WITH THE MOVIE MAKERSCHAPTER I
WITH THE MOVIE MAKERS
HOW DO YOU WATCH MOVIES?
Grover Clevelandwas a great fisherman. Once, after he was famous and President, some one asked him what he did, all those hours he spent, waiting so patiently for the fish to bite.
“Oh,” he is reported to have answered, “sometimes I sit and think, and other times I just sit.”
That’s the way most of us watch motion pictures—with the accent on the sit.
We don’t use our brains enough, where the movies are concerned, either in the selection of pictures to go to see, or in analyzing—and appreciating or criticizing—what we see.
How often do you watch motion pictures?
Do you know anything about how they’re made? And who makes the best ones? Andhow they do it? And why they are better? And how you can tell them? And what it means in your life to see good ones—or bad ones?
More than twenty years ago, at a Yale-Harvard football game in New Haven, Harvard got the ball somewhere near midfield, in the second half, and hammered away towards the Yale goal. It was a cold, rainy day, with gray skies overhead and mud underfoot. Harvard weighed more, and was better trained, and had better men. From the very first they had the better of it; early in the game they plowed through to two touchdowns, while lumps came into the throats of the draggled Yale thousands, looking helplessly down from the great packed bleachers.
Then came that march down the field in the second half, with the rain falling again, and the players caked with mud until you couldn’t tell Red from Blue, and the last hopes of the Yale rooters sinking lower and lower.
But as Harvard pounded and plowed and splashed past midfield—half a yard, three yards, two yards, half a yard again—(five yards to a first down in those heartbreakingdays) the cheering for that beaten, broken, plucky, fighting eleven swelled into a solid roar of encouragement and sympathy. It rose past the cheer leaders—ignored them; old grads and undergrads, and boys who wouldn’t reach Yale for years to come. Yale—Yale—Yale—over and over again, and then the famous Brek-ek-ek-ek! Co-ex! Co-ex!—rolling back again into the Nine Long Yales. All the way from midfield they kept it up, without a break or waver—there in the rain and the face of defeat—all the way down to the goal—and across it. Loyalty!
Another game. Yale-Princeton this time, with Yale ahead, all the way. And at the very end of the game, with the score twenty or more to nothing against them, those Princeton men gritted their teeth and dug in, holding Yale for downs with just half a yard to go! And on the stands the Princeton cohorts, standing up with their hats off, singing that wonderful chant of defeat:
“Her sons—will give—While they—shall—live—Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”
“Her sons—will give—While they—shall—live—Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”
“Her sons—will give—While they—shall—live—Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”
“Her sons—will give—
While they—shall—live—
Three cheers—for old—Nassau!”
Great!
But what of it? And what has it to do with motion pictures?
Just this. Each person, of all the thousands watching those games, was impressed.
Could not help but be. Few will ever forget all of what they saw, or all of what they felt. Something of the loyalty of the Yale stands, the fighting spirit of that dauntless Princeton eleven, became a part of each spectator.
Do yougetit?
It’s the things that we see, the things that we hear, the things that we read, the things that we feel and do, that taken together make us, in large measure, what we are. Yes, the movies among the rest.
Every time we go to a loosely played baseball game, and see perhaps some center-fielder, standing flat-footed because he thinks he’s been cheated of a better position, muff an unimportant fly—we’re that much worse off. We don’t realize it, and of course taken all alone one impression doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, but when it comes to our turn at themiddle garden, it’ll be just that much simpler to slack down—and take things easy. And every time we see c. f. on a snappy nine, playing right on his toes, turn and race after a liner that looks like a home run, and lunge into the air for it as it streaks over his shoulder, and stab it with one hand and the luck that seems to stick around waiting for a good try, and hold it, and perhaps save the game with a sensational catch—why, we’re that much better ball-players ourselves, for the rest of our lives.
It’s a fact. An amazing, appalling, commonplace fact. But still a fact, and so one of the things you can’t get away from. The things we hear, the things we do, the things we see, make us what we are.
Take stories. The fellow who reads a raft of wishy-washy stories, until he gets so that he doesn’t care about any other kind particularly, becomes a wishy-washy sort of chap himself. On the other hand, too much of the “dime-novel” stuff is just as bad, with its distorted ideas and ideals. Twenty-five years ago, the Frank Merriwell stories, a nickel a week, were all the thing, and sometimes it seemed to manya boy unfair foolishness that Father and Mother were so against reading them. But Father and Mother knew best, as those same boys will admit to-day. Too much of that sort of thing is as bad for a fellow as a diet of all meat and no vegetables. Wishy-washy, sentimental books can be compared to meals that are all custard and blanc mange.
