The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

It frequently happens, however, that a talented poet is wholly unfamiliar with the nature and technique of the motion picture. In such a case, the artistic and financial success of the picture depends upon a complete revision of the scenario as originally submitted, and this revision is undertaken either by the stage manager, who must have a fair measure of the poet in him even if he has not written, or by that creature known as the dramaturge: he is part stage critic, part stage manager.

The old-fashioned dramaturge is, as should be known, the man who has no idea of his own but who is an ingenious thief. He still vegetates in all countries, sad specimen though he is. No man is a good dramaturge who is not also a poet. He should be the second poet who collaborates with the author. The author is not infrequently maladroit, dream-burdened, and obsessed with unfilm-like notions. The dramaturge has to be a malleable connoisseur, one who can scent out of the wealth of good passages the weak spots of a film manuscript, and then lift them out before it is too late. To work with such a dramaturge is a pleasure. The author stands ashamed and humiliated in the presence of pictures the existence of which the dramaturge first challenges and then kills. One affable moment follows another of the same enviable description. A creative fever comes over both of them; they are convulsed when the heroes suffer; they revel in satisfaction when jolly situations rebound against each other.

This is however an idealized situation. Generally speaking, the dramaturge is an ambitious, avaricious, sterile wiseacre who spills his caustic criticism all over the author’s creation and leaves it a thing of shreds and patches. With heedless, listless scorn, he derides and lampoons any idea that did not originate in his anointed head. He robs in time the author of every vestige of desire to create so that he (the author) avoids future encounters with him (the dramaturge) as he would avoid a plague. From that time on, the author writes his manuscripts alone and sends them in to the dread dramaturge, who is at liberty to do with them as his conscience dictates. Good, delicate, and amiable film manuscripts do not arise in this way.

There are poets and managers who do not know what the essential prerequisites of a good motion picture are. Here is where the dramaturge comes in. It is his lofty task to effect a reconciliation between idealism and materialism. That he judge the work solely on its artistic merits and from the artistic point of view is out of the question. The first film that arose under such conditions would be a commercial failure; the second would spell the bankruptcy of the company that produced it. It is, at the same time, lamentable, pitiable, when the dramaturge judges a submitted manuscript solely from the point of view of its potential commercial success. Let this type of dramaturge have his way, and the film will suffer complete deterioration, decay, and death. Moreover, such film works have not the slightest chance of success in foreign countries. To concoct a good and “safe” thing that will take on the local corner—any man can do that. But the film must be so great and grandiose that nobody else can do it. Detective, revolver, and sensation films find devotees in the movie halls of the entire world who can do this trick just as well as anybody else; and they know it. Such films have from the very beginning powerful competition. Why has Charlie Chaplin been such a ubiquitous success? Because he is unique; his achievements are his own; his accomplishments are inimitable. A film manuscript is good then and then only when it promises an artistic and an economic success. Art and business—let us repeat—must be united in this case.

To judge a film manuscript on this dual basis is, however, not so difficult. The motion picture is art for the masses. This truth eliminates of itself all cold-blooded and un-felt texts. A warm, vivacious, animated, artistically valuable motion picture book has got to please—that is, it has got to lead up to a commercial success. The dramaturge who takes this view of his business is an exceedingly important personage among his company’s acquaintances. He is its artistic conscience; he is its reliable guarantee against failure.

The basic condition of what he does is perfect knowledge and ability in the field in which he works. He has to know the nature of the motion picture; he has to be able to see in advance its possibilities of success. And this knowing, this seeing, must be second-nature to him; he must be saturated with them. This alone will give him the ability to select, from the mass of manuscripts that are submitted to him, those that are in every way available. He must be the good physician, the unbribable custodian of those imperfect and yet redeemable papers that lie on his desk for investigation. Nor is this all. In case the manager does not elect to stage the film work himself, the dramaturge must be able to get everything that is in every scene out of it.

Fig. 14. Scene from Madame Dubarry.

[See p. [88]]

The basic condition of his very being is the perfect, the universal recognition of his position, a position that he has to fight for just as strenuously as the dramaturge of the legitimate stage has to fight for his. The film dramaturge is by no means the fifth wheel on the wagon. Indeed, every art, including the art of the theater, moves along on many wheels every one of which must be in working order if the wagon in question is to enjoy easy and unimpeded motion, and is eventually to reach the point where those who are driving it, in this way and in that, would have it go.