Chapter XXIIIERNST LUBITSCH: GERMAN DIRECTOR

Lubitsch, on his first visit to American shores, gives some few of his ideas on picture directing.—“Passion,” “Deception,” and “The Wife of Pharaoh” are proof of his skill but he has faults and can afford to absorb much of the technique of the American director.—His discovery of Pola Negri a great stroke

Chapter XXIII

Earlier mention has been made in these pages to German pictures. Lest this term be confusing to those without the picture trade and in the hinterlands, it may be explained that these recently imported pictures are generally advertised as “European pictures,” “continental spectacles” or with any blanket descriptive phrase that possibly but not pointedly includes Germany. There seems to be no good cause for refusing to give the spade its proper name today and if there are still those unacquainted with the fact, it can here be announced that “Passion,” “Deception,” “The Golem,” “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “One Arabian Night,” etc., etc., were all produced in Germany.

“Passion” and “Deception,” produced under the direction of the man considered Germany's foremost director, Ernst Lubitsch, represent the best in the German art that has yet been extensively shown here in the United States. There is another production, however, “The Indian Tomb,” called so temporarily at least, and directed by a gentleman with the unassuming cognomen of Joe May, that is destined to far overshadow anything that Mr. Lubitsch has yet been responsible for. But of this production more anon.

HERE IS THE SCENE FROM CECIL DE MILLE'S “FORBIDDEN FRUIT” THAT AMAZED ERNST LUBITSCH

ELSIE FERGUSON IN THE GEORGE FITZMAURICE PRODUCTION OF “PETER IBBETSON”

Mr. Lubitsch, as said, has been accorded tremendous praise on this side of the Atlantic. The New York critics swept him up to the plane with D. W. Griffith as soon as “Passion” and “Deception” were publicly shown, and Mr. Lubitsch positively doesn't belong beside Mr. Griffith, despite the fact that he is a great artist. However and notwithstanding the critics have formed such a habit of awarding fulsome praise to everything that bears the Lubitsch name that the situation is becoming funny. A gentleman in the production department of one of the large film companies recently advanced the thought that the company should release a domestic picture, long considered inferior for the American market, with the name Lubitsch upon it and the line “made in Germany” stamped across its face. No matter how bad it was these counterfeits would assure it of good reviews was the contention.

When the work of Mr. Lubitsch is seriously considered and balanced, the good points and the bad points, the conclusion must inevitably be reached that he is an artistic director, but lacking or rather, to give him the benefit of the doubt, slighting details of production and story, that give every great picture its lasting stamp of individualism. In a previous chapter it was contended that the majority of German directors, in the production of spectacular works, overlooked the personal story in an effort to be awe-inspiring with their mob scenes. In a sense this criticism holds true with Mr. Lubitsch. Details of story mean little to him. In fact, on his first visit to the United States, when interviewed, he expressed amazement over the fact that Cecil De Mille in one of his pictures, “Forbidden Fruit,” to be exact, brought out the predicament of the heroine, a social masquerader, by planting in closeups her hesitancy about the selection of the right fork for the various courses of a dinner. Such detailwork, which goes a long way toward humanizing a story no matter how melodramatic the structure of the whole thing may be, is unknown to the German directors of which Mr. Lubitsch is, at the moment, the bright and shining example.

Consequently, it may be asked: How can Mr. Lubitsch be placed beside the American, D. W. Griffith, when in such details Mr. Griffith excels? His latest spectacle, “Orphans of the Storm,” is proof again that he is a master of blending the personal story with the spectacular background.

At present, economic situations in Germany permit the production of spectacles there on a scale of lavishness which our American directors could not duplicate without sending their backers into bankruptcy. Labor is so cheap that the most magnificent settings can be erected in the German studios for small sums of money, sums that would be small even if the rate of exchange between Germany and the United States which makes them seem ridiculously small, was more evenly balanced. Thus a new field of effects is open to the German director that is correspondingly being denied the American director by the increasing cost of labor and materials.

Mr. Lubitsch is one of those who has made excellent use of these magnificent settings provided him. He has peopled them with thousands of supernumeraries and he is a born artist when it comes to directing the movements and actions of great groups of people. He manages to get more movement and color into suchscenes than the great majority of American directors have managed to achieve in the past.

