THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS
THE need of motion-picture producers for new raw material for the screen
grows apace, and is constantly harder to satisfy. Otherwise, the camera
would not at present be endeavoring to make pictures of Einstein’s
Theory of Relativity. It is rumored that Bergson, Freud and Coué have
been approached by hard-pressed producers on the subject of their movie
picture rights. The dilemma confronting the photoplay promoters is more
serious than that which for generations past has worried the theatrical
managers. The appeal of the dramatist is to tens of thousands of people,
that of the scenario-writer to millions. It doesn’t require much of a
head for mathematics to realize that the food-supply of the screen is
much more quickly exhausted than that of the stage.
In so far as the libraries are concerned, the movies have begun to
exhaust the resources vouchsafed to them by the writers of the past.
Their fate is like that which menaces our nation in connection with our
forests. For many years we have been cutting down our trees without
taking thought for the morrow by providing for a new growth of forest
where our improvident axe has had its wanton way. The screen has
recklessly leveled both its giant sequoias and its scrub-oaks and finds
itself in sore straits for timber that will stand the strain it puts
upon it.
The younger generation of fiction-writers are not furnishing the studios
with material with which to repair the gaps made as the romances of the
past are, one by one, fed to the capacious maw of the hungry screen.
Mark Twain asserted that there were only seven original stories in
existence—or was it thirty?—and inferred that the latest novel by the
most original of contemporary writers must be, of necessity, a variation
upon one of these ancient, basic yarns. There still exists the suspicion
that our greatest humorist was “spoofing us,” as an Englishman would
say. But the output of fiction to-day, both in America and Europe, leads
to the conclusion that our imaginative writers were not born to the
purple as master plot-makers. They repeatedly shock us, sometimes
disgust us, often interest and amuse us, constantly furnish us with food
for reflection and apprehension, and once in awhile startle us by their
brilliancy—but, for the most part, their novels do not “screen well.”
They lack, as a class, the absorbing narrative interest that makes tales
like “Monte Cristo,” “Les Misérables,” “Lorna Doone,” “A Tale of Two
Cities,” and many other masterpieces of the older generation of
romancers, effective on the screen. They seem to be influenced by the
fear that Mark Twain was right in his depressing generalization, and
that it is better to put forth a novel with little or no plot than to be
accused of employing modern methods for telling an ancient tale.
From these modern fictionists the screen asks for bread and they give it
a stone—sometimes a precious or semi-precious stone, but not what the
newest and hungriest of the arts needs for its continued sustenance.
This is the more remarkable because of the fact that we are living in an
age more stimulating to the imaginative mind than any of its
predecessors. We are called upon to rebuild a shattered world, to
salvage what was of value in a dethroned civilization and to reconstruct
the affairs of mankind upon new bases.
It is no figure of speech [remarks President Harding, in his
recent message to Congress], to say that we have come to the
test of our civilization. The world has been passing—is to-day
passing—through a great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not
more difficult than the solution of the problems which
necessarily follow.
In other words, the human race since 1914 has been going through
unprecedented experiences which of necessity furnish material for the
teller of romances, the builder of plots, the novelist, the dramatist,
the scenario-writer, richer, more varied, more illuminating than has
been hitherto vouchsafed to imaginative genius. But, as Virgil once
grumbled, “the mountains were in labor and brought forth a little
mouse.” Science is going forward to-day from one startling triumph to
another, the creative imaginations of its greatest minds rising to
adequate control of the new and splendid opportunities recent progress
has brought to them. But Art, especially that field of it reserved to
the origination of dramatic tales, seems to be suffering under a blight
that forces it to give birth either to monstrosities or to weaklings,
and to clothe its worthless offspring in garments fashioned to delude
the weak-minded into believing that what is offensive to common-sense
and good taste is necessarily a child of genius. The screen, with fame
and fortune to bestow upon the teller of tales, is forced to become a
ghoul haunting old graveyards at night because the living are unworthy
of a great opportunity, because the fictionist of to-day goes far afield
in quest of strange gods instead of worshipping at the eternal and
inspiring altars which gave inspiration to the master-romancers of the
past.
The situation confronting the photoplay producer at this moment, as
outlined above, bids fair to become worse rather than better, unless
some radical solution of the problem dealing with the constant renewal
of worthy dramatic material for the screen can be found. The most
disreputable type of movie drama has fallen into a permanent condition
of innocuous desuetude, in so far, at least, as the vast majority of
picture theatres are concerned. It has been replaced by photoplays of a
much higher order, until to-day the screen is engaged in giving to the
public splendid presentations of great masterpieces of fiction and drama
entitling it to approval and sympathetic encouragement. But you can’t
eat your cake and have it too. You can’t feed an audience of several
millions daily with the cream of the world’s imaginative literature
without shortly resorting to skimmed milk and eventually coming to the
end of your lacteal resources.
