CHAPTER III
THE WORLD THROUGH A CAMERA
Thereare two kinds of motion pictures.
One sort is the regular “feature,”—usually a six or seven reel photoplay, the bulk of the evening’s entertainment—and the other kind is illustrated by the “news reels.”
One kind tells stories. The other shows facts. “Robin Hood,” for instance, tells a story. But the wonderful picture that showed the great horse-race between Man-o’-War and Sir Barton was merely a series of remarkable photographs of what actually happened.
There are of course many intermediate pictures and combinations, part way between the two, as we shall see; but when you stop to think of it all pictures fall under one or another of the two main classifications. Either they are entertainment pure and simple, possibly with a background of truth or philosophyor fact, or else they are reality, presented as entertainment.
And here is an interesting thing: while the story side of motion-picture making, that has developed to a great extent from stage drama, has already reached very great heights, the other side of picture-making, that we see illustrated in the news reels, is still relatively in its babyhood. Scenics and news reels and an occasional so-called “scientific” or instructive reel are about all we have so far on this side of picture making, that will probably within our own lifetime come to be far greater than the other.
The “reality” films have developed from straight photography. They take the place of kodak snapshots, and stereopticon slides, and illustrations in magazines, newspapers, and books.
Between the two, cameras have come already to circle the whole world.
Not long ago in a New York skyscraper given over mostly to motion-picture offices and enterprises, three camera men met.
“Say, I’m glad to be back!” exclaimed one;“I’ve been down in the Solomons for nearly a year. Australia before that, and all through the South Seas. Got some wonderful pictures of head-hunters. They nearly gotme, once, when I struck an island where they were all stirred up because some white man had killed a couple of them.”
“I’m just back from India, myself,” remarked the second, “Upper Ganges, and all through there. Got a lot of great religious stuff.”
“You fellows have been seeing a lot of the world,” sighed the third, “while I’ve been stuck right here solid for the last eighteen months. Last eight months on a big French Revolution picture.”
Two of the men were globe-trotting “travelogue” photographers; the third was a regular “studio” camera man; while the two had been searching the world, to secure motion pictures of actual scenes, the third had been taking pictures of carefully prepared “sets” that faithfully reproduced—just outside New York City—streets and houses of Paris as they were in the year 1794.
Let us take up first the kind of movies that we usually see to-day—the photoplays made in Hollywood or New York or Paris or wherever the studio may happen to be, that tell a story or show a dramatic representation of life somewhere else.
Suppose a story of the Sahara Desert is to be filmed at Culver City, California, where several different big studios are located.
Costumes are designed or hired, and actors and actresses are made up and togged out to represent desert chieftains and wild desert beauties and languid harem maidens and uncouth tribesmen. Horses are fitted out with all the trappings of Arab steeds. Half a dozen rebellious camels are hired from one of the big menageries that makes a specialty of renting wild animals to film companies.
Then, sets are constructed to represent the interiors of buildings in Tunis or Algiers, or some of the little cities of the desert. Possibly a whole street is constructed—and it is only necessary to build the fronts of the houses, of course, propped up from behind by braces and scaffolding that do not show inthe picture—to reproduce an alley of some town near the North African Coast.
Finally, as the scenes of the story or “continuity” are filmed, one after another, the company goes out “on location” to get the balance of the exterior scenes. Perhaps the sand dunes of Manhattan Beach, one of the small resorts near Los Angeles, not far from Culver City, are used to represent the hummocks of the Sahara Desert. Perhaps a part of the desolate bed of the San Gabriel River, where it leaves the mountains twenty miles east of Los Angeles, is used to show a supposed Sahara gulley. Or the company may travel to the Mohave Desert, or all the way into Arizona, or some desolate portion of Old Mexico near the border town of Tia Juana below San Diego, to get just a bit of the real “Sahara” that they want. Maybe a desert tent is set up beneath the palm-trees of a supposed oasis, that, by careful photographing, looks like the real thing and gives no hint of the Los Angeles suburban traffic officer at a busy crossing less than fifty yards away.