So, too, Mr. Lubitsch seems able to extract the maximum ability from his actors and actresses. He was an actor once himself and a good one and, contrary to an opinion, expressed earlier in this book, believes in showing his actors how to play their scenes. Indeed, they are told very little concerning the story but rely for all their inspiration upon Mr. Lubitsch.

In his more serious statements concerning picture directing, Mr. Lubitsch is mostly inclined to point out the faults of pictures and the difficulty of producing them, than to explain what he considers the finer points of directorial technique.

Mr. Lubitsch talked, through an interpreter, about the very weakness of his and others that has just been noted. “So many pictures that promise much in their early stages,” he said, “are in the end spoiled by a lack of the proper balance and blending of all the elements that go to make the picture. The work of the author is so often sacrificed for the pictorial effect of the director. The painter (scenic designer) so often has to give way to the importance of the dramatic scene.”

All of which is exactly right. The majority of American directors whose work has been considered in this book know just how to achieve proper balance in their pictures. They know where the work of the author ends and that of the scenic artist begins. No director worthy of serious consideration in an American studio today permits his dramatic scenes to be sacrificed to make way for masterpieces of pictorial background.Nor does he reverse the mistake and sacrifice pictorial background for dramatic scenes or anything else. He knows how to achieve the proper balance.

“I prefer to suggest ideas and situations in my pictures,” he continued, “rather than to load down a scene with nothing but the starkly realistic. I prefer my actors, too, to suggest an emotion rather than to register it obviously on the screen.”

Here, perhaps, more than in any other direction does Mr. Lubitsch's greatness actually lie. He uses scenes, exteriors, actors to subtly and powerfully suggest an effect, rather than to use the same properties merely to obviously point out such an effect. It is this method, too, that, as has also been pointed out previously, is Rex Ingram's forte. Mr. Lubitsch's art in this direction is exemplified in both “Passion” and “Deception” as well as in “The Loves of Pharaoh,” his most recent picture which he brought with him from Germany.

Mr. Lubitsch went on to say, and every other interviewer seized upon his words with enthusiasm, that he only cuts his pictures once. Some remarks have already been recorded on how important a part of picture making is the cutting and editing of the scenes after they have left the director's hands. It has been my privilege to see many of Mr. Lubitsch's pictures as well as a number of other German productions before they have been shown to the American public. The one great fault with those produced by Mr. Lubitsch is that they are far from properly cut and edited.

Hence, I am unable to rush into print to praise Mr. Lubitsch because of his statement that he only cuts his picture once. Rather, I will write here the sound advice that in future he cut his pictures eight, nine or ten times. After Mr. Lubitsch's single cutting of his pictures they run twice too long for the American public. A point which can be successfully communicated to an audience in a quick interchange of closeups by an American director will take Mr. Lubitsch the laborious interchange of ten or a dozen closeups, the last one differing very little from the first one.

The reason for this I am unable to account for. Mr. Lubitsch believes in the art of suggestion as he says. Then why does he drive home a minor point with so many hammers when a little touch from his index finger is sufficient to accomplish his ends? Clearly in these two respects Mr. Lubitsch is a direct contradiction of himself. Does he do this unwittingly or does he do it because his public (the German public) demands to have a point driven home with sledge hammer blows? In the light of no other answer, we must accept the latter conclusion and chalk the matter up against the stupidity of “continental” picture audiences which seems a bit harsh.

These words on Mr. Lubitsch seem so unsatisfactory on second reading that there is an inclination to discard them altogether. In the first place they have the flavor of 100 per cent Americanism, i.e. attacking or waxing unenthusiastic about the work of a German director merely because he is a German director. Which isnot the case at all and for proof of which I ask you to turn quickly to the next chapter.

Mr. Lubitsch has received so much public praise that to go against the tide here can not help but seem purely the inspiration of a pig-head. But then there is no denying that Mr. Lubitsch is a contradiction of himself. He talks about suggestion and then does the sledge-hammer trick, he talks about cutting his pictures once when such a feat is an impossibility.

He is an artist, potentially very great without a doubt, but not as mature as many of his sponsors would have us believe. His tours of the American studios will doubtless have a marked effect on his future productions made abroad. It is to be fondly hoped that he will absorb only the good points of American technique and combine these with the good points of his own technique, discarding the bad points of each set. When he accomplishes this I will line up and sing his praises lustily along with the others who now hail him as a Moses in the bullrushes of picturedom.

But wait! After all Mr. Lubitsch is great. He discovered Pola Negri.Hoch!

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