MOVIES OF TO-MORROW
What will the movies be like ten or twenty years from now?
Recently a very beautiful photoplay, made by a famous French director,
was brought to New York. It told of two boys and a girl, a foundling,
who grew up together on a French farm. One of the boys was a farmer,
and the other became a sculptor, and the story concerned their love
for the girl, and which of them should marry her—the artist who made
beautiful statues, or the farmer, who tilled the soil and produced the
crops without which there would be no artists or any one else.
A good many people saw that picture, in private projection-rooms. One
New York editor who watched it said it was the most beautiful photoplay
he had ever seen. Most of those who saw it were deeply moved by it,
and called it “tremendous.” But no motion-picture distributor cared to
handle it, or show it to the American public.
The man who represented the producers of the picture, himself a
prominent artist and musician, explained why such an exceptionally fine
film had gone begging around the New York market for months and months,
while infinitely poorer pictures were being released every week. “It’s
ahead of its time,” he said. “Five years from now, such a film will
soon become famous.”
That is interesting.
If you have been reading these pages about motion pictures carefully,
you have probably by this time been impressed with two things: First,
that the movies are tremendously important—enormous, fascinating,
influential, popular forces, capable of improving, or injuring, our
entire American civilization; and second, that in spite of tremendous
advances already made, they are still, in the opinion of those who
ought to know, far below what they ought to be.
Taken by and large, motion pictures, while already tremendously
powerful, are still amazingly poor.
What are the changes that they will have to undergo, to become really
uplifting, instead of perhaps actually degrading, influences in our
lives? And what will bring those changes about? What must you and I do,
to play our part in bringing about a betterment, and what will that
betterment be, when it comes?
The first thing that will make a difference is knowledge. As soon as
you and Henry Jones and Dug McSwatty know enough about the movies to
avoid going to the picture shows that are not worth seeing—and know how
to tell whether or not particular pictures are worth seeing when you
see them—the picture makers will give you more of the sort of films
you’d really like to see.
That may sound a little like a dog chasing his own tail—but it is not.
You and I, and Dug and Henry, in the last analysis, are the bosses of
the whole motion-picture industry. The movies are made for us. If we do
not like the kind that is shown, the movie people will try to please us
by showing another kind.
But with reservations. For there will always be more pictures made than
you and Henry and Dug and I—all of us after all representing only one
class—can pay for.
There will always be cheap pictures, and poor pictures. They will be
made for the fellows—millions of them—who don’t know any better.
That means—since before very much longer you and Dug and Henry and I
will pay to see better films, that not so many years from now class
pictures will be made.
At present, almost every film is made with a dim hope at the back of
the producer’s mind of pleasing everybody. Or at the very least, of
pleasing the greatest possible number. Moving pictures cost so much to
make that they have to go, each of them, to hundreds and hundreds of
thousands—yes, millions of people, to pay back mere expenses, let alone
a profit. But just as soon as certain people, who like a certain kind
of picture, know where to find that picture when it appears, and go to
it, and pay to get it, pictures will be made for them, and for them
alone. Adventure stories, perhaps, for you and Henry and Dug and me,
and sentimental love stories for Minnie Cooty and her friends, and so
on.
Just as among the magazines, you find the so-called “highbrow”
magazines and reviews, and the romance magazines and the adventure
magazines, and the detective or mystery-story magazines, you will be
able to find the movies of the kind you want, under the label that
will enable you to recognize them. That will be one of the important
things—the label.
Suppose for a moment that all the magazines were published in blank
white covers, and when you went to a news-stand to buy reading-matter,
you had to pick at random, hoping that after you had bought the
magazine “sight unseen” you would find it contained the particular type
of story or review you wanted!—That is almost the way it is with motion
pictures now—except that, because of the queer existing situation, each
movie man tries to put into his picture something for everybody; as
though the owners of magazines published in blank white covers should
try to please grown-ups and children and boys and college professors
and law-students and hoodlums and scientists with a single volume of
reading-matter.
As soon as this change comes about—the division of movie audiences into
the proper groups or classes—we shall see a big change in the whole
industry. Then it will be possible to show such a film as that French
peasant story, profitably.
And it will not be long before that change comes; it is on its way
already.
