AMERICAN MOVIES ABROAD
Have you ever happened to think: the world has at last found a
universal language!
The men who created Esperanto, or any of the other so-called
“universal” languages, little imagined that before their product
even reached its twenty-fifth birthday the old world would have
unconsciously accepted an entirely new method of interchanging
ideas—and that the “new” method would be the oldest language of all.
“Say it with pictures.”
Long before the Romans began to roam—even before the Athenians settled
down in Greece—men talked to each other in pictures. The Eskimos
scratched their tales on bone, and the Egyptians carved pictures of
eagles and lions into solid rock, and from such crude beginnings,
little by little, the various languages evolved.
Now, we have a chance, in a way, to go back to the beginning, without
losing the later developments.
The human face is a document that all may read. An expression of sorrow
is not confined to any one language. A smile goes round the world.
Fear—anger—hope—excitement—can readily be recognized, whether the face
that expresses them is white or black, man or woman or child, long or
thin, or round and slant-eyed.
A boy laughing in Southern California may make a Hindu in India smile
in sympathy, when that laugh appears upon a Bombay screen. Tears are
universal. So is a grin.
Motion pictures made in one country may be shown in any other, and find
appreciation. Films produced in America may go to all the countries of
the world, and do.
But America is not the only country producing motion pictures. French
films or German, or Italian, or English, or Scandinavian, or any other,
may also be shown in any of the countries of the globe, including
America.
To be sure, there are changes that have to be made, here and there.
The leaders or captions—now usually called titles in this country—have
to be translated into the required language; sometimes the action
in the pictures has to be cut to meet the requirements of differing
customs and conventions. And the audiences of the globe do not all like
the same things, or see them in the same way.
A missionary returning from one of the island groups in the South Seas
recently told me of the first “movie-palace” to be established in his
vicinity. “Shows” were given only at irregular intervals, and were
talked of for days in advance, and attended like country fairs, by all
the villagers able to walk, from miles around.
As the job of translating the titles on the film into the native
dialect would be altogether too expensive for such limited audiences,
a native interpreter, able to guess at the meaning of the foreign
titles here and there, stood in front of the screen and told the story
as he imagined it ought to be, as it flickered along. The highly
emotional audience was always greatly excited, and the enthusiasm and
shouts of the natives gradually grew louder and louder, as the action
progressed, often drowning out altogether the shouted explanations
of the interpreter. Not infrequently the excitement grew almost into
hysteria, so that it was nothing unusual for the show to wind up in a
free-for-all fight.
But the most interesting thing was the attitude of the native audience
toward the characters of the photoplay.
Their virtues were not the civilized virtues, nor were their
vices those of the film producers, so that they saw the hero as a
good-for-nothing, and the villain, often enough, as a hero. When
the melodramatic “heavy” pulled out his knife and plunged it into
the trusty guard, they cheered him on, and when he next dragged the
beautiful heroine into his refuge in the hills by the hair of her
head, they were more enthusiastic still. But when the hero appeared on
the scene in the nick of time, to help the girl escape and foil the
villain’s plans, they hissed like good fellows, and nearly broke up the
show.
Let us see for a moment just what the world market in motion pictures
means to America.
Not in dollars and cents, because, alone, the money side of the
picture industry is neither exceptionally important nor particularly
interesting. The film industry is now, I believe, the fifth largest
in the country, and its exports and imports run to millions of
dollars annually. American pictures for the whole world would mean
more dollars coming our way, and more prosperity in this country; but
that is neither more nor less than can be said of half a dozen other
industries. Money is not the only thing we need to make America the
greatest country in the world.
Indirectly, the movies mean more, even from the money standpoint, than
the tremendous direct returns from the industry itself give any idea
of. The citizens of Rio de Janeiro, let us say, watch American films
and become acquainted with the interiors of American rooms, American
furniture and all the rest. When they have to furnish a home of their
own those Brazilians have to choose, let us say, between German-made
furniture and American. If they’re already accustomed to the American
designs and styles, through seeing them on the screen, they will take
them, unhesitatingly, in preference to the German. For what people
have already accepted unconsciously as a standard—what they see others
using in countries they look up to—inevitably appeals to them for their
own use. And as with furniture, so with all the host of other things
American, manufactured for export as well as home use.
The really big thing about American films abroad—in Europe, in Asia,
in Africa and South America—is that they carry American ideas, and
American ideals and American influence, around the world.
To-day the American girl is known all over the globe. The faces of our
screen actresses—Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge, Lillian Gish, and
many more—are watched in Calcutta and Petrograd, Cape Town and Budapest.
Doesn’t that make it seem a fortunate thing that Mary Pickford,
with her charming smile, has come at least as near as she has to
representing the real heart of America—all that is cleanest and kindest
and best in us? For, when all is said and done, she more truly,
perhaps, than any other one living person represents America in
foreign lands.
