturally. The great director is a born artist. The born artist is a natural vagabond and nine-hundred and ninety-nine people of a thousand are not natural vagabonds.
After this fundamental requisite of experience come a dozen other assets that go to make the good director—the great director. The ability to handle people, to be a master of men, the knack of “visualization,” to inject those little touches into a scene that perform the miraculous act of “getting under the skin,” to achieve a proper and telling “atmosphere,” etc., etc. These requisites will be dealt with in other chapters, sometimes by the directors themselves.
But no matter how important these other essentials loom it may be stated again that first of all EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE counts.
Chapter II
THE PICTURE SENSE
Every director who consistently derives a living from picture making has in more or less degree the power of visualization.—Without it he would be unfit for his position.—The conclusion that this “power” is mere common sense applied to picture directing
Chapter II