From the Morning Telegraph, November 26, 1922, Section 5, page 5. “In and Out of Focus” was the overall title of a series of weekly interviews with filmmakers and stars conducted by Louella Parsons.
What is the matter with the movies will be answered when some theatre owner invents a remedy for the present handicap in the theatre of permitting the public to see the last half of a picture before the first has been unreeled, David Wark Griffith says. He believes conditions in the film world will continue as black as some of our most erudite writers have pictured them in the recent scathing magazine articles, until this crying evil is overcome.
“How long could David Belasco hold his supremacy as the stage’s most artistic producer,” asked Mr. Griffith, “if his audiences straggled into his theatres all during the performance, some of them seeing the big dramatic climax before they had seen the events leading up to it. Brilliant as he is, he would be a lamentable failure if the public were permitted to see the surprises in his plays first; if the denouement was presented before the first act was seen, he could not possibly survive.
“The greatest dramatic producer in the world of any age could not have any appeal to his public if he had to plan his plays with the idea in the back of his mind that he must work out his plot step by step with the thought it could be seen backward as well as in its logical sequence of acts and scenes.
“Take my picture, One Exciting Night [1922]. It is full of unexpected moments. The audience is not supposed to know who murdered Johnson [played by Herbert Sutch]. The name of the arch villain who is constantly killing someone is not known. If the patrons of a theatre walk into the house and see the whole plot exposed with the murderer brought to justice and the reason for all this wild excitement, what is there left for him when the first scenes go on again? The picture is ruined. You could not expect anyone to find an evening’s entertainment in a mystery play with the mystery explained in advance.”
Mr. Griffith feels so keenly on the evil of continuous performances he believes it is as grave a problem as censorship.
“I talked with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the harm that has been wrought by this backward presentation,” said Mr. Griffith. Mary talked for half an hour and agreed with me something should be done.
“If any theatre owner,” said Mr. Griffith, “blazed the trail and announced he would show his features only at certain hours, he would probably lose money. His fellow exhibitors would laugh at him for his visionary plan, but he would be doing a big thing for the artistic future of motion pictures. A plan might be devised on Broadway,” went on Mr. Griffith, “whereby no one would be seated after the feature had been on half an hour. If anyone arrived that late he would have to wait until the end of the photo-play. There are comfortable divans and commodious lobbies to take care of the late arriving patrons, but I am not sure this plan would be practical in the smaller towns, where the theatre owner has no way of taking care of his patrons outside of the theatre.”
Mr. Griffith feels it is highly essential for some way to be devised for a picture to be seen as the producer intended it when he made it, that he is willing to award a prize to anyone who can work out a practical solution of the difficulty and offer some substitute for the haphazard plan that so upset the soul of those who are striving to give the world better pictures.
One Exciting Night is not the sole motive for prompting Mr. Griffith to make this plea, but every other production, he says, that has been made with a care and earnestness that gives its producer the right to expect a different presentation.
“We ask ourselves what is the matter with motion pictures. Why do some of our most brilliant minds ridicule the motion picture as cheap and ridiculous? Simply because many producers purposely make their pictures with an obvious theme. They figure if they try any subtlety it will be submerged when the films are run off with the last scenes first and the first scenes last.
“There must be some way to overcome this evil that is holding the motion picture down to a lower level and preventing it from attaining the place it was destined to reach,” said Mr. Griffith. “Even the stumbling over pairs of feet in the dark is minor compared with the irreparable harm being done our finest productions by the vogue now existing in the theatres where the films are run off as quickly as the operator can operate the machine in order to seat as many people as possible.”
Someone suggested to Mr. Griffith that a system might be evolved whereby the exhibitor would send out to his patrons postcards with the hour the feature would be shown, asking that the patrons try and get to the theatre at the time mentioned on the cards.
“Naturally the theatre owner wants to make as much money as he can,” said Mr. Griffith. “No one blames him for that. The postcard might keep people away. He would not want to do anything that would work a hardship against his business. But I feel there is some brave soul somewhere who for the sake of what it means to motion pictures will try the experiment of not permitting his patrons to take their seats after the feature has been on for half an hour. He would be doing a great good and every producer would rise up and call him blessed.”
Mr. Griffith says he will be happy to receive any suggestions either from men who are in the film business or from outsiders. He is confident there is some solution to this evil which threatens to be so disastrous to the finer productions and he asks that everyone who is sincerely interested in giving not only New York, but Keokuk, Iowa, or Oshkosh, Wis., the best in motion pictures try and help find the solution.
What is the matter with the movies, as [highly regarded entertainment journalist] Karl Kitchen and other writers have asked in articles in the various magazines, is not a desire on the part of the producers to make cheap films with tawdry subjects, but an inability to get away from these subjects so long as the films are presented backwards.
David Griffith always has something to say when he speaks, and we believe this is worthy of consideration. We should like to hear from someone else on the same subject.