American Cinematographer - January 15, 1922 - 7

[anuar y 15, 1922

THE AMERICAN

Jimmy the Assistant
THEM GERMAN PICTURES
FORRIN
pictures is amongst our midst, and as long
as the people is willing to pay money to go see 'em,
they're going to stay here regardless of what laws is
passed, and what squawks is put up by folks whose
business they hurts. That's as flat as your foot.
If a thing can be sold at a profit, no matter whether
its films or feathers, that thing's going to be sold, no
matter how much its legislated against.
Take booze, f'rinstance.
It would be awful hard to
find anything much more in legal disfavor than booze,
yet, as Mr. Hamlet says, I could a tail unfold about that
same booze stuff that would be something scandalous.
Of course you can't very well bootleg films, but, if you
got a lot of dough and influence you can go the bootlegger one better and see that it ain't necessary to run
a blind pig theater by making it clear to the powers
that be that the importation of films is so and so, and
so forth and all that, which is just about what any of us
would do if we had a lot of money depending on it.
I don't think there is any doubt that we will have
forrin pictures with us as a steady thing in the future,
just the same as we have German toys, and Swedish
matches, and Turkish baths. Nor do I think we have
to lay awake nights worrying about it. All you gotta
do to insure a good night's sleep is to go look at any
German picture and then compare it with any American
picture of the same class.
The American perducer has got the forrin perducer
licked so many ways it's a crime to even compare the
work. Speaking of comparing work, I don't suppose
there's anyone yet who has attempted to make a real
valyooation of the forrin perducer from a teknickle
angle. All the critiscisms reads 'good or bad according
to how the critic's dinner was digesting, without giving
any whys. Even the directors talking about the pieters
next day at the studio let's it go at that.
Next time you see a forrin picture, look at it from
a investment viewpoint and see what you think about
the forrin director as a tecknishan. By investment angle
~I mean value receeved from story material, value returned from mobs used, and the amount of good stuff
made from the material he had to work with. That's
the way to judge any workman.
Take "The Golem," f'rinstance. "The Colem," as a
picture, was a good picture, and well worth going to
see. That's all the people is interested in, and that's
all-for the present-the releaser cares about. But we,
whose future is involved, has to look a little closer, and
see whether the perducer of the picture is dangerous as
a compettiter.
Well, he ain't. "The Colem" is about as exzaggerated a example of missed oppertunities as I ever saw.
Here's a guy with a peach of a story, a free hand on
sets, cast, and 'mobs, and from the looks of it, money,
and what does he get out of it?
Seventy percent?
That's a awful high estimate. Mebbe you don't agree
with me, so let's look a little closer.
First, mobs. Do mobs, as mobs, help a perduction
unless they help tell the story?
They do not. Yet the
German perducer strangles his story time and again to

CINEMATOGRAPHER

cut in a mob scene that means nothing. It used to be
that you could knock a audience off the seats by showing
them a mob on the screen, but that day has went. They're
used to it now, and ain't impressed. So the German
mobs, the way they is used, don't amount to nothing.
The sets is good. You gotta hand 'em that. But
why, in a picture like "The Golem," does he go in for
distorted sets? It ain't beautiful, or at least, it ain't
as beautiful as the real arkitechture of the period he
was dealing with would be, and it had the most unfortunate effect of making the whole story seen unreel and
unconvintsing. So let's not give him too much on his
settings.
And story. Gee Whiz, what a story that must have
been. And what did he do with it? Used it as an
excuse to show mobs and queer sets, and missed more
dramatic oppertunities than you would think possible.
Never a moment of suspense, although he must have
had a hard time avoiding them, the oppertunities was so
frequent, not a speck of human interest anywhere, although the story cried for it, not a thrill, throb, or laugh
in the whole thing, aIthough it seems almost impossible
to have even purposely missed them, with all that wealth
of story. The story just plugged along, telling itself as
impersnally as possible, and trying its best to keep in
the background so you could see the city burn, which
it did for no reason at all, unless it was to have a
miracle happen, which didn't mean nothin'. Yet it was
a good picture, but only because the material was so
rich that even childish perduction couldn't strangle it.
(Continued on Page 10)

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American Cinematographer - January 15, 1922

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