The result? Possibly a very good picture ofthe Sahara Desert, with Americans playing the parts of Mohammedan tribesmen and pieces of America representing Africa. But naturally there are many chances for mistakes. The costumes may be wrong. The actors may not look the parts, or act as the types they are supposed to represent really do. The dunes behind Manhattan Beach, or the “Wash,” of the San Gabriel, may not really look like the Sahara at all.
Recently a widely traveled oil man was telling me of an afternoon he spent at a trading town on the East African coast, a thousand miles or so north of the Cape.
“I was killing the day with an old trader,” he said. “We were to set out into the interior the next morning, and had nothing to do but amuse ourselves until we were ready to start. We saw the posters of a movie that was being shown, that told a story of the very town where we were. And say! When we went in, we certainly were amused, all right!
“It was an American film, made by one of the Hollywood companies. The heroine was washed ashore from the wreck, and regained consciousness just in time to see a tiger readyto spring at her from under the palm-trees at the edge of the beach. But the hero was Johnny-on-the-spot. He was tiger-hunting himself, and dropped the beast with a single shot. He was wearing riding-breeches, and puttees, and a pith helmet,—sort of a cross between a motion-picture director and a polo player.”
“What was the matter with it?” I asked, “Everything?”
“Pretty much. First place, the beach along those parts isn’t anything like what was shown in the picture. There aren’t any palm-trees within a thousand miles. Tigers don’t grow in that part of the world, either. Lions, yes. But tigers, no. You have to go clear to India to get tigers.
“But that hero’s outfit was the best. In the heat, there, he’d have died in six hours, in that outfit. My friend the old trader and I were wearing about all that anybody ever wears in those parts—ragged old shirts, and “shorts”—like running pants, or B. V. D.’s—and keeping out of the sun. If you do have to go around, in the heat of the day, the one important thing isto wear some kind of a hat or cloth that protects the back of your neck and saves you from sunstroke. But the movie hero was sprinting around in the middle of the day with leather legs and a cartridge belt that would weigh at least ten pounds. Say, we had a great laugh!”
Not long ago I was asked to look at a film, made in Austria, that told a story of love and intrigue among the American millionaires. The hero’s father was supposed to be a railroad king who lived in New York City, and the girl’s mother, who also lived in New York, was a “railroad queen” at the head of a rival organization. Each morning the lovers, the hero and the heroine, slipped away from their homes—that looked more like the New York Public Library or the Pennsylvania Station than anything else except an Austrian palace—and ran down to the railroad yards. The boy stole a regular German engine from his father’s round-house, and the girl got its twin sister from her mother’s shop on the other side of the city, and they each climbed aboard and ran them outside the city until they met, on the same track, head on. Then the lovers got downand kissed each other on both cheeks in true American fashion (Austrian interpretation) somewhere near Hoboken, I suppose.
Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation.Getting Thrills with a Balloon.Motion-picture camera men circle the globe, and companies go almost any distance for a novel location or sensation. Note the carefully assembled “properties” apparently carelessly strewn on the ground beside the basket.
Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation.
Getting Thrills with a Balloon.
Motion-picture camera men circle the globe, and companies go almost any distance for a novel location or sensation. Note the carefully assembled “properties” apparently carelessly strewn on the ground beside the basket.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.An Old Whaling Ship Refitted to Make a New Movie.TheGeorge W. Morgan, nearly 100 years old, refitted and sent to sea to make a whaling story called “Down to the Sea in Ships.”
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
An Old Whaling Ship Refitted to Make a New Movie.
TheGeorge W. Morgan, nearly 100 years old, refitted and sent to sea to make a whaling story called “Down to the Sea in Ships.”
