Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

MOTION PICTURE DIRECTING
THE FACTS AND THEORIES OF THE NEWEST ART

By PETER MILNE

Motion Picture critic for over six years on Motion Picture News, Picture Play Magazine and Wid's (Film) Daily; and member scenario and production department of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.

Published and Copyrighted by

FALK PUBLISHING CO., Inc.

145 West 36th Street, New York

Used as a Supplementary Text in

New York Institute of Photography

NEW YORK CHICAGO BROOKLYN

Copyright 1922

by

FALK PUBLISHING CO., INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

The observations on the art of directing motion pictures included in this book are not by any means intended as lessons for the layman with ambitions pointing him toward this goal. To teach the craft through the printed page is as impossible of accomplishment as instructing a steeple-jack in his trade through correspondence school. “A director must be born, not made.” This old adage, adapted to our present situation, is of a necessity partially false, inasmuch as at the time of the present day directors' initial birthdays there was no such thing as motion picture production. Still it is true in a sense. Because to direct for the screen requires a personality and an ability, blending so many elements of generalship and technique that to studiously acquire them is next to an impossibility.

Be that as it may, the motion picture of today is developing its own directors. It has reached out to all businesses and arts and drafted men who are now headed for top positions in the ranks of directorial artists. Besides it offers the most humble of the studio staff the opportunity to rise to the top.

During recent years cameramen, property men, authors, continuity writers, artists of brush and of pen and ink, actors and business men from varying lines have become identified with the art of motion picture directing. The law of averages has declared that many of these should fall short of success. Many have. But others have succeeded, have succeeded even beyond the expectations of their sponsors. Therefore it may safely be said that the gates to the field of motion picture directing are ready to open to all-comers, provided that the aspirants have the inborn abilities and personal makeup that are rigidly required.

These abilities, essential qualities and characteristics are dealt with in the following chapters by the undersigned who has spent nearly ten years in the motion picture industry, serving in the capacities of critic and continuity writer.

These abilities, essential qualities and characteristics are, therefore, set down here as first hand observations. But they are never intended as lessons that will produce immediate results in the way of lucrative positions. No reader of this volume can go dashing home to his eager wife with that much advertised greeting: “Dear! I've got that job! The New York Institute's book on directing produced 100 per cent results!”

It is hoped, however, that it will give those who have the patience to peruse it something of an insight into the tremendous responsibilities that rest on the shoulders of the conscientious director. At present most people seem to believe that that line on the screen: “Directed by ——” just stands for a lucky fellow having a grand and glorious fling within the walls of a motion picture studio.

Peter Milne.

With grateful thanks and appreciation for the views expressed therein by Marshall Neilan, William C. De Mille, Rex Ingram, Cecil B. De Mille, Frank Borzage, Edward Dillon, Ernst Lubitsch; and the representatives of D. W. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince, and other artists herein referred to, whose co-operation has made this book possible.

Chapter I
THE GREAT AND THE LESS GREAT

Emotional experience and the capacity for enduring and retaining mental pictures of such experiences—these constitute the chief asset that distinguishes the master director from the rank and file. Practical explanations and a word of warning

Chapter I

What is the fundamental asset that makes the great motion picture director? The requisite that distinguishes the real artist from the rank and file? It is really the same asset that distinguishes the great artist in any walk of art from the less great.

When you put this question to a selected group of directors you are liable to receive a different answer from each one. In fact several were approached on the subject before this chapter was written. And very few of them agreed with one another. A still smaller number hit upon what seems the correct answer to the question.

It is quite true that the ability to “feel” a story and each one of its individual scenes, counts a lot in a director's favor. The proper “atmosphere,” the director's ability to achieve it, is vastly important. So also it is important to have the ability to properly “visualize” the continuous action of a picture even before the cameraman has once turned his crank.

But after all has been said and done on these scores it remains that the one determining factor that distinguishes the great from the near-great in the picture producing art is experience.

Other requirements are important, vastly so, but first of all and in capital letters EXPERIENCE.

It is fondly hoped that no one will presume to take this literally to the very capital letter. To produce a realistic crook story a director must not, of necessity, turn Raffles for a night. Nor to portray the effects of African “yaka water” on a white man, must he subject himself to a long siege of the drug itself. And doubtless a capable director can successfully picturize the life of a pearl fisher without diving into the briny deep.

Such specific experiences are not within the span of any one man's life. A director might know Africa thoroughly, might know what “yaka water” was as well as a “madeira chair” and then be handed a manuscript containing such nautical terms as “chain box,” “capstan,” “seacock” and “chain cable.” As a consequence a director must always hold himself in readiness for research work when a 'script containing such foreign terms comes his way.

But these experiences are largely physical experiences. And they are very minor when it comes to a summing up. No matter what peculiar terms and words are used in a story, it is the emotional content of it that counts as of greatest importance. Therefore the director with the most complete groundwork of emotional experience is the man most properly equipped to rise above his fellows. This groundwork of experience takes the shape of an emotional arc, an arc that includes on its line points representing each human emotion of life, reduced to specific and commonplace fundamentals. The more points of emotion upon the director's arc, the better craftsman he is.

Diagrams properly don't belong in books written upon an art such as directing. They should be confined to volumes on mathematics and astronomy, but a simple one introduced here will assist in illustrating the above point clearly.

Now let the arc pictured illustrate the entire span of emotional experience possible for a certain man, our great director, to have undergone. Say that the line and point A represent the emotion of suffering.

Our director has suffered in his early career. Perhaps he has slept on a park bench on a cold night with newspapers stuffed among his thin clothes to guard against the wind. His sleep has been fitful and in his moments of awakening he has thought the whole world against him—and roundly cursed it. In the morning he has risen with his bones aching and not even the two cents in his trousers necessary for the purchase of a cup of boiled muddy water called coffee down the line at Ben's Busy Bee.

This is a not uncommon case of suffering, specially in the world of make-believe, where genius is raised from poverty to affluence sometimes within the short space of a single day.

But while it is being experienced it is doubtless one of the most terrible adventures ever visited upon a human being. As a consequence in later years this experience of acute suffering remains stamped, consciously or subconsciously, on the individual's mind.

Now to the point where this experience will tell when the individual has become a director. The director is called upon to stage, we will say, the scene of Napoleon, a prisoner of the European powers on the island of St. Helena.

