The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

Fig. 13. Scene from Sumurun.

[See p. [88]]

If the moving picture writer is paid precisely the same money for a subtle, well-studied, artistic, and purified bit of poet action that he would be paid, or is paid, for a bit of cheap, meretricious, and insidious cajolery, there is no hope. Then good-bye soul, and welcome to the martyrdom that ensues when other people wax fat on the creation that has made the author lean! He says to himself, and he cannot be expected to say anything else, “To the Devil with idealism!” This explains why Hans Gaus is not writing another Madame Recamier, why he is not writing any more passionate, brilliant, disciplined film poetry. And it explains, too, alack and alas, why he is turning out cleverly devised, invented, and not felt, film pieces that keep the pot boiling. This explains, of course it does, why the battalions of rather talented motion picture writers are fabricating whole libraries of scenarios that reveal nothing more than the cold hand of invention.

The motion picture itself suffers most from this unenviable state of affairs. But this, in itself, is a rather impersonal theme for lament, for it is the film corporations that must bear the major part of this misfortune. And why? Because a good scenario, one that glows with the heat of informed inspiration, forces its way into the soul of the spectator, invites him to come back, and even goes so far as to have the hope well forth in his bosom that, having now seen twenty moving pictures in which the swollen effusions of uninspired tricks have left him cold and disappointed, he will go the twenty-first time with enough faith in human nature to fancy that he may at last be rewarded for his persistence. A motion picture is successful only when an unusually good and extraordinarily inspired scenario chances to lift it up above the colorless odds in numerical superiority and enables it, for this reason and for other reasons, to shine forth like a lighthouse on a sea of near-darkness.

It is sometimes amazing to see what enormous sums of money may be expended, and what an abundance of ability may be lavished on utterly inadequate and ineffective poetry. Such a film can never hope for wide or world-success. Everything that is deserving of attentive interest is in the picture itself. Once it has been played there is no more to it; that is the end of it. There may be architects of real imagination and education, managers who are inherently clever and not at all afraid of work, a select company of actors and actresses—all of which is fine. But in this circle of people there is one who is missing: the author. He should be there, for it is he who is to reflect on the ways of the world and project a new world on the screen. It is he in whom and through whom the work of the others is to acquire the breath of real life.

But, though it is a hard statement, it is true: In this art not a finger is being moved in the exclusive interests of the idea of æsthetic progress. And yet, and yet—for the film companies to further the cause of the poet is to put money into their own pockets. The best field the film companies can possibly develop is the mind, heart, and soul of the naturally gifted film author. The film companies will never have splendid and effective scenarios to work on until they have made up their minds to reward, in a practical way, the film author, splendidly and effectively, for his labors, to recognize him, in a practical way, just as they at present “recognize” the leading manager and actor.

I am ready to contend that the best film actions are written in Germany—but that the very worst manuscripts and clue-books are also written in Germany. This is true of the average. Those companies in which the film author enjoys the same rights and privileges that the manager enjoys, and in which the two work hand in hand, are having one success after another. I need but mention the Decla-Bioscop, a company that is altogether unique in that its records show that one of the most brilliant film authoresses Germany has thus far produced, Thea von Harbou, is married to Fritz Lang, one of our very best managers.

It is a remarkable fact that no one can write a film alone—and that it should not on this account be attempted. A good film, other things being equal, is created when two adequately endowed writers, one of whom can depict action, the other of whom can arrange the scenes, rub elbows in a common and mutual effort. When it is done in this fashion, the film glows with the fire of creative genius and is altogether vivacious.

From an artistic point of view, there is but one way to solve the problem of the film writer, and that is to have the author—as Griffith, Lubitsch, and a number of others are doing—stage and produce their own works. The idea of the action has been crystallized in their souls in a thousand pictures. No other person, however gifted he may be and be his intentions the very best, can appreciate the picture even approximately as well as the author himself who dreamed it into existence.

But if the film author has no ability as a director, the only course left open to him is to submit his scenario to a second party, or at least the germ, the central idea of it. The only thing this second party can then do is to raise a strange flower from the seed the author sowed. A sympathetic understanding of the two artists, in this case, is a wish that has not yet been fulfilled. For the two artists to work at random, to say nothing of working against each other, is to create confusion worse confounded, and such is not art. In the end the will of the one or of the other will have made itself felt. And we can hardly demand of the poet that he accede to revisions and emendations of his poetry without cavil, inquiry, or interest.