Look at Goldwyn, for instance—and Universal, and Metro and Vitagraph.
Universal was one of the first to begin to make distinctly “class”
pictures. I don’t believe that they even knew quite what they were
doing—consciously, I mean. But they began to make good “cheap”
pictures, that were distinctly not for the “exclusive” audiences.
Their pictures were for the people who wanted clearly “popular”
entertainment, as distinguished from “highbrow stuff.” The result was
that, with honesty and sincere effort, they soon came to occupy a place
as leaders, producing thrillers of “Western” action, where cowboy
heroes would ride up at incredible speed in the final feet of the last
reel, and save the lovely heroine with a six-inch gun in each hand.
Gunpowder, adventure, excitement, and love—that was the formula, served
in large doses for those audiences that were not too particular about
the plausibility of their stories, so long as they contained those
ingredients.
With Metro and Vitagraph it was more or less the same, with this
difference: that they both tried to reach a little higher grade of
audiences with their melodramas.
They tried to get on the screen a little more of artistry; the heroine
didn’t need to be quite so truly good and beautiful, or the hero quite
so noble and brave and quick with each of his guns. But after all there
was not so much difference, and in some way Universal, perhaps seeing
a little more clearly just what they were doing, had something of an
advantage.
Later, Metro tried still harder to please more discriminating
audiences—with varying results. “The Four Horsemen” is a film of fine
qualities, for audiences with a certain kind of grown-up mind. It tells
of how a boy from the Argentine, and his friends and relatives, were
drawn into the Great War, and gives a wonderful, complicated picture
of human nature, and war, almost as impressive and confusing as life
itself. On the other hand, “Turn to the Right,” equally well done, and
by the same director (Rex Ingram—the name is worth remembering) is
almost childish in the way the story is handled, with the crooks and
the innocent hero and the girls and the misunderstandings that go to
make it all up.
And with Vitagraph, “Black Beauty,” one of their most pretentious films
from an artistic standpoint, mingles the beautifully told horse story
with a brand-new tale of utter melodrama, that the horse is supposed
to tell. “Black Beauty” was all right as long as he stuck to his own
story; but when he came to telling the story of the human beings around
him for Vitagraph, I am not so sure whether he really had good horse
sense, or not.
Goldwyn, and Famous Players, and later on, First National, definitely
went in for better-class films. With Goldwyn, the effort, while not
altogether successful, was so sincere that it more than once came
close to endangering the future of the entire organization, through
putting out “class” pictures ahead of their time. “Milestones” is an
example of the kind of picture that as yet has not really found its
own audiences, and so presented a pretty big problem to its producers
from the box-office standpoint. It tells three stories in one, of how,
in three successive generations, the young people follow up their own
ideas with new inventions, and marry as they want to, before they find
themselves growing old and conservative and advising against the very
things they made a success of when they were young.
Of the existing companies, Famous Players has done even more to bring
along the day of class pictures and divided audiences, and has so far
remained far ahead of Goldwyn in the actual number of truly artistic
pictures produced.
But let us get a step closer to this business of putting out “better
pictures,” such as we may expect to have in larger proportion
to-morrow. We can do so by noting what particular “better films” have
done.
“Humoresque,” made by Cosmopolitan Productions, and distributed by
Paramount, may fairly be classed as a “better picture.” It was also a
popular picture. The returns on the film ran to tremendous figures—said
to be well over a million dollars. It told the story of a Jewish boy,
the idol of his mother’s heart, who gave up his opportunities to become
a great violinist to enlist when the United States entered the War.
People really wanted to see flesh-and-blood characters on the screen,
instead of just noble heroes and beautiful heroines. Dug and Henry and
I—and likely you, too,—enjoyed the little boy and the little girl and
the big little family where on birthdays there “came a meanness” into
the house.
“Humoresque” made a big step towards the “better pictures” day that is
coming, by showing such queer things as the real-life little slum girl
finding a dead cat in an ash-barrel and loving it—because the producers
made a big profit on the film.
Wherever better pictures make money, other producers will imitate them;
again, that’s where it is for you and Henry and Dug and the rest of
us to keep away from poor films and find and pay admission to those we
really like.