REX INGRAM, DRILLING SOME OF THE VARIOUS “TYPES” OF “THE FOUR HORSEMEN” IN THEIR PARTS

GEORGE FITZMAURICE TRANSFERRED “PETER IBBETSON” TO THE SCREEN RETAINING ALL ITS RARE CHARM

How can the director know how Napoleon felt? What does he know about his attitude of mind? The answers are he knows everything. Back in the photographic gallery of his mind he reaches for that scene of himself on the park bench. He recalls that that was the night during which he suffered, in his own mind, even to the extent that Napoleon had suffered.

Therefore, still in his mind's eye, our director refers to his arc of emotional experience. The point A represents the height of his suffering. He then merely extends the line A out and beyond his own emotional arc until it crosses the emotional arc of Napoleon at the point where he suffered the tortures of defeat, disillusionment and imprisonment.

On the other hand perhaps the scene of suffering that our director will be called upon to reproduce on the screen is one less important or vivid than his own. It might be a scene of a little boy stammering out his first lesson in school. Suffering, to be sure, but not of such great magnitude. In this case the line A is merely extended downward until the little boy's emotional arc is reached.

To reduce such a process of the intellect is indeed dangerous. An individual's emotional experience is no matter of diagrammatical science. However this science is purely imaginary. The whole process is carried out in the director's brain. It is only the fact that it is here reduced to cold type that makes it seem rather brutal.

Perhaps certain directors will scoff at the idea but to those it may be replied that they use such a process of reasoning whether they know it or not. The whole working out of the scheme is mechanical and subconscious to a certain extent.

Perhaps, too, there are those among the directors who believe that their moments of supreme suffering, park bench or otherwise, were far greater than Napoleon's sufferings. Nevertheless their own arcs of emotional experience still serve their good steads. Such a director merely reverses the process and goes down the line A until he reaches what he believes the arc of Napoleon, instead of going up the line. Such conceit on the part of the director does not, however, lead to the best results.

By the same process the director is able to live in his mind the greatest case of self-sacrifice that the world has ever known, provided that at one time in his career he has made a self-sacrifice that loomed of tremendous proportions at the time. His line of sacrifice, B, is followed to the point where it cuts the arc containing the greatest sacrificial act of the world. And of course on the line, B, as on all the other lines from all the other points innumerable other arcs cut across representing cases of emotion between the greatest and the humblest.

And so by his own experience, no matter how small or how large it is in comparison to the experience he is to picturize, the director is able to give a realistic and sensitive representation of it on the motion picture screen.

The case holds the same with all the other emotions of life. Perhaps with the case of love it is a bit different. For in the matter of other emotions the director may grant that someone else has experienced them in greater degree than he. But with the matter of his own romance or romances—no! All directors have no hesitancy in claiming, only to themselves of course, that theirs is the greatest in the world. Consequently there is no line C, but just the point. It is stationary. The director follows it neither up nor down to reach out for some similar point on another arc. Thus it is that romantic scenes are quite the most frequently done realistically and properly of all the emotional scenes contrived for the screen. This time the director's conceit does not stand in his way.

For the rest the great director's arc of emotional experience contains every emotion, every cross and mixture of emotions, that he has lived through during his life. His arc contains hundreds of lines, each one distinguished from the other by less than a hair's breadth. And yet, when he comes to employ the arc in his work, the exact line he desires immediately stands out in bold relief from the others and the director sets to work upon it.

Thus the greatest directors of today are the men who have run the greatest gamut of emotional experience. To converse with D. W. Griffith is to instantly realize that here is a man who has suffered, sacrificed, lost, loved, triumphed. His brain is a storehouse of emotional experience, his own particular arc contains so many points upon it that a dozen times a dozen alphabets would not suffice to represent them all.

Thomas H. Ince has confessed to tramping Broadway searching for work. Chance led him to the old Biograph studio. Today he is among the greatest producers in the art. And it is a safe wager that his beginnings and struggles have not been obliterated from his mind by his success—rather they have been responsible for it.

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

All our directors are not great. There would be no fun for the picture audiences if they were. Fans would be deprived of that greatest of all pleasures; writing to the magazines to point out that Marie wore silk stockings going in the door and lace filigreed hose coming out of it. But in the rank and file of directors whose work appears with regularity on the screen there are many capable and skilled men—each one, perhaps, merely waiting the chance or opportunity to step into the limelight with a pictorial masterpiece.

Most of these directors are noted as “specialty men.” One can do comedy-drama well, another excels at straight romance, a third has a particular turn for handling the intricacies of farce. These men are skilled artists but not great artists. Potentially great, perhaps, but the full extent of their emotional arcs has not as yet been tested.

What then, a student of the screen has a perfect right to ask, determines the ability of these men? The answer is, that uncanny sixth sense necessary to become a director, “picture sense” or more technically, the power of visualization.

The picture sense is latent in every embryo director. It can be developed, but no amount of study will acquire it. It seems to be born in some men just as a perfect tenor voice is born in some men. Study brings each out but cannot create either one.

The “picture sense” is the art of seeing in the mind's eye, or rather the mind's picture screen, every scene of the scenario writer's typewritten manuscript. Readers will probably recall that this accomplishment has also been set down as the scenario writer's fundamental groundwork of learning. Thus the writer and the director have much in common. And this is one reason why so many scenario writers have become successful directors.

It may readily be seen that this picture sense, this ability of visualization, is constantly being used by the director. When he first reads his script he is visualizing it every moment of the way. To himself he says, “Scene one will look like this, scene two will follow like this.” He then conjures up before his eye what sort of a set he will work in, what properties it possesses, how his people will dress, where they will stand when they go through their emotions, how they will enter and exit from the scene, and a hundred and one other details.

If, during this process of visualization, the story or one of its various scenes rings false, then the director is prepared to talk it over with the scenario writer and see what can be done to set it right.

So right here it may be divined that a director with this sense of visualization developed to the utmost is a most valuable asset to any producing company. If, on the contrary, he has to wait until he sees a scene actually screened before he can detect its flaws and, seeing them, prepare to take it all over again, the waste time runs into money lost.

IN “SENTIMENTAL TOMMY,” DIRECTOR JOHN S. ROBERTSON SUCCEEDED IN RETAINING THE CHARM OF SIR JAMES M. BARRIE'S ORIGINAL WORK

“THE THREE MUSKETEERS” REPRESENTS DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS AT HIS BEST AND MUCH OF THE CREDIT BELONGS TO FRED NIBLO, DIRECTOR

Thus a director with a proper sense of visualization is not prepared to “shoot” until he has determined that each scene will screen realistically to the best of his knowledge.

