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.