On the other hand, in contrast to these hurriedly made, inaccurate pictures, made to make money for ignorant people by entertaining still more ignorant people, are the really worth while historical films and others made with painstaking care. Some of the great American directors maintain entire departments for research work, that check up on the accuracy of each detail before it goes into production, costumes are verified, past or present, details of architecture are reproduced from actual photographs, and even incidents of history and the appearance of historic individuals are treated with scrupulous accuracy.
Valuable impressions of life in ancient Babylon could be gathered from Griffith’s great picture “Intolerance.” While not necessarily accurate in every detail, the wonderful Douglas Fairbanks films “Robin Hood” and “The Three Musketeers” instruct as well as entertain. In a magnificent series of historic spectacle films such as “Peter The Great,”“Passion,” and “Deception,” the Germans have set a high-water mark of film production that combines dramatic entertainment with semi-historical setting.
It seems a pity after watching one of the really well-made historical photoplays, to have to see a picture of the American Revolution so carelessly made, in spite of its cost of nearly $200,000, that you feel sorry for the poor British redcoats at the battle of Concord, when the American minute men, outnumbering them about ten to one, fire on them at close range from behind every stone wall and tree or hummock big enough to conceal a rabbit. Why, according to that particular director’s conception of the British retreat from Lexington, the patriots might just as well have stepped out from behind their protecting tree-trunks and put the entire English army out of its misery by clubbing it to death in three minutes.
Leaving dramatic photoplays, then, let us turn to the other kind of movie that shows what actually happens.
The news reels are the simplest form of this kind of movie. They correspond to the headlinesin the daily newspapers, or newspaper illustrations. Indeed, a good many newspaper illustrations, nowadays, are merely enlargements made from single exposures, or “clippings,” from the news reels. You may yourself have noticed pictures in the rotogravure sections of Sunday newspapers that show the same scenes you have already seen in motion in the news reels during the week.
To get the news reel material camera men are stationed, like newspaper correspondents, at various places all over the globe. Or, when some important event is to occur at some far-away place, they are sent out from the headquarters of the company, just as special correspondents or reporters would be sent out by a big city newspaper, or newspaper syndicate. Sometimes a camera man and reporter work together; usually, however, each works separately, for newspapers and movies are still a long way apart. If a new president is elected in China, a news-reel camera man—Fox, or Pathé, or International, or some other, or maybe a whole group of them—will be on hand to photograph the ceremonies. If a new eruptionis reported at Mount Etna, some donkey is liable to get sore feet packing a heavy motion-picture camera and tripod up the mountain while the ground is still hot, so that a news-reel camera man—possibly risking his life to do it—may get views of the crater, still belching fire and smoke and hot ashes and lava, for you to see on the screen.
The news camera men, like city news reporters, have to work pretty hard, not infrequently face many dangers, and get no very great pay. The tremendous salaries and movie profits that you sometimes hear about usually go to the studio companies, and not to these traveling employees.
Recently I talked with a “free lance” camera man, who had just completed a full circuit of the earth—England, Continental Europe, Turkey, and Asia Minor, through the Suez Canal and down into India, then Australia, New Zealand, Samoan Islands, and back to New York by way of San Francisco. He had paid his way largely with contributions to news reels, sold at a dollar or a dollar and ahalf a foot. The last part of the way home he had worked his passage on a steamer. He had borrowed enough money from a friend in San Francisco to get him back to New York. He had about ten thousand feet—ten reels—of “travel” pictures, for which he hoped to find a purchaser and make his fortune. But he owed the laboratory that had developed his film for him a bill of some three hundred dollars that he couldn’t pay, and was offering to sell the results of his whole year’s work for fifteen hundred dollars. And at that he couldn’t find a purchaser.
News reels and travel pictures, and beautiful “scenics” too, are only the forerunners of much more ambitious efforts to come, that before many more years have passed will be bringing the whole world before us through the camera’s eye. Did you happen to see the marvelous record of sinking ships made by a German camera man on one of the U-boats during the ruthless submarine campaign of the Great War? Or the equally remarkable series taken of the marine victims of the GermancruiserEmden? They show what the camera can do, when the movie subject is a sufficiently striking one.