All this may sound perfectly easy to those unacquainted with the inside of a motion picture studio. It might be surmised that to detect unrealities in a manuscript is merely a matter of common sense.

But it is remarkable indeed to take notice of the many men, true artists in their particular lines and certainly possessed of a modicum of common sense, who have experimented in the directorial field and who have failed because of this lack of picture sense, lack of the ability to visualize.

One of the larger producing companies in the field today, which is constantly seeking new directorial talent, a company that is actually willing to pay intelligent men to learn the craft of directing, recently induced an author of national reputation to join its scenario department with a view of later becoming a director after he had become fully acquainted with the construction of manuscripts.

This man never had a chance at directing because he never made good in the scenario department. He didn't, couldn't visualize. And as said “picture sense” is required every bit as much by the scenario writer as it is by the director.

Whereas, this highly talented individual failed in mastering the picture craft, another man, a man who had never written a line in his life, was given a megaphone and told to go out and “shoot” a picture. This man was a cameraman, had worked on a hundred pictures and, having the power to visualize, had developed it to a remarkable degree. The results he achieved with his first picture have earned him a position with the producing company as long as he wants it.

The difference between these two “rookies” was just that difference of “picture sense.” On the one hand was a man with the inborn power of visualization, on the other hand a man with a total lack of it. The difference between success and failure.

Because of these conclusions it might be pointed out that picture sense is a greater asset in the production of pictures than a general experience in human emotions. The argument might stand if it were not for the fact that the cameraman-director is not as yet great. Indeed, he is several degrees below the heights reached by the creme de la creme of the craft. As yet he has only attempted light romance on the screen, the easiest sort of picture to produce and to produce well as has been pointed out. As yet his real emotional gamut has not been brought into play. It is an unknown quantity. When it becomes known we may determine the degree of the director's greatness.

Every studio has its stories regarding the amusing predicaments in which a director would have found himself had he not previously taken stock of the situation and summoned his power of visualization to his assistance.

It might be well to cite a simple case in point to thoroughly bring out the value of this ability.

For instance, a director came upon the following sequence of scenes in a scenario he was scheduled to produce:

Scene 45—Interior Ballroom. Full Shot

Host and hostess stand at door in f.g. receiving late guests. General dancing and ad lib activity in b.g. Run for a few feet and then bring in Mary escorted by John. They exchange greetings with host and hostess.

Scene 46—Interior Ballroom. Semi-Closeup

Richard sees Mary enter and starts off toward her.

Scene 47—Interior. Medium Shot

Mary turns from greeting host and hostess while John is still talking with them. Richard enters and confronts Mary. He speaks hotly.

Spoken Title:

“You dare to come here, now that I've found you out?”

Scene 48—Interior Ballroom. Closeshot

Richard and Mary. Richard completes title. She looks at him with scorn. He rages on a few moments and then exits.

Scene 49—Interior Ballroom. Full Shot

Mary turns to John who leaves host and hostess, and the couple make their way across the dance floor.

This, of course, is but a section of a script. Moreover, it is as technically perfect as anyone could desire. And yet here the scenario writer has Richard denouncing Mary in a closeshot, denouncing her quite savagely, and right on top of this, in the next scene, she is walking serenely on with her partner, neither he nor any of the others in the crowded room having noticed the previous scene.

This, of course, is an exceedingly obvious instance of how the ability to visualize comes to the director's aid. Yet there are many more subtle errors and superficially more realistic, that are ever lurking in a manuscript, lurking so securely as to sometimes escape notice.

You may choose to say again, “Tush, the scenario writer lacked common sense when he wrote the above sequence of scenes.”

And so he did. After all, common sense when applied to the art of directing is none other than “picture sense,” the power of visualization. And so we arrive back at the beginning of the chapter.

Chapter III
PREPARATION FOR PRODUCTION

The routine attached to a director's task before he begins actual production.—Also some instances of stellar temperament, which, though mildly amusing in their relation, are something akin to tragedy in their enactment

Chapter III

Before going further into the requirements of actual directing and the methods employed by certain directors, the various processes through which a scenario goes before the actual work of production starts, can be noted with benefit.

The scenario writer finishes his manuscript and the director goes into retirement for a day or two to study it and to put it through the test of visualization.

In the meantime other copies of the manuscript have been placed with the various departments of production of the studio.

The production department receives a copy. It is the duty of this department, first of all, to estimate the cost of the picture. So a “scene plot” is made. This consists of the description of each interior “setting” and exterior “location” called for in the story. A list is made as follows:

Interiors

Ball room

Kitchen

Living room

Cafe

Etc., etc.

Exteriors

Waterfalls

Open road

Large field

Etc., etc.

After the description of each interior and exterior are placed the numbers representing the manuscript scenes that are played in each interior and exterior.

The cost of production is then estimated. The production manager, the head of the studio, a man who strives to combine the ability of a business man with the feeling of an artist, perhaps sees a way whereby the kitchen scenes can be transferred to the living room. This will eliminate the cost of erecting the kitchen setting.

Details such as this attended to, he will then give orders to the art and property departments to start on erecting the first setting. This is usually the one in which the greatest number of scenes are enacted.

The art department makes plans for the setting. When these are passed they are given to the boss carpenter who sets his men at work on the actual preparation of the set.

When they have finished the art department in conjunction with the property and drapery departments “dress” the set. This is the working of fixing it up and making it look like the real thing.

In the meantime the picture is being cast. Probably the star and leading man are already chosen. Then the casting director makes the list of all the actors, actresses and “extras” needed in the production of the picture.

He refers to his files and calls upon the people he needs, either upon those in the stock company which most studios of size maintain, or from the numerous agencies who manage the players.

His selections are then submitted to the director and the production manager for O. K.

In the meantime the location department has secured a list of the exterior scenes required by the picture. The location man refers to his files containing pictures of every likely location within a reasonable distance of the studio. He must find waterfalls, open road and a large field.

He selects these locations, being sure that the physical action of the story can be played in those he selects and then submits them to the director. If the director has a reason for not liking any of them, the location man must jump into his automobile and tour the countryside for suitable substitutes to his first selections.

All rather hard and serious work.

