THE MOVIE AND THE CONTINUITY WRITER
WAS it Brander Matthews, Henry Van Dyke, Richard Burton or Clayton
Hamilton who asserted that any given novel must be placed in the
category of either the Impossible, the Improbable or the Inevitable?
Whoever it was, he helped to clarify the thinking of any writer who may
find himself dealing with the topic of screen tales and tale-tellers, of
the movie drama and the continuity writer. Every art has its own special
sins of omission and commission. The poet who tells a story in verse may
take liberties denied to the novelist relating the same story. The
continuity writer who places this tale upon the screen enjoys certain
prerogatives denied to either the poet or the novelist, but he is also
bound by limitations and restrictions inherent in the medium through
which he is working as a raconteur.
It is not easy to fool a movie audience in regard to the Inevitable.
Jove may nod now and then when he is engaged upon an epic poem or a
romantic or realistic novel but he must remain wide awake when he is
writing scenarios for the screen. Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Read,
Dumas, Victor Hugo, Thackeray may “get away,” to use a slang phrase,
with a lapse of memory, an injected anachronism, even the reintroduction
of a character who has been killed off in an earlier chapter. The
impressive flow of their narrative, their charm of style, and the
tendency of a reader to forget minor details in what he has already read
of a tale, have enabled the great story-tellers to commit strange,
almost unbelievable, blunders in the unfolding of their narratives
without seriously marring the value of their work. But when a
tale-teller is employing the movie screen he can not afford to take
liberties with the basic proposition that seeing is _not_ believing
unless there is the logic of the Inevitable in the sequence of the
events portrayed.
The above is asserted under a full realization of the fact that for
years the story-telling films tried to the breaking-point the patience
of their more enlightened supporters by frequently sacrificing the
Inevitable to the Expedient, allowing the logic of events to go to the
bow-wows because a reel must be cut, or a movie star exploited, or a
scene over-emphasized for the sake of its advertising value. Lincoln
asserted that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but at one
period it seemed as if the screen were stubbornly endeavoring to perform
this miracle. A picture-play, whatsoever might have been its origin,
succumbed, as a rule, to a tendency to underrate the general
intelligence, the power of memory, and the knowledge of life and human
nature possessed by the average movie audience.
But times have changed. Continuity—that is, the spinal-column of a
picture-play,—manages, for the most part, to keep the cervical, dorsal
and lumbar vertebræ of the narrative in a normal juxtaposition, with the
result that dramatic monstrosities are gradually disappearing from the
screen. It is still possible to fool some of the people all the time,
but it no longer pays, so far as movie audiences are concerned, to throw
common-sense into the discard when the screen essays to tell a dramatic
story. Recently in a small city within a hundred miles of New York the
proprietor of a motion-picture theatre spoke to me of a great change
that he had observed of late in the attitude of his audiences toward the
silent drama.
They won’t stand for many things they overlooked a short time
ago. They demand both logic and accuracy in our pictures. South
Sea scenes must be taken in the South Seas and African wild
beasts must be filmed in their native habitat or our patrons
revolt. At the present rate of progress, the next generation,
through the aid of the screen, will become so worldly-wise that
even county fairs will be made safe for the farmer.
There is much that is worth serious consideration in the above quoted
opinion of one whose professional welfare depends upon the keenness of
his judgment regarding the trend of public opinion in connection with
the screen. Somewhat quaintly he gives expression to the conviction that
the movie and its clientele react upon each other and that the general
tendency of this mutual action and reaction has been toward the
elevation of the screen and the enlightenment of its patrons. In this
elevation of the screen the continuity writer has, of course, played a
leading part. The time has gone by when he could recklessly substitute
the Impossible or the Improbable for the Inevitable and retain his
professional standing. That he has been guilty of sins of omission and
commission, has shown at times a lack of imagination, and has frequently
failed to conform to the axiom that a story, no matter through what
medium it is told, must, to be effective, preserve to the end the
element of suspense is undoubtedly true. The fact is that the ideal
continuity writer is, as is the poet, born not made. The technique of
scenario writing can be acquired by anybody with average intelligence
but to employ it for the highest possible purposes of the screen is to
show the possession of something akin to genius. Such being the case,
the law of the survival of the fittest, working out in the studios, has
decreed that though many are called to continuity work but few are
chosen in the end to lead the film drama toward the heights to which it
is destined to attain.
Suspense! Ah, there’s the rub! To tell a dramatic story by means of
pictures to a miscellaneous collection of movie fans, wise in the
niceties of this new method of narration, in such a way that the
interest of the on-lookers is won at the outset, maintained throughout
succeeding scenes, and intensified as the climax is reached, is to
accomplish a feat requiring a combination of technical skill and
imaginative inspiration that places a real triumph of the continuity
writer’s art high upon the list of worth-while creative achievements.
That such a large percentage of picture-plays have failed to satisfy the
demand of audiences for drama that stresses the Inevitable, conforms to
the logic underlying real life, and preserves to the final
screen-curtain the suspense that it is the mission of dramaturgic art to
beget is not strange, therefore, when we take into consideration the
natural and acquired powers demanded of the ideal continuity writer.
Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the scenario-maker has been,
and will continue to be, blamed for shortcomings of the screen that
cannot be justly laid at his door. He is more or less at the mercy of
the director and the film-cutter, a victim frequently of exigencies
against which his devotion to the underlying principles of dramatic
exposition cannot prevail. A picture play that may be effectively
complete when presented in a metropolitan theatre may be so eviscerated
for provincial use that the continuity writer, lauded in the cities, is
often forced to undergo unjustified suburban censure. But, as is
suggested in another chapter, the comparatively new art of the
continuity writer is bound eventually to overcome its earlier handicaps
and, in its bestowal upon the race of a novel medium through which
creative genius can manifest itself, will beget a type of
super-scenario-maker to which the screen’s future splendid achievements
must be, of necessity, largely due.
The meaning of life Man doesn’t know. Art is, and always has been, Man’s
testimony to the fact that he believes that life has a meaning and that
his quest for that meaning is not destined to be forever futile.
Recently the race came into possession of what seemed to be at first a
new toy, not to be taken too seriously, but worthy, as it presently
appeared, of development as a most fascinating addition to our
recreational resources. But of late the public has begun to realize
vaguely that the screen is becoming something of more vital importance
to mankind than merely a plaything that serves only as a time-killer.
The fact to which the provincial manager above quoted called my
attention, namely, that movie audiences are constantly emphasizing their
demand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
possesses a significance that is entitled to the most earnest
consideration. Is it possible that Man has come finally into possession
of an art-form enabling him to come nearer to solving the riddle of the
Sphinx we call Life than has been hitherto possible?
There will be those among my readers, I fully realize, who will feel
that my inclination all through this book has been to take the screen
too seriously, to overrate its psychical dynamics and to underrate its
gross materialism, to prophesy for it a future that could be made
possible only if producers became archangels and movie patrons pilgrims
to a shrine where the soul of the race became no longer of the earth
earthy. Well, so be it. Perhaps, as regards the subject in hand, I am
allowing my naturally optimistic liver to dominate my habitually
pessimistic brain. But neither I nor my critics will live long enough to
know which of us was in the right. A conviction, nevertheless, has come
to me of late out of which I am sure that I shall never be
shaken—namely, that when Man recently found a way to stop living, now
and then, that he might look at life, he took the greatest step forward
that he has ever taken toward becoming a philosopher. He pauses
periodically in these days before a screen and sees, as he never did
before, what manner of creature he is. By so doing, he must eventually
attain to a self-knowledge such as he has hitherto craved but has not
known how to acquire.
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