And on the other hand, doesn’t it seem a pity, and more than a
pity—yes, a great misfortune, a terrible calamity—that so many films,
made by commercial-minded producers with apparently no spark of the
real spirit of service or patriotism, go forth across the face of the
world and spread abroad their idiocies, and meannesses, and lack of
idealism, and even uncleannesses, as representatives of America?
Think of that, next time you happen to pay money to watch a worthless
movie; it may be representing America abroad!
To-day the country that sends its films into foreign lands is leading
the thought of the world.
It is probably not too much to say, although the bare thought itself
is a staggering one, that to-morrow the country that excels in the
production of popular motion pictures will dominate the world.
Fortunately, in the early days of the picture industry in this country
there was a man known as David Griffith, who was something of an
actor, a little of a writer, and possessed no small measure of real
power as a story-teller.
From the very start, the mechanical and inventive end, as well as
the commercial and organization end, of the industry in this country
outstripped competition. Combined with Griffith’s story-telling
ability, this technical supremacy and commercial organization put
American films in front of those produced elsewhere.
American movie-palaces mushroomed into existence by the hundreds, and
we developed a huge domestic market that made possible extravagant
spectacle-productions costing first tens of thousands, then hundreds
of thousands of dollars. The name of David Wark Griffith became known
all over the world; the supremacy of American films became everywhere
acknowledged; pictures from the United States went to every corner
of the globe, carrying American prestige and influence, increasing
American commercial prosperity and development.
When the World War ended—and though this may seem so exaggerated
that it sounds like a joke, it is not—no little degree of America’s
influence and predominant position, during the early weeks of the Peace
Conference at Paris, was due to the fact that through the preceding
decade our pictures had circled the world.
But that is not the end of the story. Since then there has been a big
change.
Even Griffith, for that matter, as a leader of American picture-makers,
has by no means been universally popular outside this country, although
as a whole his pictures have received almost as great acclaim as they
have here.
Once, for instance, the popularity of his films induced one of the
foreign agents to pay some thousands of dollars for the “Far Eastern”
rights on “Intolerance”—including China and Japan. The Chinese did not
think much of it, and the distributor lost money. But in Japan the
exhibitors were smarter. Having secured the picture “sight unseen” for
the Islands, they had to play it to get their money back. But they
felt, after seeing it, that possibly their Japanese audiences would not
particularly care for it—so they prepared carefully an exploitation
campaign worthy of the best advertising brains in this country.
“Intolerance,” they said, was at once so artistic that it appealed to
the highest intelligence, and so simple that any man of good sense
could appreciate it. To fail to be moved by its beauty and artistry
would mark anybody as being—well, stupid.
“Intolerance” was a great picture, but it was too long, and too hard to
follow, for the average Japanese audience. The Japanese did not really
like it any better than the Chinese did, but because of the clever
advertising beforehand, each person who was bored by the big foreign
film was slow to admit it, because of the fear of labeling himself
stupid. Many people praised the picture, whether they liked it or not,
to show how wise and clever and cultured and intelligent they were. So
“Intolerance” made money in Japan. But then, too many people who had
seen it began comparing notes, and found that it really was possible to
have what passed for good sense, and yet not like that particular film.
Since nobody likes to be laughed at, there wasn’t any great fuss made
about the matter one way or the other, but I am told that the word
“Intolerance” has been incorporated into the slang (if we can call it
that) of the Japanese language; when a man stretches the truth too far,
or tried to “put on too much dog,” as they might say in Arizona, his
Japanese companions merely smile and perhaps shrug their shoulders a
trifle, and murmur “Intolerance.”
The fact is, American films, from the very start, have lacked the inner
value, the idealism, the spiritual vision and far-sightedness that make
for real leadership. The result is that at the present time films from
half a dozen countries are competing successfully with ours, and to a
considerable extent driving them from the foreign field.
In Germany, after the War started, the making of motion pictures
developed as plants might in an enclosed garden. Shut off from the
rest of the world, and the influence in particular of American
motion-picture methods, Germany developed methods of her own. Chief
of all these was the tendency to tell the story for the sake of the
story itself, with a real story-teller, the dramatic author, in full
charge of the production. Of course this has not always been the case,
nor has it been particularly evident, but on the whole it has meant a
great deal. It meant that the author brains, instead of the glorified
director brains, or the irresponsible star brains, have been the
predominating influence in the pictures.
Over here it has been Charles Ray or Bill Hart, Lasky or Ince, deMille
or Neilan. Only comparatively recently, largely through the Goldwyn
organization, have authors—Rex Beach, and Mary Roberts Rinehart,
and Rupert Hughes, and so on—come into any particular prominence or
influence in picture making.