Then the director starts to work. The production department must watch him and have the next setting ready for him on time so that not a day will be wasted. If more than one or two companies are working in the studio there may not be room to erect the next setting. Then, perhaps, if weather permits, the director goes out on location.

Thus he is obliged to jump from one place in the story to another. He may be shooting scenes in the last part of the picture on one day and scenes in the first part a few days later.

All this is the routine work that must be gone through with the production of each picture.

Then the temperament of the actors and actresses comes in—comes in very strongly for that matter. If the director be working with a female star she may complain as to her leading man.

TRUE AND PENETRATING CHARACTERIZATION FEATURES WIN DE MILLE'S “MISS LULU BETT”

“THE LOST ROMANCE,” A PICTURE DIRECTED BY WILLIAM DE MILLE, BEARS THE SAME TRUE RELATION TO THE UPPER CRUST OF THE SOCIAL PIE AS “MISS LULU BETT” DOES TO THE MIDDLE PART

“What's the matter with him?” the director will ask. “Can't he act?”

“Yes, but he is not quite tall enough,” answers the star, “why can't I have So-and-So from my last picture?”

“Well, So-and-So is busy on another picture just now, sorry,” answers the director.

“I won't work without him,” this from the star.

Of course she will work without him. She has to. The director knows this. So does she. But he has to handle her diplomatically, to say the least.

He would like to come out and say: “You will work with any leading man they give us.” But he doesn't. He knows the temperament of the feminine star.

He summons all his reserve to his rescue and speaks to the lady in cooing words. He brushes her ruffled fur the right way. Exasperated husbands might take a fine example from him.

After a few minutes talk he has succeeded in convincing the lady that Such-and-Such has So-and-So beaten eighty ways as to general ability, furthermore, his contrasting complexion shows her off to much better advantage.

Then the star, thoroughly convinced, cheers the director up with such an answer as: “Oh, all right, if you insist, but I did want So-and-So.”

She wouldn't dream of giving in and showing the director he was right. The director doesn't get such satisfaction. But if he's wise he doesn't bother about it.

And so the work of production can go on. One day while the director is working in the cafe setting, which may be erected to represent a Parisian cafe an extra will come up to him and tell him that it is all wrong.

“Because,” he will say, “I've been in a cafe in Paris.”

“Well, were you in all the cafes of Paris?,” the director will politely ask.

“No, but this one didn't have—”

“Back to your place then, please,” answers the director if he maintains his diplomacy and poise and retains his anger.

Another extra will have too much makeup on. The director must know how makeup photographs, what its effects are with people of various complexions and under certain lights.

The extra will resent being sent back to the dressing room and told to alter his face. It is a reflection on his ability. Another case where diplomacy is demanded.

And so finally the director gets everything working smoothly. He gains the confidence of the star and the leading man. He shows the extras that he knows his business and is perfectly able to look out for it, without their assistance.

The only trouble is that just about at this point the director has finished the picture.

Chapter IV
THE METHOD OF WILLIAM DE MILLE

Facts regarding the manner in which the majority of pictures are made.—The new order of producing pictures “in continuity” with some interesting remarks on the subject from William C. De Mille, director of “Lulu Bett” and “The Lost Romance”

Chapter IV

One of the most highly publicized tasks which fall to the lot of the director, highly publicized because of its mere freakishness, is the routine which decrees that he must often begin “shooting” his picture in the middle or at the end of his story, or at any intermediate point except the very first scene. Press agents delight in harping on this fact, calling attention to the mental agility of the director in being able to jump from love scene to angry outburst, omitting intervening action in the jump and coming back to it at a later date.

This is due to the fact, as has just been stated, that all scenes taking place in the same set or exterior location must, for economy's and convenience's sake, be photographed at once or rather successively.

The “scene plot,” compiled by the production department, lists the number of interior settings and exterior locations required by the picture and after the description of each scene in the scene plot a row of numbers, each indicating a separate scene to be played in the set or location, follows. Thus a section of a scene plot may read:

LIVING ROOM: Scenes 19, 20, 21, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 159, 160, etc.

DINING ROOM: Scenes 1, 2, 3, 4, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 291, 292, 293, etc.

Of all the settings required let it be said that the living room contains the majority of the action to be photographed. In all likelihood, then, this set is the first one to be erected by the studio production department and as a result the director begins his first days work with scene No. 19 and follows it with scenes No. 20 and No. 21, which disclose closely related action.

Let us say that these early scenes have to do with the first happy days of a young married couple. They discover the little joys and hardships of housekeeping, etc. Well and good. But immediately after producing these scenes the director is forced to jump ahead to the sequence beginning with scene No. 81. Here is a point considerably further advanced in the story and so the director is obliged to mentally leap the action intervening between his first sequence and his second. Whereas Mary and John may have been perfectly contented in scene No. 19, they may have grown two years older and separated altogether in scene No. 81. Inasmuch as he “shoots” No. 81 immediately after No. 21 it must be seen that the director is obliged to adapt his own mood to this peculiar state of affairs created by the ramifications of studio organization. He must live two years in half an hour or less. Such procedure requires mental gymnastics that are more difficult than the act of the vaudeville contortionist.

It is needless to add that this jumping hither and thither and back to hither again, requires a minutely adjusted sense of continuity on the director's part. To keep his whole story and the comparative values of certain sequences straight in his mind, is no easy matter. Further complications enter when it is realized that a sequence of exterior scenes may follow immediately after a sequence of interior scenes, these exteriors being closely identified with the interiors and requiring the same mood. But yet again the plan of work mapped out by the production department may postpone these scenes to the very last day of work. Thus the director is forced to jump back into the early mood of his story after he has rehearsed himself and become thoroughly satiated with all the other moods, a task imposing seemingly insurmountable difficulties.

Time was when it used to be the boast of some directors that they could produce a picture in this jumping about fashion just as well as if they had been permitted to “shoot” their stories in actual continuity. The method is still followed but the boasts aren't as audible.

This method of production gave a fine opening to those critics who cried out that the motion pictures would always remain in the cheap state so well described in the word “movie.” Really artistic results could never be secured with this eternal jumping from 4 to 11 to 44, they said. They added, quite rightly too, that a consistent, well developed, psychologically ascending character was impossible of achievement under this plan. Inasmuch as actors often had to play their climaxes first and then go back and play a scene that led up to the climax, there was considerable point to the arguments of the critics.

A very few directors have now managed to arrange their work so that they can actually make their pictures in continuity, beginning with scene No. 1 and proceeding straight through, with but slight deviations, to the end.