To watch first-class motion pictures (when you can find them) is like reading worth-while stories. They tell us, show us, as often as not, places that are interesting, and different from the parts of the world we live in. They bring all people, and all times, before us on the screen. But the poor pictures that we see twist out of shape our ideas of people and life; they show things that are not and could not be true, they gloss over defects of character that a fellow should—that a regular fellow will—face squarely. A clothing-store-dummy “hero” does things that no decent scout would do—and we’re just as much hurt by watching him on the screen as we would be by watching that flat-footed center fielder on the losing baseball team.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.Making Use of a “Real” Incident.In this scene, taken at the edge of the Mississippi, the young hero has just missed the old ferry, from which the pictures are being taken. He was unfamiliar with the machine he was driving, and nearly went to the bottom of the river. The scenario was changed to make use of this mishap.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
Making Use of a “Real” Incident.
In this scene, taken at the edge of the Mississippi, the young hero has just missed the old ferry, from which the pictures are being taken. He was unfamiliar with the machine he was driving, and nearly went to the bottom of the river. The scenario was changed to make use of this mishap.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.The Scene the Audiences Saw.In the preceding illustration the cameras that took this picture are shown. But on the screen only what was included inside the “camera angle,” as shown here, appears.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
The Scene the Audiences Saw.
In the preceding illustration the cameras that took this picture are shown. But on the screen only what was included inside the “camera angle,” as shown here, appears.
Why are the Bill Hart pictures about the best of the so-called “Westerns” of the last seven or eight years? Isn’t it because on the whole Bill Hart has played the sort of chap that is most worth while—with courage, kindness, and loyalty, and ability to control his temper and do the right thing?
Only, did you ever stop to wonder how it happened that so often Bill Hart’s “hero” was a bandit or train-robber or outlaw? If the fellow Hart played had really been as good as he made out, would he have been robbing or killing so many times? At least, it’s worth thinking about. And in one of Hart’s Westerns the hero had to ride a horse over a twenty-foot bank—almost a cliff—to get away from his pursuers. It made you wonder how they could “pull a stunt” like that without too much risk. It looked as though both horse and rider were hurt.—As a matter of fact, the horse actually broke a leg, and had to be shot. Nobody seemed to think there was anything out of the way about that—merely killing one horse to get a good picture. But how does it strike you?
Of course, that horse incident is an unusualone, but there are hundreds of interesting problems that come up in the making of motion pictures nowadays. Pictures are one of the things that week by week are making us the fellows we are—oughtn’t we to know something about them?
In one year, according to the government tax paid on box-office admissions, nearly $800,000,000 worth of photoplay tickets were bought. That means more than $2,000,000 a day paid to see motion pictures. If the admissions averaged about twenty cents apiece, that means some 10,000,000 people a day watching the movies—getting their amusement and instruction, good or bad, and their impressions, good or bad, that go to determine what sort of people they will be, and what sort of a nation, twenty years from now, the United States will be.
What about it? Isn’t it a pretty important thing for us to know something about the best movies, and the worst, and why they are the best, or the worst? And how they might be better?—So that we can encourage the right films, and censure the ones that ought to becensured, and do it intelligently, playing our part in improving one of the biggest influences that this country or any other has ever seen? For surely we all know that if we can avoid the photoplays that aren’t worth while, they will be just that much less profitable for the men who make them, and the pictures that we do see, that are worth while (if we can tell which ones they are, and recommend them to our friends after we’ve seen them), will have just that much more chance to live and show a profit and drive out the poorer specimens and get more worth while pictures made.
One of Marshall Neilan’s pictures was called “Dinty.” It told the story of a little newsboy in San Francisco. It contained a lot of cleverness and a lot of laughs; for instance, Dinty had a string tied to his alarm clock, that wound around the alarm as it went off, and tipped a flatiron off the stove, and the weight of the flatiron yanked a rope that pulled the covers off Dinty.—Then, on the other hand, there was a lot of stuff in it that was not so good.
Now, when you saw that picture, if you did, could you tell what was good and what was notso good, and why the poorer part was poor? If you could tell that, you’re in a position to profit most from such pictures as you see, and get the least possible harm. Also, you can help the whole game along by intelligent comment and criticism, and enthusiasm for the right thing.
Of course, you can get some fun out of watching a picture as a two-year-old watches a spinning top, but you can get a lot more if you use your brains. Try it.