More than two years ago a camera man named Flaherty secured the backing of a fur-exporting firm to make a trip with his camera to the Far North. After laborious months of Arctic travel he returned to the Canadian city whence he had started with some thousands of feet of splendid negative. While it was being examined—so the story goes—a dropped cigarette ash set it on fire. Celluloid burns almost like gunpowder. The entire negative was destroyed in a few moments.
But Flaherty started out again, and returned once more with thousands of feet of film depicting the Eskimos’ struggle for life against the mighty forces of Nature in the frozen North. From this negative a “Feature Film” was edited, called “Nanook of the North.” It showed how the Eskimos build their snow huts or igloos, how an Eskimo waits to spear a seal, and how he has to fight to get him even after the successful thrust.
At first the big distributing companies thathandle most of the films that are rented by theater owners in this country didn’t want to handle the picture because it was so different from the ordinary movie that they didn’t think audiences would like it. But finally, after it had been “tried out” successfully at one or two suburban theaters, the Pathé Company decided to release it. Likely you’ve heard of it. It has been a big success. It is now being shown all over the world. It will probably bring in more than $300,000. Flaherty, as camera man, director, and story-teller rolled into one, has been engaged by one of the big photoplay producing companies at a princely salary to “do it again.” This time, he has gone down into the South Seas, to bring back a story of real life among the South Sea Islanders.
Quite a number of years back a man named Martin Johnson went across Africa and secured some very remarkable pictures of wild animals. These jungle reels were released by Universal, and proved such capital entertainment that they brought in a fortune. Others followed Johnson’s example, but for years noone was able to equal his success. As Flaherty has done more recently, Johnson next went to the South Seas and made another “Feature Film” of life upon the myriad islands that dot the Southern Pacific Ocean. The film was fairly successful, but did not begin to make the hit that had been scored by the animal reels.
“Hunting Big Game in Africa,” the next big “reality” film to make a hit with American audiences—aside from short reel pictures and an occasional story-scenic—“broke” on the New York market in 1923. It was made by an expedition under H. A. Snow, from Oakland, California, and represented some two years of work and travel, with a big expenditure of money.
Snow’s experience in getting his picture before the public was not unlike that of Flaherty. The motion-picture distributors and exhibitors were so used to thinking in terms of the other kind of pictures, the regular movies or photoplays that you can see nearly every night in the week, that they were afraid people wouldn’t be interested in “just animal stuff.” In spite of the success made by “Nanook of the North,”and the Martin Johnson pictures before that, they were afraid to try out pictures that were different from the usual run.
“Hunting Big Game in Africa” was more than ten reels long—two hours of solid “animal stuff.” The Snow company finally decided to hire a theater themselves and see what would happen when the picture was presented to a New York audience.
You can imagine what the audience did. They “ate it up.” The picture started off with views of the ship that was carrying the expedition to South Africa. Then there were shots of porpoises and whales. And thousands and thousands and thousands—they seemed like millions—of “jackass penguins” on desolate islands near the South African coast. Funny, stuffy little birds with black wings and white waistcoats, that sat straight up on end like dumb-bells in dinner jackets—armies and armies of them, a thousand times more interesting (for a change at least) than seeing the lovely heroine rescued from the villain in the nick of time, in the same old way that she was rescued last week and the week before. Andfor that matter, two or ten years ago—or ever since movie heroes were invented to rescue movie heroines from movie villains when the movies first began.
From the penguins on, “Hunting Big Game in Africa” was certainly “sold” to each audience that saw it. There were scenes that showed a Ford car on the African desert, chasing real honest-to-goodness wild giraffes, and knocking down a tired wart hog after he had been run ragged. Only at the very end of the picture was there any particularly false note, when a small herd of wild elephants, that appeared very obviously to be running away from the camera, were labeled “charging” and “dangerous.” Possibly they really were dangerous, but the effort to make them seem still more terrible than they actually were fell flat. When you’re telling the truth with the camera, you have to be mighty careful how you slip in lies, or call out, “Let’s pretend!”