Among these directors and leading them all in results attained, stands William C. De Mille, a director responsible for such artistic successes as “The Prince Chap” and “Conrad in Quest of His Youth,” both with Thomas Meighan, and “The Lost Romance” and “Miss Lulu Bett,” with casts very nearly approaching the all-star state.

Mr. De Mille specializes in stories containing the true and dramatic psychological development of character. The artificial melodramatics and blatant heroics he subdues to unnoticeable effect or more often eliminates entirely. His arc of emotional experience is filled, it is more than obvious, with all the sensitive lines imaginable. In fact Mr. De Mille is one of the few artistic directors in the field today, though perhaps his name has not been as highly publicized as have those of lesser lights.

Mr. De Mille states that both he and his brother, Cecil, produce their pictures in actual continuity. “With such pictures as those in which I specialize,” he says, “and by this specialty I mean of course pictures such as 'Miss Lulu Bett' and 'The Lost Romance,' pictures that depend considerably for their value on the consistent and progressive development of character, rather than mere physical action, producing in continuity is tremendously effective as well as a great help.”

“To jump about in character studies of this type would be exceedingly difficult for both players and director and in many cases, suitable results would not be obtained.”

Let it be inserted here that other directors may scoff at the De Mille idea, but it may also be noted by students of the screen that no other director has achieved the highly artistic results in this line of pictures that stand to the credit of William De Mille.

Let him continue: “The method of starting with scene No. 1 and proceeding numerically to the conclusion of the picture is of benefit to both players and director. The players characterizations become well sustained, they take a greater interest in their work as they realize it growing consistently with each day's effort. And the director is able to get a better slant on his story as he watches the whole thing grow and take definite shape from day to day.”

Those who ask for proof need only look at one of the four pictures mentioned above that Mr. De Mille produced. “The Lost Romance” contained four of the most real characters ever developed on the screen. As for the two pictures in which Thomas Meighan appeared it is safe to say that his work in them far surpassed anything else he has done before or since with the exception of “The Miracle Man.” And the basic success of these two Meighan pictures was in each case, the characterization rendered by the star. This characterization might have been achieved by other methods but it is doubtful. Certainly De Mille's method has proven itself.

WILLIAM DE MILLE USING THE MAGNA-VOX, AN ELECTRICAL IMPROVEMENT ON THE MEGAPHONE, WHICH CARRIES HIS VOICE DIRECTLY ONTO THE “SET” AND INTO THE EARS OF HIS PLAYERS

“MISS LULU BETT,” DIRECTED BY WILLIAM DE MILLE, LIFTS THE CURTAIN ON A DRAMATIC SLICE OF LIFE

The production of a picture after this method necessitates a carefully prepared manuscript, for once again, the efficiency demanded by studio organization enters into the scheme of things. “Naturally the continuity writer must take particular care in building scripts for me,” Mr. De Mille continues, “for it may be seen that this arrangement of production calls for an equally careful arrangement of the different settings employed in the picture. The studio seldom permits a director to keep more than three or four settings standing at once for any considerable length of time. So it must be arranged that the early action of the picture takes place in the first three or four settings erected. In other words, the settings of the production must be progressive as well as the characterizations. It is a little mechanical trick that is much easier to utilize than it is to explain.”

It may be added that Mr. De Mille himself works with his writers on their scenarios and supervises all such details as this matter of mechanics as well as the more important matters that come under the head of scenario writing.

To make his method easier Mr. De Mille has evolved still another production trick which is interesting to say the least. Many directors after they have photographed a full scene are obliged to lose valuable time in moving the camera and lights up to the principal players in order to take closeups. This time may also account for the loss of the proper mood on the part of the director and his players.

To eliminate this unsatisfactory condition, Mr. De Mille has his settings built so that he can photograph them from different angles and from different distances at the same time. So his players while acting one long scene are actually photographed in full shots, semi-closeups and closeups. The closeups cameras are “blinded” behind convenient pieces of scenery.

This step of producing pictures in continuity is a big one and one in the right direction. Pictures are not perfect in this day by any manner of means but when a point is reached when all those that demand to be so treated can be produced in continuity, the results will doubtless be obviously better.

Naturally, however, this method would not apply to the director working on the “action” picture such as that in which William S. Hart and Tom Mix appear. In such cases where physical action and thrills are set at a premium, it would be useless and an entire waste of time to insist on producing in continuity. Imagine calling “Halt!” on a long shot of advancing train robbers while the cameraman moved up and took a closeup of the bad man's finger pulling the trigger! And then moving back again and permitting the train robbers to proceed.

Such a procedure would be as foolish as to attempt to produce one of De Mille's works in the old fashioned way.

Chapter V
CECIL DE MILLE ALSO SPEAKS

In which it is noted that the more famous De Mille, besides employing the method of production described by his brother, places unusual faith in the intelligence of his actors and actresses.—“Never show them HOW but tell them WHAT” is his formula.—A case where an actor insisted on being shown

Chapter V

Mention of one of the De Milles immediately brings to mind the other. Cecil and William are as easy to say in one breath as Anthony and Cleopatra, Nip and Tuck and Mutt and Jeff.

Cecil B. De Mille is one of the few directors of today whose name carries a picture to the financial success that greets a picture bearing the name of a great star. It appears that he first rode to national fame when he inaugurated a series of pictures bearing such mandatory and interrogatory titles as “Don't Change Your Husband” and “Why Change Your Wife?”

But long before this he was cutting wide swaths in the old fashioned method of directing by doing his work in a distinctly individual and better way. Pictures such as “The Golden Chance” and the first edition of “The Squaw Man” stamped him as considerably more of an artist than the earlier pioneers in the art of directing.

Cecil De Mille was, perhaps, the first director to use the method of producing his pictures in continuity, as outlined by his brother in the previous chapter. Perhaps this is the reason that he early secured such superior results to those achieved by the general run of directors in the early days.

Or perhaps on the other hand it is his ability to handle actors and actresses so as to get the very utmost from their efforts. For Mr. De Mille claims that one of the primal rules of directing is “never tell an actor how to play a scene.”

On this axiom, he states, lies the secret of achieving real characterization and absolute naturalness on the screen.

This may appear to be a perfectly natural conclusion to some readers. An actor of ability knows his business and therefore knows how to develop a true characterization. All he needs is a few words from the director as regards the timing of his transition from one emotion to another.

