THE ART OF PHOTOPLAY MAKING.*
A REALLY thoughtful and interesting book dealing with the psychology of the " movies " is very much needed and is sure to come. We shrewdly suspect that The Art of Photoplay Making is that book, and that it will be very widely read. It is useless for superfine people to throw contempt upon a new art which has taken the world by storm—a new art which appeals to simple people as nothing but music has ever appealed, and as music itself cannot appeal in this country. It seems to embody the very last word of science in the direction of representation and yet to be primitive. It is, as Mr. Freeburg points out, nearly connected with the masks and pageants, the juggling and acrobatic displays, of the past. Organized horseplay expresses the wild spirits of a young crowd whose eyes are held by the constant motion as they are held by running water or a marching regiment.
In the cinema of the future he sees the Great Magician a-he can materialize fancy and reveal the secrets of Nature, who can show the flower growing from a seed, take any man with Gulliver upon his travels, make the imaginary world real, and bring the real world before the imagination of whoever will look in front of him. The old men of the future, he thinks, will be uncertain what great sights they have actually seen and what have appeared before them on the screen. Thu " Pictures " will depend less and less for their interest upon word explanations. A new symbolism will develop, making as wide an appeal as that which resulted in the Gothic Cathe- drals.
Meanwhile the " photoplay " actually is something so different
from all this that if any one were to take up the book before us on his return from a picture palace he would probably burst into shouts of derisive laughter. A tissue of impossible situations are all the fruits of fancy which have been laid before him. Drunken-dream-romps, the rapidity of whose motion defies the eye, and vulgar efforts to use facial contortion as a vehicle of narrative, have sent him home depressed and disgusted. But even in the midst of his bitter laughter the word " dream " may give him pause. Has he not passed by as in some dream-train a lonely stretch of seashore or of forest or of cornland ? How like they seemed to the pleasant visions of the night. The " movies " have made their appeal to the artistically proud as well as to the artistically humble.
The photoplay needs regulation by the critics, as Mr.
Freeburg insists, needs above all a producer who shall be willing to declare a dividend in art and not in cash. What a hobby for a millionaire! Our author proceeds to constitute himself one of those critics—a constructive critic anxious not to satbize what is, but to point out what might be, and what he thinks must be some day soon. Space forbids us to do more than epitomize a few of his suggestions. An ideal photoplay can never he, he says, a novel in celluloid. Everything must be brought pictorially before the audience with hardly any use of words. An ordinary crowd is very little intellectual ; therefore the intellectual appeal should be the least important. The first appeal must be to the heart, the second to the eye, in the critic's opinion. The plot of a photoplay should consist of "a pro- gression of pictured happenings or conditions in a logical sequence contrived to create and relieve suspense in the mind of the spectator." This definition by no means confines the photoplay to melodrama. Suspense, as our author argues, does not imply surprising events. We may know what is going to happen ; we want to know how it is going to happen, and when. Delineation of character is of course difficult without words, but various devices should occur to the photoplay writer other than the primitive one of grimace. The critic gives an instance. A fallen *omen sits as a model to an artist, and during the first sitting she steals his purse. A picture of the Madonna seen at his studio makes an immense moral impression upon her. She is constantly looking at it. She surreptitiously returns the purse. In the various succeeding scenes her appearance changes slightly. Subtle points of like- ne,ss between her and the picture she is beginning to adore suggest themselves to the audience, &c., &c. The art is in its infancy. The spectator will learn to follow what must to some extent be a, new language. He is already learning to follow with surprising quickness. A quite intelligent person who has been very little to the pictures will often find himself
• The Art of Photoylay hfak:ng. By 'Victor Oscar Freeburg. Ph.D. New York : Macmillan. [lo'. gg. Dew
unable to understand a narrative which to the habitue is perfectly clear. On the other hand, some explanatory devices which are too crude and obvious must be Oven up. It is too ludicrous to exaggerate the size of a hero's head till it is possible to inset a small picture upon his hair in order to show what he is thinking of. Nevertheless the fact that much must be vaguely suggested rather than detailed is in a vay a good thing. We do not like to have a joke explained, and sometimes other things are best left to the imagination. Mr. Freeburg makes a point when he says that if two people making love are thrown upon the canvas it does not take from the poetic value of the incident that every man in the audience may put his own words to it.
Obviously the English public likes symbolism. Everyman was once a popular play. The Pilgrim's Progress was once the most widely read book in the kingdom. Mr. Freeburg hopes for a new Maeterlinck who will write for the "movies."
Wer are left, as we lay down this extremely suggestive book, with a sense that something new and delightful and very momentous has been discovered, that new careers and new delights and new sensations are opening before a world sick of material pleasures and tired of dull work. We suppose that was the effect Mr. Freeburg wanted to produce, and we congratulate him.
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