We have been taught to expect fine things of Victor Seastrom. His greatness was first heralded by the pictures which came before him from Sweden. These pictures were made by a master mind.
NEW HOPE
FOR THE
AMERICAN
PHOTOPLAY
BY
Constance Palmer Littlefield
A {{sc|black-robbed figure, its youth and strength subdued to stately step, heads a solemn procession through the cold austerity of an English courtroom. The moment is fraught with intensity, for this young man—the newly-made deemster—is to sit in judgment on a girl accused of killing her illegitimate baby. Out of all the world, only the girl and the judge know who the father of that child is.
The courtroom is crowded with spectators eager for details of the sordid tragedy. The girl, white-faced and cold in the extremity of her terror, has steadily refused to speak the name of her seducer. She has not faltered even though she knows that that seducer is the judge whom the prosecuting attorney is forcing into a pronunciation of the death sentence.
Back of this great dramatic conflict stand the minds of two men. One of them is Sir Hall Caine, who first created the situation in his "The Master of Man." The other is Victor Seastrom, the director who is transferring that novel to the screen for Goldwyn.
Depends Upon the Director
In the hands of a weak man, the story could become merely a melodramatic sequence of fights, rainstorms, ranting villians, and noble heros. Under the guidance of a certain loud-mouthed director—incidentally my pet personal aversion—I can easily imagine the girl's trouble resulting from a cafe drinking party in which three hundred and fifty extras blithely stick confetti down one another's necks and thirty-two scantily-dressed Follies girls languish in the middle of the cleared dance-floor, thereby giving the exhibitors the pesky "big set" which he demands.
But we have been taught to expect better things of Victor Seastrom. His greatness was first heralded by the pictures which came before him from Sweden. These pictures were made by a master-mind. They sounded truly and surely the sombre note of tragedy which deepens and strengthens the great symphony of life.
American producers and American audiences—which one is the cause and which the result we cannot say—have made of life a fairy tale of Cinderellas and happy endings finally punctuated by the last fade-out clinch. Producers say exhibitors demand these abortions, and exhibitors in their turn say they are prompted by the public which supports the box-office.
Public Demanding Realism
The public—as far as can be judged from letters received by Screenland and other film magazines—is slowly but surely rousing from its passive acceptance of things as they are and is demanding a true reflection of life.
There is every reason to believe a great, thinking, earnest public exists. But, unfortunately, this public never puts pen to paper in the interest of motion pictures. It is the same public which has tamely allowed certain laws to be foisted upon it.
In the mad dash for ducets, the producer aims to make pictures which will at one and the same time please Flossie Bright-eyes and an old man with a long white beard, a professor and a cook, a lady and a scrub-woman. Obviously, it can't be done.
But in Victor Seastrom lies hope. Since his coming to us from Sweden, he has been instrumental in organizing the Little Theatre movement of the screen. It is related to motion pictures much as the Theatre Guild is related to the theatre.