Then there came another Martin Johnson picture of animals in Africa, possibly even better than the Snow film, and quite as successful. As usual, Martin Johnson took his wifealong, and the spectacle of seeing a young woman calmly grinding away with the camera, or holding her own with a rifle only a few yards away from charging elephants or rhinoceri was thrill enough for any picture. At many of the scenes audiences applauded enthusiastically—a sure sign of unqualified approval.
An interesting discovery that has come with the success of these “photographic” pictures, that show what actually happens as pure entertainment, so interesting that you don’t think of its being instructive, is that ordinary dramatic movies can be made vastly more interesting and worth while if a good “reality” element is introduced.
The Germans were on the trail of this when they had wit enough to plan their historical pictures based on fact and actual historical personages, that would appeal to people of almost any civilized nation on the globe. So good was their example, that we have followed suit, here in America, with “Orphans of the Storm,” and the big Douglas Fairbanks pictures, and a whole lot more.
But now, we have gone a step farther, a stepthat adds to the danger and difficulty in picture making, but that shows more and more the wonderful possibilities of the screen.
Take “Down to the Sea in Ships.”
A writer named Pell who lived up near New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the old whaling industry used to center, in the days before steam whalers carried the business—or what there is left of it—to the Pacific coast—had an idea. He wrote a story about a hero who turned sailor-man and went to sea on a whaler, and harpooned a real whale.
They make some wonderful motion pictures in Hollywood, but they don’t harpoon many whales there. When you’re a motion-picture actor, harpooning a real whale is a good trick—if you can do it.
Pell took his story to Mr. D. W. Griffith, famous ever since “The Birth of a Nation.” But Mr. Griffith didn’t have time to play with it, so he turned it over to a director named Elmer Clifton, who decided that a picture of a real whale would make a “real whale” of a picture. He got a company together and went to work.
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.Capsized by a Real Whale.Remarkable picture, taken during the cruise of theGeorge W. Morgan, of a whaling-boat attacked by a wounded whale. (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
Capsized by a Real Whale.
Remarkable picture, taken during the cruise of theGeorge W. Morgan, of a whaling-boat attacked by a wounded whale. (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.Aiding Nature by a Skilful Fake.In the original of this picture the boat appeared much as in the photograph above. Added dramatic value has been given by “retouching” or painting in the imaginary flukes of the whale, as hemighthave raised them if he had been more accommodating. (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
Aiding Nature by a Skilful Fake.
In the original of this picture the boat appeared much as in the photograph above. Added dramatic value has been given by “retouching” or painting in the imaginary flukes of the whale, as hemighthave raised them if he had been more accommodating. (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.Real Danger on the High Seas.Imagine working to right an overturned whale boat in shark-infested waters, with a dangerously wounded whale still cruising about in the vicinity, just for the sake of a motion picture! (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
Real Danger on the High Seas.
Imagine working to right an overturned whale boat in shark-infested waters, with a dangerously wounded whale still cruising about in the vicinity, just for the sake of a motion picture! (Seepage 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.The Second Step to Safety.The hero of the picture again sitting in the righted boat. A microscope will show the pains taken to secure realism in its film; the actor actually became a sailor for months, with hair grown in the fashion of sailing days. (See page 62.)
Courtesy W. W. Hodkinson Corporation.
The Second Step to Safety.
The hero of the picture again sitting in the righted boat. A microscope will show the pains taken to secure realism in its film; the actor actually became a sailor for months, with hair grown in the fashion of sailing days. (See page 62.)
They decided the first thing to do would be to get the whale. If that part worked all right, they’d go ahead and make the rest of the picture, if it didn’t—well, they could start over again and make some other picture, of a cat or a dog or a trick horse that wouldn’t be so hard to play with.