Another picture: “Broken Blossoms.” That was a tragic story of a little
girl of the London slums who was befriended by a Chinaman after her
brutal father had given her a terrible beating. It ended with almost
as many deaths as Hamlet, but it was so beautiful, artistically, that
American critics hailed it as the most wonderful movie ever made.
Now, tragedy is never very popular in America. We like to have our
stories end at a pleasant turn of the road—an engagement, or a wedding,
or a successful culmination of the search for treasure, or what you
will,—instead of stopping only when the people of our story finally
die, or quarrel, or give up the search for the gold. And because
“Broken Blossoms” did not have this popular appeal—the happy ending—Mr.
Griffith, who made it, had to take it and exploit and exhibit it
himself, in order to secure a hearing—or a “seeing”—for it.
This was the result: The picture was hailed as so wonderful that
millions went to see it, because of its reputation. Of those millions,
hundreds of thousands, perhaps, were not able to like it, because
it was so tragic. Other movie producers, watching the result,
noticed this, so that although the picture helped the movies along
artistically, it didn’t convert other producers to that sort of
effort. “People don’t want that sort of stuff,” they said in too many
instances. “Look at ‘Broken Blossoms,’—they really don’t want better
pictures.”
Another famous film was “Over the Hill.” That picture helped movies
along because it didn’t cost much to make—relatively speaking—but
brought in as much for the producers as other films costing far more.
The story, of a devoted mother who was neglected or abused by all but
one of her children when she needed their help and love, was far better
than the average movie, and had a big, and healthy, emotional appeal.
Any fellow who could watch it without resolving to be better to his own
mother would be pretty worthless.
“The Old Nest,” another story of the same type, though not quite as
appealing, also did well. Such pictures, worth while in themselves, and
at the same time profitable, helped along the whole picture industry.
[Illustration: _Courtesy United Artists Corporation._
ARCHWAY FROM “THE THREE MUSKETEERS.”
A high degree of artistry has been reached in the designing of
motion-picture sets.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation._
A MEXICAN GATEWAY FROM “WINNERS OF THE WEST.”
Simplicity is often the keynote of effectiveness. Here an impressive
effect is secured with a minimum of effort.]
“The Copperhead,” on the other hand, and “The World and His Wife,” two
of the finest films ever distributed by Paramount, did not help things
along very much, because being, like “Broken Blossoms,” more or less
tragic, they failed to find the audiences that might have made them
profitable.
A few years from now, when certain brands, names, or concerns have
come to have a definite following of audiences that will know what to
expect from them, “The Copperhead” or “The World and His Wife” could
be distributed, in all probability, with far greater success. “The
Copperhead,” in particular, a patriotic spy story of the Civil War,
with the appeal that it has through the portrayal of Abraham Lincoln,
as well as its stirring war setting, would be sure to please—as soon as
it could find the right audience, and a big enough one.
This brings us to another point of improvement that will be seen in
pictures before long: good films will last longer.
Just such pictures as these mentioned, for instance,—“The Copperhead,”
“The World and His Wife,” “Over the Hill,” “Broken Blossoms,” and many
more, will be watched and welcomed again just as gladly as was Mary
Pickford’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” or Griffith’s “Birth of a
Nation.” The day when a good picture will “go” only when it is brand
new—only when you and Dug and I have never seen it before, and go to
it only because it’s new, is almost over. In the long run you and Dug
and I—and Henry, too,—have more sense than that. We shall be just as
willing to see and enjoy a good picture a second time—perhaps years
after we saw it the first time—as we are now willing to re-read a book
or story that pleased us immensely.
As an example, take “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”; any
one who enjoyed that whimsical yarn of a Yankee in armor as much as I
did will be entirely willing—yes, anxious—to see it again, if it is
shown once more, half a dozen years from now.
Never be afraid to go to see a really good film twice; never be afraid
to go to see a really good film after it is old or out of date. That
will help things along. For the quicker poor photoplays die, the better
off we are, and the longer good ones live, the better off we are, too.
Next, to get to another change that will come to the movies very
shortly. That is the coming in of a more far-sighted dollar.
