The Spike or Victoria University College Review September 1927
The New Art
The New Art.
It is a commonplace of the champions of the movie that the screen is the biggest educational event since the invention of printing and that Northcliffe, Hurst and Collier combined did not wield an influence with that written word that is possessed by the film of to-day. It is a commonplace that its appeal is universal, that seeing is believing and that the possibilities of the art are tremendous. It is also a commonplace that the world's best theatres, the world's worst stories and the world's worst actors are devoted to the screen. Rudolf Valentino, a waiter, and a waiter who used scent, Gloria Swanson, a shop-girl with little besides temper and teeth, any number of young men with smiles and figures to carry many suitings, any number of little girls, more or less ornamental, from Clara Bow to Corinne Griffith, these are the purveyors of the new art to our midst. Judged on attitudes, most of them, after having been sworn into the light stance by some irascible director, are twice as regal as the Prince of Wales, four times more like royalty than the lamented Archduke Ferdinand and ten times more imperious than the one-time Crown Prince. Judged by acting ability, adaptability, resource, or intelligence they are exactly on the level of performing seals. Most of them do not possess enough ability to manage a Punch and Judy Show successfully enough to intrigue an audience aged 10 and under. To put the level of their performance anywhere near that of the theatre is to elevate an ant-hill to rival the Eiffel Tower. To put their equipment anywhere near that required in the theatre is to array the native Patagonian against a veteran battalion of the British Grenadier Guards, complete with machine-guns and with a brigade of artillery in support. And to call the posturing and mimicry of the screen "acting" is to call a dandelion a sunflower and sauerkraut paté-de-fois-gras.
Not only is the attitudinising of the movies not acting, it is scarcely the raw material of acting. Setting aside the inestimable advantage which a screen "personality" would possess on the stage because of her comely face and good shape—an advantage which is generally off-set by a voice which sounds like anything from a tin-whistle with the pea jammed to a Klaxon horn—she would have to learn her trade anew if she changed over. That she does not do so is the result, not alone of the fact that it would be for a lesser salary, but of the fact that she does not possess the vaguest idea of what is necessary on the stage, or the ability to make good once she got there. The proof of the superiority of the stage star is to hand. Since the beginnings of the movies, scores of stage names from Olga Petrova and Pauline Frederick to Nazimova and Jacqueline Logan have been added to the publicity sheets of filmdom and scarcely one of them has failed. In the same period the number of outstanding mummers who have gone from the films to the theatre could be counted upon one hand, and I am not sure that it could not be counted upon one finger. The stage is as virile as ever despite the Gabriel trumpet-blowings and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse prancings which ushered in the movies, and I am prepared to say that in the 20 years of its life the film world has not captured 10 actors whose loss has been great enough to be felt in the theatre.
The excellent, if ingenuous, James Agate has argued that millions would feel the loss of the movie more than the loss of the printing press and, further, than in 10 years the films have captured these millions whose imagination has been untouched by 500 years of the written word and 3000 years of the spoken, for the reason, says Agate, that the artist gets in their way.
It is an excellent, if naive, way of saying that the movies are the entertainment of the illiterate. It is a direct, if ingenuous, admission that the imagination of these millions has been so clogged by circumstances and clotted with sentiment that it takes a feature with a sixpenny novel plot, waxwork actors and sub-titles written by the ex-sporting editor of "Pink Pages" to stir it. And I find myself in full accord with Mr. Agate on this point. The movies are the entertainment of the illiterate. The boasted educational powers of the film have less than no appeal to anyone with a sixth-standard intelligence. The movies are on the same level as beer, cheese and onions, a somewhat lesser plane than a vaudeville show and a somewhat higher than a dogfight. Agate urges that art is not an immutable thing, that the power to express beauty is implicit in the movie, that those who deny this are of the order who would return to the viol-da gamba, the toga, hand-loom weaving and printing in black letters. "What a mess of it serious composers would have made if they had stopped resolutely at the harpsichord and ignored the piano," says Agate. But why pick on the piano? there are other instruments. And I look in vain for a concerto by Elgar for Jew's harp or a sonata for saxophone and piano by John Ireland. Agate's arguments, in brief, treat the movie as an advance on the theatre, which it is not; as an art, which it is not; and as capable of drama, which it is not. The drama of the movie is the drama of a large crowd of supers in a large allotment near the super-Excelsior-de-Luxe Film Company's location flourishing wooden swords outside the canvas and lath walls of Babylon, or of forty Irishmen disguised as Crusaders carrying the Princess Guinevere (who has a blonde wig over her dark shingle) through the darksome defile of Moose Creek at great risk, this risk being provided by forty Scotsmen who have been disguised as Moors and who are pushing boulders over the precipice at Yawning Chasm, for another camera to photograph, a mere matter of 40 miles away.
But the weakness of the average film production is really beside the point. With the best will in the world and with a brilliant direction instead of the usual ex-stewards, ex-snake-eaters and ex-piemen, who generally supervise the jewelled super-features of filmdom, the movie could be made nothing better than pantomime and must remain that until the end of its days. It is and will remain an "art" which can take "Notre Dame" and improve it, which can take one incident from a crowded book and call it "The Three Musketeers," which can take Conrad's "Nostrono" and make of it something which is despised by my barber. Its attempts at drama are pathetic. Sub-titles rapidly succeeding one another, with dizzy glimpses of scowling faces thrust right against the camera—this is the movie's effort to overcome the disability imposed on it by its lack of the spoken word. Not a feature have I seen in which that deficiency was not recognised and fought with until one suffered with the producer. And it is all so useless. For the movie can never hope to approach the theatre in its own sphere. Its so-called superiority to the theatre in range of subject and wealth of incident and setting are really drawbacks in the undisciplined hands which hold them to-day. Nothing is left to the imagination. If a character goes from one house to another we see him through the door, into the motor, travelling along the road, leaving the car, ascending the steps, and then, in case of doubt remaining, are given a glimpse of the butler's hand on the doorknob. If lonely Susie dreams of her country home of 10 years ago we see her mother, clad in a frock modelled after the fashion of last fall, seated in a room with a recent portrait of the Prince of Wales in one corner and a radio set in another. The remorseless pile of detail blots out imagination altogether.
Another strength usually ascribed to the movie is that its photography is fast becoming an art. But the best and most ingenious photography in the world will not overcome the drawbacks which are inherent in the film. Photography cannot provide drama. At best it can give only some moments of beautiful back-grounds which are inevitably succeeded by the close-ups of the scowling faces. And turning politely towards Mr. Agate I venture to point out that the millions are not interested in beautiful backgrounds. Inasmuch as the millions are interested in anything they are interested in sentimentality and sex, both of which they receive in large slices. To ask them to appreciate beauty would be to give them the feeling first that they were being fooled and second that they were bored and uncomfortable. When the movie is working in what is its medium the millions are thoroughly happy. And that medium includes custard-pie comedy, melodrama of the blood-on-the-floor variety, and charming love stories akin to that magnum opus "The Girl That Took the Wrong Turning."
—C.Q.P.