This is becoming more and more true as the art of picture production develops but the time is easily recalled when directors boasted that they acted out every part of the picture so that their casts might secure the proper grasp of the story.

I remember very well one director, a big man in his day but who has since sunk to oblivion as far as picture production goes, who used to take great delight in showing his players how to play certain scenes.

After a few preliminary rehearsals he would become disgusted, or pretend to become disgusted, with the efforts of his cast and thereupon he would act out each and every role for the cast's benefit. It was rather ridiculous to see him affecting the coy mannerisms of an ingenue, then jumping quickly into the role of the hero and from there to the contrasting part of the villain. He would even perform the butler with pompous dignity for the benefit of the extra who was playing the part.

But what effect did all this play on the director's part have on the onlooking cast? The director's personality and individual mannerisms were displayed in every role. Thereafter the actors endeavored to imitate him not to enact their parts. The hero merely gave an imitation of the director giving an imitation of the hero. The ingenue gave an imitation of the director imitating the ingenue. And so on through all the parts.

The results, it need hardly be pointed out, were not natural. In the end all the players gave bad imitations of the director. On top of this they endeavored to effect his mannerism and tricks of expression. As a consequence there was absolutely nothing distinctive about the completed picture. It was the director's and no one else's. The director, being conceited to a great degree, was naturally delighted with the result. But he was the only one delighted with it as is testified by the fact that he is not in the art today.

This method has gradually been forced out of the studio. There are few directors who insist on acting every part out nowadays. There are some left but not many. A few more years and they will all disappear and then we will have still better pictures.

Mr. De Mille evidently believes that a good many directors of the present day still adhere to the old fashioned method. It is to be hoped that he isn't altogether right.

“Too many directors,” he says, “consider it their duty to show an actor just how to play every scene in the picture. This type of director insists on acting out every role and demands that his cast shall mimic his action before the camera. The results are woefully wooden, unnatural and characterless.

“In the perfect photoplay each character must be distinctly itself. It must be sharply differentiated from all other characters in that particular play. This result can only be achieved by permitting each actor or actress to work out his or her own interpretation of a role.

“If I show an actor how to pick up a paper or a book in a scene he will consciously strive to imitate my actions. Now, what may be perfectly natural for me may be unnatural and awkward for him. At the best his attempt to copy my model will be but a poor reproduction of Cecil B. De Mille on the screen. If I carried that program through with respect to each player I would have just as many weak versions of Cecil B. De Mille as there are characters in the play.

“If, on the other hand, I explain to the actor what the action of the scene is and what idea or emotion I want him to convey to the spectator and then permit him to work out his own interpretation of the scene I have a distinctive, natural and far more powerful piece of work from that actor. I assume that every actor is better at creating than mimicking me.

“My task comes in in my effort to perfect his interpretation by helpful criticism and suggestion but not by example.

“Before beginning actual production on a picture I make it a rule to call together the entire cast and the technical staff. At this meeting I tell them the story with all the detail of characterization and atmosphere that I am capable of putting into it. I do not read them the continuity scene by scene. I try to make them see and feel the story and the characters and, as everyone in the production art knows, the straight reading of a continuity is an uninteresting and tedious proposition.

“So when the cameras actually start to turn, each member of the cast has his or her own characterization and its relationship to the others well in mind.

“At the beginning of each scene I sketch out verbally what the action of the scene is to convey to picture audiences. Then comes a rehearsal and often many rehearsals before it is actually filmed. But through all these rehearsals I make a point of never showing anyone how to do a thing. If an actor does something badly or awkwardly I try to locate the cause of the awkwardness and remedy that. By way of example the scene may call for an actor to be seated at a desk thoughtfully smoking a pipe. Perhaps the actor may handle the pipe like an amateur. Inquiry may uncover the fact that he is far more at home smoking a cigar. Thereupon the cigar is supplied and the scene proceeds smoothly.

“A little thing, to be sure, but between the pipe and the cigar lies the difference between a natural and an unnatural performance.

“No actor worthy of his calling should have to be shown how to play a scene. He may have to be coached; that is part of the director's task. But it is no part of the director's duties to furnish the acting model for any or every character in the play. I firmly believe that attempts on the part of the directors to show actors how to do certain things will inevitably result in bad performances and consequent damage to the quality of the finished production.”

Melbourne Spurr
CECIL B. DE MILLE

CECIL B. DE MILLE AT WORK

Mr. De Mille's comments are very interesting. It is to be supposed that he does not give copies of the picture continuity to his players that they may thoroughly acquaint themselves with the parts they are to play before actual production work begins. Today the majority of directors like to do this.

However, as Mr. De Mille says, “I tell the story with all the detail of characterization and atmosphere that I am capable of putting into it.” This appears to be an admirable course to pursue. Given the continuity an actor may get quite the wrong idea of the role he is to play. Listening to his director sketch the story, including in it his ideas as to its development, must of necessity give the actor a clear idea of his work and an idea more coinciding with that of the director's. Thus it might appear that misunderstanding and argument are well disposed of.

On the other hand Mr. De Mille is fortunate in having players of general intelligence and ability to deal with. Look over any of the casts he has employed in his recent productions, “The Affairs of Anatol” for example, and you will discover that there is hardly an unknown in the entire cast.

It is amusing to consider what Mr. De Mille would have done if he had had the task of producing “Cappy Ricks,” a picture made by one of the directors that Mr. De Mille developed, Tom Forman. There was the role of a Swedish sea captain, humorously called “All-Hands-and-Feet” in this picture.

An old prize fighter was selected to play the role. He looked the part to perfection. But the scenario called for the star, Thomas Meighan, to engage in a fight with him and knock him out. The ancient fighter was perfectly agreeable for the fight, in fact he battered his opponent considerably but when it came time for him to be knocked out he just wouldn't fall down.

The scene was tried over and over again and each time when it came to the psychological moment “All-Hands-and-Feet” positively refused to fall down on the deck after Mr. Meighan had delivered a blow on the chin.

“Go down! Down!” Mr. Forman kept repeating wrathfully.

“Down? Down?” queried the one time prize fighter, “I no understand what you say.”

Eventually Mr. Forman had to submit to the ignominy of allowing Mr. Meighan to land on his chin and drop him on the deck.

A broad grin crept over the benign countenance of “All-Hands-and-Feet” as he said, “Ah, I never bane knocked down, I see what you mean. I try to fall next time”.