Far-sighted dollar? Exactly. At present the dollars invested in movies
are mostly very shortsighted. At the very best, we can say they
are—well, “smart.” They don’t look ahead. They take no particular
pride in their work. They are not ashamed if they fail to give value
received—100 cents of satisfaction for every 100 cents.
Speaking of dollars in this way is entirely correct. For a dollar
is an inert thing, that takes on life and movement and power and
individuality in accordance with the ideas and ideals and personality
of the man who spends or invests it. The selfish dollar is the coin of
the purely commercial business man who merely tries to get as much as
he can while giving as little as he can. The intelligent dollar is the
dollar of a really intelligent investor, who expends it wisely, and
fairly, and in such a way that it will bring him both a sure and an
honorable return.
In motion pictures, the average investor, up to the present time, has
been either a “sucker” who simply lost his money, or a speculator who
took a blind chance, or a “wise guy” who knew the picture business and
merely played it for what he could get out of it, with little or no
regard for the other fellow, or the public, or American prestige, or
anything else that didn’t directly affect his own pocketbook. Of course
there are exceptions—but after all there are not so very many of them.
The dollar of the average American movie producer to-day is still a
rather unintelligent dollar.
Up to this time, intelligent dollars have been a little ashamed to go
into motion-picture investments, because with so many unintelligent
dollars around they were afraid they would be classified the same
way. A publisher, for instance, who has had wide magazine experience
and who now runs more than one New York magazine, was recently
urged to go into a motion-picture investment “for the good of the
movies.” He refused, because, he said, he had never stooped to that
kind of investment. To him, the movie dollars seemed so selfish, so
short-sighted, so unintelligent, that he refused to let his own dollars
associate with them.
Every time, though, that your father, or Dug’s father, or Henry’s
father, chances to invest dollars in any motion-picture scheme
that turns out better pictures, that pay by being better,—and such
investments are now possible every once in a while—the unintelligent
dollars in the movies are crowded a little farther along the bench,
and the whole industry, and indirectly the whole country, is that much
better off.
The time is now close at hand when motion-picture investments will
rank much higher than formerly, so that intelligent dollars may come
in without losing their self-respect. When the industry is regarded
as quite as honorable a field for investment as in the case with, say
the newspaper or book-publishing business, we shall have far better
pictures.
And finally, the movies are just now on the edge of invading a
brand-new field.
When your sons go to college, they will probably watch motion pictures
a good deal of the time.
Just as certainly as the books and the magazines and the newspapers
followed the invention of the printing-press, educational films will
come to replace some of our present methods of study.
Already we have seen the news reel, and the scenic, depicting the
scenes where history is being made to-day, or showing more graphically
than any printed words could ever describe it, the rush of water at
Niagara Falls. Unconsciously, we are learning geography from those
scenic reels right now, more often than not. If you have seen the top
of Vesuvius, and the scenes about the top, in motion pictures, you know
more about that wonderful old volcano right now than any school-book
ever taught you.
Slow motion pictures show how the tennis-player serves, how the swimmer
makes his crawl strokes, how the wrestler gets his hold. Scientific
films have shown the circulation of the blood, with the veins and
arteries magnified to a degree that makes them look like brooks, two
feet wide, with the pulse-current sending along fresh waves, half a
foot high. A camera placed in the best position for observation at a
clinic can bring to the screen the most minute detail of a delicate
operation performed by the greatest living surgeon—and make that
knowledge available for hundreds of thousands of students.
It is through this door, perhaps, this educational door, that the great
metamorphosis of the movies will come. For the making of reels that
will carry information for students, that will take truth and wisdom
to whole generations of scholars, is an honorable and conscientious
undertaking. With money profitably invested in motion-picture ventures
of this new, and inevitable, kind, the whole motion-picture field will
take on a new aspect, and attract the more intelligent dollars, the
more honorable dollars, that will in turn gradually lift the character,
and the quality, and the products, and the results, of the entire
industry.
Well, that brings us to the end of this movie-talk, that you and I
have been having together. If you will do your part, and encourage the
best films you can find, and try to keep away from poor ones, you’ll
help the whole cause of better pictures, that we need so badly, along.
I will do mine in trying to _make_ better pictures. Together, you and I
and the others who want to see better pictures and the others who want
to make better pictures, will _get_ better pictures.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by equals is in bold (_bold_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.