THE MOVIE DEVELOPS A CONSCIENCE
NOT long ago the good people of Stratford-on-Avon, England, arose in their might, held a great mass meeting, and decreed that Shakespeare’s birthplace should not be desecrated by the movies. Lacking sufficient clairvoyance to realize that possibly the motion picture of the near future, with its natural colors and its synchronization of movement with the tones of the human voice, may be destined to give Shakespeare a new lease of life and a larger public than he has hitherto possessed, the Stratford-on-Avonites were not without justification for the protest they registered against the more or less disreputable pictures that threatened to invade a shrine hitherto dedicated to the loftiest achievement the realm of the drama can boast. But Shakespeare’s birthplace will see the day when its inhabitants will repent of the narrow-mindedness they have shown as regards the movies.
It is not for us Americans, however, to jeer at Stratford-on-Avon for its aggressive conservatism. Our immediate ancestors blocked the wheels of progress in many mischievous, if not laughable, ways. The School Board of Lancaster, Ohio, adopted in 1826 the following resolution: “Such things as railroads are impossibilities and rank infidelity. If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles per hour by steam, He would clearly have foretold it through His holy prophets.” The advent of the bath-tub, destined to be one of the crowning glories of America, was denounced by our medical men as a menace to the public health. Philadelphia, Pa., in 1843, endeavored by ordinance to prohibit all bathing between the months of November and March. Boston, Mass., in 1845, made bathing, except when prescribed by a physician, unlawful, and, at about the same time, Virginia put a tax of thirty dollars a year upon every bath-tub in a commonwealth that can claim to be the cradle of American liberty!
Whatsoever is new under the sun must fight for its place in the sun. For centuries the printing-press had to struggle for freedom against powerful restrictive influences that looked upon it as “an agent of the Devil.” The telegraph, telephone, bicycle, automobile and wireless have all had their bigoted opponents, who feared that the broadening of humanity’s contacts would become an increasing menace to their own narrow beliefs and habits. Is it strange, then, that the movie, a new form of art qualified to make an instant appeal to both the good and the bad in human nature, should have had, at the outset of its career, a hard struggle to justify itself to the more conservative elements of the community? Bad boy that he was in his earlier years, the movie made it difficult for a public largely puritanical in its origins and tendencies to believe that the youngster could be reformed, that he had in him untried and unmeasurable powers for upward progress, that he was a prodigal son of Art and Science fated to exercise a controlling influence upon the destinies of the race.
However, there is an element in the make-up of the American people that leads it, even at the eleventh hour, to institute reforms whenever an institution seemingly worth saving must either be heroically treated or permitted to go completely to the dogs. There came a time when negro slavery must be destroyed if our Federal Constitution was to survive. At an enormous cost of life and treasure, the blacks were freed and the Union preserved. It became apparent recently to the American public that there were destructive influences at work within our three most popular forms of amusement, that our stage, our base-ball diamond and our movie screen were in jeopardy from internal perils, as were our governmental institutions in the early sixties.
What Judge Landis is endeavoring to do for our national game and Augustus Thomas for our stage is, in a general way, what Will H. Hays has been called upon to effect in the field of the motion picture. For a quarter of a century the movies in America, if not going from bad to worse had shown no marked signs of repentance for their early indiscretions. Cut-throat competition had long exercised its evil influence upon the industry and the law of the jungle had prevailed in its financial affairs. How this new commercial activity, despite its unbusinesslike methods, its apparent disregard of the economic laws that are said to underlie all competitive industries, and its seemingly happy-go-lucky indifference to the multiplication-table actually forged its way upward until it placed itself high on the list of the business enterprises of this country is a marvel and a mystery that only financial wizards could explain.
When Will H. Hays resigned as Postmaster General of the United States to enter, in a position of commanding influence, the motion-picture field he became an important factor in an industry whose growth has been one of the marvels of the world’s commercial history. It was no longer a peripatetic gambler, out-at-heels one day and affluent the next, but a vast business enterprise sufficiently prosperous to afford the luxury of a general house-cleaning. It is easier for the well-to-do to be respectable than for the down-and-outs, and the movies had reached a point financially when, without disastrous monetary sacrifice, they could essay the task of shortening their list of sins of omission and commission.
Going to the root recently of the new influences at work in the motion picture realm, and of his official connection with them, Hays said:
There has been some query as to just what this effort which the industry is making at this time is all about. It is simply that those men who make and distribute pictures have associated themselves to do jointly those things in which they are mutually but non-competitively interested, having as the chief purposes of such association two great objectives—and I quote verbatim from the formal articles of association, which have been filed in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, N.Y.: “Establishing and maintaining the highest possible moral and artistic standards in motion picture production and developing the educational as well as the entertainment value of the motion picture.”
Later on in this book, we shall have occasion to refer in detail to what Hays and his colleagues have accomplished in their efforts to improve the tone of the movies. But just here it is well to direct the course of our narrative into the two channels referred to in the clause of the producers’ agreement above quoted, following the flood of movies devoted to mere amusement for awhile with searching eyes, and later on making a survey of the rapidly broadening stream of pictures designed for educational purposes. From the latter, perhaps, it may be expedient for us to go forward with some confidence toward a more minute consideration of the dynamics lurking in the screen for the furtherance of a method of world-wide enlightenment that may eventually save civilization from the disintegrating forces by which, both externally and internally, it is menaced.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” is a sweeping generalization intended by the poet to be a compliment to motherhood. Whether it is a compliment or a condemnation depends wholly upon one’s point of view regarding the world. If the world is worth saving, the hand that rocks the cradle is worthy of all honor; if it isn’t, then motherhood has been unjustifiably glorified. Believing, personally, that the human race is not without many reasonable claims to salvation, we turn curiously to the movies in their capacity as a public amusement to see whether, leaving their educational function for further consideration, they display as a pastime anything that looks like a gleam of hope for the regeneration of the race.
Have we, in fact, cause for optimism regarding the future of the amusement screen? We find to-day the press, the pulpit and the playwrights denouncing the shortcomings of the movies, chastising their secret faults and their open transgressions; editors, preachers, dramatists posing as Savonarolas at a spiritual crisis in the career of a young but alarmingly potent world power. These are portents in the sky that promise well for the future of the screen. If our leading thinkers, writers and publicists, yes, and picture producers, were indifferent to the sins of omission and commission attributable for a quarter of a century to the movie its case would be hopeless. But it is worth saving, as the best minds in our country well know, and the criticism that it is always undergoing is a most encouraging phenomenon.
The regeneration of the movies must be both through external and internal sources. A producer who recently relieved his over-burdened soul in Collier’s Weekly puts the whole matter in a nut-shell when he says:
We must have better pictures. And to get them we need these two things: inside the industry, the higher standards and leadership that can only come in with intelligent capital; and outside the industry, the support and encouragement of such good pictures as are already made. We of the motion-picture industry who stand for more intelligent pictures can only provide them if you on the outside, in addition to criticising in no uncertain terms the stupid films that offend you, will take the trouble to hunt up, and go to see, and boost, the photoplays that are good enough to merit your interest. When you do that we can have better movies.