The result of this has been that our films have been too highly
commercialized. The making of movies is of necessity very largely a
commercial proposition, but here it has been overdone.
Since the very first, Griffith has remained almost the only one of
our real story-telling producer-directors who has put individuality
and authorship above the box-office returns. Even he doesn’t do
it consciously; he tries, I suppose, to make pictures, as all the
rest do, that will attract the largest audiences. But he has ideas
and prejudices and opinions of his own—the things that make for
individuality and leadership—and he would rather lose every dollar he
has ever made than give them up.
While abroad the work is commercialized, too, just as ours is, there is
a little more vision in it, and in some ways the films are better.
“Gypsy Blood,” “Deception,” “The Golem,” the “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,”
“Our Mutual Friend,” “Carnival,” “I Accuse,” “Theodora,” “Hamlet,”
“Peter the Great,” and a good many more have made tremendous records
for themselves in this country. German, Norwegian, French, Italian,
English.
Almost as if in reply, Douglas Fairbanks and Griffith made respectively
“Robin Hood” and “Orphans of the Storm.” They gave us a good chance to
compare our best home product with the foreign-made article.
The Fairbanks and Griffith pictures show that we can at least equal
the German and other foreign films, if we try. Both these American
pictures have a pictorial beauty that no foreign picture has ever
equaled. The Fairbanks film has a suspense, and the Griffith picture
both feeling and excitement, that no picture made outside of this
country has ever shown.
So, we can lead the world, if we will. But unfortunately, those two
pictures are exceptions. One can name a few more, like “Little Lord
Fauntleroy,” “Humoresque,” and “Over the Hill,” that are good enough
to hold their own with the best producers elsewhere; but that is about
all. The run of our American-made pictures are not good enough, to-day,
to deserve world supremacy.
That is something to think about.
The German pictures, as well as those of some of the other foreign
countries, have certain qualities, resulting from an unwillingness
to compromise with ideals, that allow them, as a class, to outrank
ours. For instance, while the Germans desire beauty, just as we do,
and would like to have their heroine as beautiful as ours, they also
desire a real ability to act. If they can not have both, they will
let the beauty go, and take the real acting. We will not; we let
the ability go, and stick to the pretty flappers. Accordingly, in
American pictures, our leading actors and actresses are almost always
good-looking—and frequently poor at acting.
It is the same about truth, or the sense of reality. We sacrifice
convincingness—fidelity to life—truth—to our desire for youth and
beauty. If we could have both, well and good; but it is impossible.
Accordingly, on the American screen, we see, again and again, our
beautiful little flapper friends playing parts that should be taken by
older women—not so young and pretty, perhaps, but true to life, instead
of childish caricatures of truth.
Even with Griffith’s “Orphans of the Storm,” we see still another
sacrifice of an ideal—one might almost say principle. That is the
giving up of historical value, and big things, for excitement, and
little things. The French Revolution is a tremendous story in itself;
in the foreign made films it is made the backbone of the whole story;
in Griffith’s film, it is merely a background, while the “main” story
is centered about one or two appealing characters, that mean, except
for momentary entertainment, little or nothing. It is a question of
Lillian and Dorothy Gish being more important, on this side of the
Atlantic, than the French Revolution; but on the other side, when
the French Revolution is filmed, it is more important than the great
actress who plays in the picture—Pola Negri.
Also, in the mad “run to the rescue” in “Orphans of the Storm,” the
main dramatic value of the story is sacrificed in order to have the
mechanically produced excitement of horses galloping across Paris in
time to save the beautiful Lillian from the guillotine. And who leads
the headlong, melodramatic dash across the city? Why, Danton himself,
leader of the Revolution! That’s putting it on pretty thick!
There is the whole trouble with our American pictures: in a single
sentence they are willing to sacrifice too much, to “tell a good
story.” For with our producers the “good story” means really the
entertaining or exciting or pretty story, which is in the last
analysis the most popular story instead of the really best story.
Roast beef and oatmeal are a better diet, in the long run, than candy.
Candy tastes better, perhaps, for the moment, and more people will buy
it—but in the end, too much of it makes you sick.
Our American motion-picture producers are specializing on candy,
because—for the moment—more people want it. But they’re over-doing the
thing. If they want to hold the world leadership in movie-making, they
must turn out more roast beef.
And we must help them, you and I, by demanding something in pictures
besides candy, and in learning to like and applaud the really
worth-while films that we can turn out, when they come along.
[Illustration: _Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation._
A “WESTERN” ACTOR AND HIS FAVORITE HORSE.
Trick horses are always valued by “Western” heroes for cowboy work.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation._
“WESTERNS” ARE ALWAYS POPULAR.
The above scene from a Universal serial of pioneer days helped pave
the way for the popularity of such features as “The Covered Wagon.”]