The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-09
ABOUT THE. CANNED DRAMA

the entire country, for the manufacturers do not care to make pictures that will be refused in so many theatres as New York contains, and they are, moreover, glad to receive from the censorship committee valuable suggestions that will help the moving pictures to serve the ends of edu- cation The example of New York might well be followed in other cities. Certainly there are many moving picture theatres everywhere which are still grossly insan- itary and unsafe. though the pictures themselves are being daily improved by the manufacturers.
 The greater improvement at present (and there is still plenty of room for more) is along the line of dramatic struc- ture and significant acting. Does 1t sound silly to talk thus pedantically, in tile lan- grage of dramatic cricitism, about mov- ing pictures? If you will watch a poor American picture unroll blinkingly, and then good French one you will feel that it is not silly after all. You will realize that unconscously certain standard of taste, genuine aesthetic standard, can be set for the children and poor people who frequent canned drama by the millions. You have your standards-or you should have-of acting, gesture facial expression, dramatic unity. coherence, interest on the stage. These people can be taught, are be- ing taught, to have their standards on the moving picture screen. Canned dramas succeed or fail, like any others, and for very much the same reasons
 It is important that ordinary canned dramas be not only free from brutality, coarseness and suggestions to crime, but that they be constructed with imagina- tion, told with interest and coherence and be well acted. If we must have canned dramas, we must see to it that we Lave good ones.
 And here the French are far ahead of us-not always in the moral tone of their subject matter, but almost univer- sally in dramatic interest and in the quality of the acting. The same supe- riorities prevail as in the regular theatre. The firm of Pathe Freres leads the world None disputes their supremacy. They have three plants near Paris and one at Nice. They employ an army of $500 men and women. Their photographic and re- productive processes are the best. But above all, they employ the best actors and playwrights In Ameriqa the canned dramas are mostly patched up by the stage manager, or somebody employed for the purpose. They are disjointed, epi- sodic, often dolefully commonplace and uninteresting in idea. The best French canned dramas are really dramas, with a beginning. a middle and an end. They have development, climax. Often they have, even for the sophisticated ob- server, a positive dramatic thrill. They are toilfully rehearsed, carefully acted. And the so-called films dart'' of tho Pathe Freres are written and acted by the leading authors and actors of Paris
 You smile at the thought of Mrs. Fiskc or B. H. Sothern acting in moving pie sture devised by Clyde Fitch or Augustus Thomas or William Vaughn Moody. But why is the idea more absurd than that of Caruso or Melba singing into talking machine? Certainly. even in America, you can see LeBary. of the Comediet Francaise acting canned drama written by Henri Levedan of the Academic, author of "The Duel;" or Mounet- -sully. or even the divine Sarah herself Jules Lemaitre and Edmond Rostand have writ >ten canned dramas. Even Duse Is soon to appear in one When actors and authors of this stamp turn their atten- ton to moving pictures, the result .s something quite different from the horse- play films you, perhaps, have seen. It ex- plains why canned drama at 10 csuts ip bound to continue formidable rival ts tawdry melodrama and vaudsvi1la at. q csnta