The writer of
fiction entering the field of photoplay writing will do well to bear
this further fact in mind: the very incident that might be the means
of selling a story to a certain magazine might be the cause of a
rejection if introduced into a moving-picture plot. The photoplay has
standards all its own.
"One type of the unpleasant drama," says a writer in the _Photoplay
Magazine_, "is the kind showing scenes of drinking and wild
debauchery, where some character becomes drunk and slinks home to his
sickly wife, beats her, and then, finally, after reaching the last
stages of becoming a sot, suddenly braces up and reforms." The same
writer also remarks: "The only time that murder should be shown, _and
that very delicately_, is either in a detective drama or else in good
tragedy, where the removal of some character is essential to the
plot." "Every one of Shakespeare's tragedies tells of crime," says an
editorial in _The Moving Picture World_, "but does not exploit it, and
never revels in the harrowing details to produce a thrill."
It is not to be denied that careless and unthinking directors are
responsible for a good deal of what is objectionable on the screen. At
the same time--and this is especially true of comedy subjects--the
director is merely, as a rule, carrying out the author's
_suggestions_, if not his actual directions.
Pages:
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317