They held a convention of old sea-captains, who decided that Sand Bay or some such place, in the West Indies, would be a likely spot for whales. They fitted up an old vessel, the last of the real old whalers, and sailed away.
Luck was with them. They struck a whole school of whales almost as soon as they had dropped anchor at the point that had been selected.
Green hands at whaling, they started off with every whale-boat they had, and cameras cranking. They tried to harpoon the first whale they came to, I’m told,—and missed it. But luck was with them again, decidedly. Missing the big whale, which happened to be a female, the harpoon passed on and struck a calf on the far side of her, that the amateur whalemen hadn’t even seen.
Ordinarily, they say, a school of whales will “sound” or dive and scatter for themselves when one of their number is harpooned, but in this case it was a calf that was struck, and its mother stuck by it, and the rest of the school stuck by her, while the movie-whalers herded them about almost like cattle. They got some wonderful pictures.
Later, they captured a big bull whale, and had an exciting time of it. More pictures, and a smashed rowboat.
Then they returned to New Bedford and completed the photoplay.
As a “Feature Film” the final picture, “Down to the Sea in Ships” is nothing to boast about,exceptfor the whales. Without the whaling incidents, it is a more or less ordinary melodrama, beautifully photographed, of the whaling days in old New Bedford. But the real whales make the picture worth going a long way to see.
A Scandinavian film, released in this country by the Fox organization under the name of “The Blizzard,” does the same thing as “Down to the Sea in Ships.” Only, it has a reel thatshows reindeer incidents, instead of whales. But it is just as remarkable. You see a whole gigantic herd of reindeer—hundreds and hundreds of them, the real thing—follow their leader across frozen hillsides and rivers and lakes, through sunshine and storm. Finally, in a blizzard, the men holding the leader that guides the herd get into trouble. One of them falls through the ice, while the other is dragged by the leader of the herd over hill and dale, snowbank and precipice until at last the rope breaks. The herd bolts and is lost.
It’s a wonderful picture. Because of the reindeer incidents. But it couldn’t have been made in Hollywood. It combines fiction with fascinating touches of actual fact.
About the time the reindeer picture was released in this country, a five-reel film that was made in Switzerland was shown at the big Capitol Theater in New York. It was made up of scenes of skiing, ski-jumps, and ski-races, in the Alps. Nothing else. But it furnished many thrills and real entertainment.
Here we come back again to the crux of the whole matter,entertainment. A picture has toentertain us, whether we want to be instructed, or only amused. But between the two kinds of pictures that I have outlined in this chapter—the movies that merely tell a story and the pictures that show facts—there is this difference: Photoplays that are designed to be merely entertaining, to be good, have toseem real.
But photoplays that actuallyarereal have to be genuinelyentertaining.
Courtesy United Artists Corporation.A Douglas Fairbanks “Set” Used in “The Three Musketeers.”Note the wheelbarrow, the peddler’s box, and all the wealth of minute properties and detail necessary to properly costume and equip the actors and “dress” this elaborate set. (See next illustration).
Courtesy United Artists Corporation.
A Douglas Fairbanks “Set” Used in “The Three Musketeers.”
Note the wheelbarrow, the peddler’s box, and all the wealth of minute properties and detail necessary to properly costume and equip the actors and “dress” this elaborate set. (See next illustration).
Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.How a Movie “Set” is Made.The scaffolding shows the flimsy construction of the movie buildings. Only the walls that will appear in the picture are constructed, propped up from behind by undressed scantlings. Note the reflectors set up to throw additional light on the scene that is being photographed.
Courtesy Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.
How a Movie “Set” is Made.
The scaffolding shows the flimsy construction of the movie buildings. Only the walls that will appear in the picture are constructed, propped up from behind by undressed scantlings. Note the reflectors set up to throw additional light on the scene that is being photographed.