Mr. Forman and Mr. Meighan started a movement to back “All-Hands-and-Feet” for the championship of the world. But when their subject heard of it he mysteriously disappeared. Possibly he didn't want to be taught what “down” meant in a serious way.

Chapter VI
WHEN ACTING ABILITY HELPS

An amusing incident of studio life that might be seen by a visitor any day in the week with the moral “Never be shocked by anything you see in a motion picture studio”

Chapter VI

No better illustration of the value of Mr. De Mille's foregoing remarks can be found than in the case of Charles Chaplin. Mr. Chaplin as well as being the world's greatest comedian, also directs his pictures.

Suppose that Mr. Chaplin decided to rehearse in every part of his picture so that his supporting players might pattern his performances after his. The completed product would show: One good Charles Chaplin and a dozen bad imitations of Charles Chaplin.

Mr. Chaplin has imitators enough without going to the trouble of bringing them right into his own pictures.

Incidentally the task that confronts the actor-director is extraordinarily difficult. He not only is obliged to face the lights in makeup and drop his own personality in the role he is playing but he must also be able to see his own work from behind the camera, to retain his perspective from this angle of the production as well as from the acting angle.

His is thus a twice difficult task and perhaps for this reason there are few surviving actor-directors. In the old days there used to be loads of them but the pictures were then too much actor and not enough director.

Besides Charles Chaplin only a few survive today, prominent among them being William S. Hart and Charles Ray and it may be said that each of these stars has done his best work when directed by someone else. When they essay the dual task of acting and directing they pay too little attention to the supervision of the entire production and concentrate too largely on their own performances.

Despite this criticism of the actor-director and the cry against directors showing their players how to perform a scene no one can deny that a knowledge of acting, or rather a knowledge of how to act, comes in very handy from the director's point of view.

A little over a year ago I happened to visit one of the large eastern studios when John S. Robertson, probably one of the most competent men in the production craft was working there. Mr. Robertson has years of acting on the stage behind him. He played in stock for a long period and knows every role in every play of importance produced over a period of considerable years.

However Mr. Robertson is now a director and not an actor. What was my surprise then to discover him in the midst of a highly dramatic scene. The setting was the dressing room of a stage star. Mr. Robertson was half sitting, half reclining on a luxurious chaise-lounge. The atmosphere was fairly exotic.

Marc McDermott, excellent character actor that he is, stood in the background, immaculately clad in evening attire. He was gazing at Mr. Robertson with the glint of evil in his eyes.

The door opened and in walked Reginald Denny who immediately rushed madly to the couch on which Mr. Robertson was reclining languidly and proceeded to make violent love to him.

Naturally my first impulse was to make matters known to the Department of Health but on inquiry I soon learned that Mr. Robertson was merely playing Elsie Ferguson's role in the preliminary rehearsal of “Footlights.” Miss Ferguson was a little late and Mr. Robertson was obliging for the benefit of Messrs. McDermott and Denny!

So I watched them further. A long scene was enacted with Mr. Robertson playing Miss Ferguson's role exactly as the script called. And he was doing it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As for the other participants they were so engrossed in their work that they didn't seem to notice the absence of Miss Ferguson and the presence of her capable substitute.

When at last she did appear the scene only needed one brief rehearsal before the cameras started to grind.

Besides pointing out the value of the ability to act to the director this little tale also points another moral, to wit, never be shocked at anything you see in a motion picture studio.

Chapter VII
REX INGRAM ON “ATMOSPHERE”

The director of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and “The Conquering Power,” two of the screen's greatest achievements, has something to say about settings and atmosphere.—Using impressionistic methods to realistic ends is his forte.—The effort demanded to achieve convincing realism on the screen

Chapter VII

Few people who closely follow the screen will need an introduction to Rex Ingram, the young director who startled the whole screen world with the artistry of his work in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Mr. Ingram is one of those to whom the screen gave one of its biggest opportunities. For a long time before “The Four Horsemen” was completed the wiseacres were prowling about, shaking their beards and stating that the young director was running wild and breaking the producing company that was sponsoring the picture.

How he startled the world with a magnificent piece of work is still recent screen history. And how he followed his first big success with another great picture, “The Conquering Power,” is also still fresh in the minds of picture audiences.

Among many others one thing distinguished both “The Four Horsemen” and “The Conquering Power” and that was the remarkable atmosphere which Mr. Ingram had managed to inject in both subjects. It was absolutely startling in its effect. Those who hadn't stopped to bother about Mr. Ingram's early studies which included art in two forms, painting and sculpturing, didn't know how in the world he had managed it. However, it appears from Mr. Ingram's own words that he merely used common sense and applied the methods of the older arts to the craft of picture production.

REX INGRAM, REHEARSING ONE OF THE RACE TRACK SCENES IN “TURN TO THE RIGHT”

REX INGRAM DIRECTING ONE OF THE MANY MOB SCENES IN “THE FOUR HORSEMEN”

He has some very interesting things to say regarding the value of atmosphere in motion picture production.

He writes: “After sincerity of characterization and directness in story-telling, atmosphere does more toward making an audience accept what it sees on the screen than anything else. By accept, I mean, be entertained, engrossed in the subject.

“While good atmosphere gives an air of reality to a picture yet the most convincing and engrossing atmosphere is often far from realistic. This is so because the aim of the director should be to get over the effect of the atmosphere he desires, rather than the actual atmosphere which exists in such scenes as he may wish to portray, and which, if reduced literally to the screen would be quite unconvincing.”

This principle of Mr. Ingram's is the ideal one on which to work. It is the principle of other arts beside that of producing motion pictures. It is the principle of creating something by implication and suggestion rather than actual reproduction. This, however, detracts not one whit from the credit that is Mr. Ingram's for being the first director to apply it to picture production in a consistent and effective way.

Mr. Ingram continues: “Whether a scene is being made of a beach-comber's shanty, an underworld basement saloon, a pool-hall, a ship's cabin, a shoe factory or a smart restaurant, not only should the aim be to convince the audience, but enough study should be given the subject, in each case, to convince the habitues of any of these places that they are in familiar surroundings.

“One of the most interesting sets that I have ever handled from an atmospheric standpoint was the interior of a derelict ship, beached, and become the hang-out of beach-combers, in 'Under Crimson Skies,' a production some years old. Conrad, the master writer of the sea, never offered a more wonderful opportunity for color than did this episode in the story provided by J. G. Hawks, with its thrilling climax in the battle in the surf between the white man and the black giant.