The point toward which we have been driving is this: The movie, with its
stupendous resources of capital, its enterprising and ambitious
personnel, its right to believe, through its experiences of a quarter of
a century, that no obstacle can check its triumphant progress, is like
an army that can conquer the world only on the condition that its
commissariat solves the problem of food-supply. It is possible, of
course, that when the screen has fully mastered the technique involved
in color reproduction and the synchronization of voice and action the
photoplays now attracting the movie public may receive a new lease of
life. We who have enjoyed, for example, “The Count of Monte Cristo” on
the screen, despite the fact that neither color, sound nor perspective
assisted the development of Dumas’s absorbing story, would be inclined
to give it our attention again when Edmond Dantes is no longer clad in
black-and-white and has found his voice. But it is best to let the
marvels of the future take care of themselves. For the present, we must
confine ourselves to the screen as it is, and as it seems likely to
remain for an indefinite time to come.
However, there must come a crisis in the future, under present
conditions, when the movie producers will be hampered by a lack of
screen material unless they have been far-sighted enough to provide
against this contingency. There are among them forward-looking
exploiters of the latest story-telling medium who have formulated, in
rather a vague and general way, a possible solution of the problem
confronting them. They are encouraging writers possessing imagination
and originality to take part in the development of a new form of the
dramaturgic art which makes direct rather than indirect use of the
screen. In other words, the movie displays a growing tendency to demand
from creative minds its own special requirements; to turn, so to speak,
away from the libraries to the librettists. Eventually, it is safe to
assert, there will come a day when scenario-writers will not spend a
large part of their time listening to echoes for inspiration but will
beget screen plays from internal instead of external impulses. In a not
distant future, it is reasonable to predict, the movie will, of dire
necessity, develop its own type of dramatic story-tellers whose
fecundity may make Mark Twain’s assertion, quoted above, seem more than
ever humorous rather than accurate. The movie must do this or run out
eventually of screen material, for the dead tale-tellers have little
more to offer it, and contemporary novelists have not, from the picture
producers’ standpoint, risen to a great opportunity.
Of course, the future of the movie, no matter how glorious it may be,
must be, of necessity, circumscribed, as are fiction and the drama, by
the basic limitations applying to human passions. Love, hatred, loyalty,
jealousy, ambition, generosity, cupidity, philanthropy, selfishness, and
the other dominating motives impelling men and women to beget the raw
material of drama will not be increased in number because the screen has
developed a new method for telling tales to a story-loving race. While
the widely-accepted generalization that human nature never changes may
not be true, it can not be questioned that the scenario-writer of the
future will be forced to deal with the same manifestations of Man’s
psychic make-up which engaged the attention of Æschylus, Sophocles,
Molière, Shakespeare, and the lesser dramatists. But as the nations
to-day are striving to find a new way to pay old debts, so is the screen
seeking a new way to present the eternal dramatic clash of old passions.
As the kinetoscope thirty years ago begot a novel form of amusement, so
is its successor, the movie screen, bringing into being a new type of
dramatic technique. The scenario-writer is something besides a
combination of story-teller and playwright. He is experimenting in a
youthful artistic medium, whose resources and possibilities are as yet
only partially revealed, and he has become a pioneer in a realm that
belongs to a kind of specialist bearing resemblance to both the novelist
and dramatist but differing from them in ways peculiarly his own.
The future welfare of the screen, in so far as it is confined to the
amusement field, depends largely upon how stimulating to men and women
possessing creative imagination this new method of tale-telling, rapidly
developing its own technique, may prove to be. Will the movie produce
its own Hugos, Sardous, Stevensons, Barries,—perhaps, its
Shakespeare—who, fascinated by the most democratic method yet devised
for genius to appeal to the masses, shall eschew the old methods for
telling new tales and reach immortality by means of the photoplay
scenario? If you who have read the preceding chapters of this book,
believe, as does the writer, that the only universal language yet
devised by Man is the most important contribution to the spiritual
resources of the race that has been made for centuries, you will be
inclined to hope that scenario-writing for the screen may become an
occupation worthy, in succeeding generations, of the exclusive devotion
of many imaginative creators.
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