“In 'The Four Horsemen,' the basement resort of the Buenos Aires bocca, or river front hang-out, furnished plenty of chances to make colorful pictures—yet had I been literal in the way I handled it the effect would not have been anything nearly as realistic. For I doubt if anything just like that dive ever existed in the Argentine or anywhere else for that matter.

“The set was a Spanish version of a bowery cellar saloon that I used in a picture which I made several years before and re-created to suit the episode suggested in the great Ibanez novel. The signs on the wall, the types of men, in fact all the bits of atmosphere in the place were the results of painstaking efforts to get “color” and local atmosphere into the set. In one corner a sign hung which was the advertisement of a notorious 'crimp,' a sailor's boarding-house keeper, whose establishment was on the bocca for years. An old sailor who was working in the scene and who had lived in Buenos Aires came to me and said: 'I've been shanghaied by that blood-sucker.'

“I have gone so far as to have my principals speak the language of the country in which the picture is laid. Few of them like to go to this trouble but it helps them materially in keeping in the required atmosphere. The results on the screen are so encouraging that after they see what it has done for them the players don't mind the extra study that this course entails.

“I know of no branch of a director's job that is more fascinating than getting color and atmosphere into the settings—thinking out bits of 'business,' little flashes of life which, though only on the screen for a few moments, can give an air of reality to an entire sequence of scenes, that would perhaps otherwise be lacking.

“In screening Balzac, as I did in making 'The Conquering Power,' fine atmosphere and characterization are of more vital importance than incident, for nine times out of ten it is the characters in a great novel that we remember—rather than the plot.”

Mr. Ingram is going on his way, creating distinctly unusual pictures and one of the chief reasons is this great attention that he pays to atmosphere by suggestion rather than actual reproduction. Novelists call atmosphere “background.” The terms are the same. The novelist creates his background, his atmosphere, by painting pictures with words, suggesting the locale and environment of history. Thus with Mr. Ingram. He suggests scenes in his pictures and refuses to label them. In this respect he is farther advanced than most any director in the art today.

This idea of suggestion can easily be carried too far, however. The German producer who turned out “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” carried it to the point of alleged futuristic “art.” He aimed to suggest but instead he puzzled completely. The producer of “The Golem,” another German picture, came nearer the point. But it appears that neither of them equalled or much less surpassed the work of Mr. Ingram in his two fine productions already mentioned.

Mr. Ingram is one of the very few new directors that the screen has developed in recent years. New in the sense that he has attracted attention not only within the art of picture production but without it as well. He is one of those men who have been recruited from other fields of endeavor and who has fulfilled expectations and gone far beyond them. A man such as Ingram will always have an opportunity. He may have to fight for it but it's bound to come.

Mr. Ingram's remarks about building settings, so that people who frequent such places in real life will instantly recognize them, opens an interesting field of comment. Even if a director labors painstakingly to achieve the proper atmosphere there are always some crabs in the audience who are bound to take exception. If they can't find something to criticise in the setting they criticise the way the extras play their parts.

For a long time doctors have been grossly misrepresented on the screen. Doctors in particular have objected that they never act as if possessed of diplomas. A director recently resolved to put an end to such criticism. It annoyed him particularly inasmuch as he had a friend, an M.D., who was forever poking fun at him whenever he introduced a man of medicine into a picture.

When the director in question completed his latest picture he took his doctor friend to see it and after it was over asked him specially how he liked the performance of the actor who played the doctor.

“Terrible,” replied his friend, “The man never saw a clinic and shows it. No real doctor would act like that.”

“That's funny,” replied the director with a smile, “because, you see he wasn't an actor but—a doctor!”

Chapter VIII
MAINLY ABOUT D. W. GRIFFITH

The producer and director of “The Birth of a Nation,” “Hearts of the World,” “Way Down East,” and “Orphans of the Storm” works with amazing disregard of system.—Others attempt his methods of procedure and come more often to grief than to glory

Chapter VIII

No volume on the subject of directing would be complete without the mention of D. W. Griffith. And yet it is utterly impossible to deal with D. W. Griffith in any comprehensive way. The producer of the first great picture “The Birth of a Nation,” the man who strove for something beyond the times in “Intolerance,” the artist who made “Hearts of the World” and the masterly technician who stands sponsor for “Way Down East,” is singularly hard to approach from any ordinary viewpoint.

There is no doubt that D. W. Griffith at intervals gives just cause to the commentators who place him at the top of the list of all directors. But at the same time he often does the most ordinary of things on the screen. In one picture he is an artist and in the next he appears in the light of a producer of hack pieces of motion picture film.

The reason, no doubt, is that Mr. Griffith is a business man as well as an artist. He sinks an unusually large amount of money in a picture such as “Hearts of the World” and then realizes that, while the returns from such a subject are slowly accruing, he must needs turn out a few pot-boilers to keep the wolf from the door. Thus “Hearts of the World” was followed by two or three shorter and less pretentious war pictures of commonplace variety.

Mr. Griffith is constantly exasperating people by such mixed proceedings and just when his long-suffering public has decided to forsake him forever and turn to more consistent directors and producers, he startles the world again with another masterpiece.

His latest picture, for instance, “Orphans of the Storm,” has proven an artistic success from almost every viewpoint, and has been quite capable of disposing of the bad taste left in the collective mouths of critical audiences by his recent “Dream Street.”

One of the most interesting things about Mr. Griffith to the lay mind is that he never uses the usual continuity that the majority of directors employ. He has his story clearly in his mind before he starts work. He has something of a subconscious realization of how many different scenes ought to be embraced in each episode and he sets about his work accordingly.

This might not seem so difficult as it really is if Mr. Griffith employed the De Mille method of directing his pictures in continuity, beginning with scene No. 1 and proceeding numerically onward. But Mr. Griffith sails right along using one setting or scene after another without much regard for continuity. He takes the number of shots required in each setting and scene with but slight assistance from notes and memoranda.

He works in the following order: A scene may represent a room in a country home. A son is saying goodbye to his mother; he is either going away to war or going to the city to make good. There is, of course, a tearful parting. Now the average director will refer to his script and note that the scenario writer has given him, say, twelve different shots, including closeups, long shots and semi-closeups in which to get the “goodbye” scene over and done with.

D. W. GRIFFITH