New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1918-12-22
On The TRAIL OF The MOTION PICTURE
Hotu Long TO Wait
For the War Films !?

"S'Vehess OF the Chaplin film it on1-
ea by being just as comic"
"oh, we'll, of course. if Won yo,,,t
take anything seriously
We take our Chaplin SERIOUSLY
assure you. But what intended
oehca'ely to convey about the jumblcd
"e"rlum OF war-plays we've all heen
wing through vs's that they didn't
oHer uS anything serious to take
When we left the frank nonsense nc
'he fatrias and Elaines we merely cot
unto much dullcr and more pretentious
nonsense or else into rood. stout s+oro
o'Speo' "ell-managed melodrama, no.
differing in anything more essentia,
than styles of armament from Tho mol
ooramas about the Siege of lucknow
or the Fall of Rome At a time whom
the producers were spending all thoi,
money energy, acumen and good will
IN positively wracking attemnt to
i've up to their greatest opportunitv
they turned out nothing that wasn't
machine made. The weight of an ox-
cited, enormous and sometimes daon,v
CONSCIENTIOUS effort rolled, roaring and
booming, down those pictures. but the
oreath of spirit trimming with
speech that it longed to utter never
preathed through one Of them. OF
course. some of the propaganda nict-
ures were smashing good documents
mat made the points they started ont
Tor, but still, even in expressed intcn-
ton, only documents. Then again.
heaven forbid l should appear to lumn
with the machine-made anythinr 81
beautiful and moving as Blackton's
Missing! But there the appeal was
absolutely in the love story, with the
war a glowing color, not an issue.
Between these opposites our machine
made melodrama was sometimes brisk
entertainment, moro rarely it reused
us with an Imperative, pulsating touch.
BUT OF corSse it could never hold any
nourlshment for all that emotional
quickening that was going on in us
With these words we came upon our
idea and we at once began to look as
wise as if we had known just where we
were steering all along.
at docs seem to be the Yankee note
mats missing. Even after our war
was on and the gag of neutrality was
off Americans in FINLAND seemed
scarcely to enter the combat in any
less high-fying capacity than as crack
of thn T.ofo
nearly always the Foreign Legion.
Now, however, mortal proud we are of
every one of them; the doughboy is the
hero of our war, be sure of that, he is
the darling of our heart, whether he
left fortune when he went or lived
down in our alley But our film heroes
have been more like adventures by
Ouida OF, we'll, say Robert Chambers,
than like bank clerks or truck drivers
Or farmers or advertising experts, the
young lawyer from Kankakee Yes,
Bobby Harron could have showed us
how the war struck young America, so
could Jack Pickford and Charlie Raw
and Bryant Washburn, so could Doug
las Fairbanks. Isn't it pity that our
national Doug didn't stop jumping
over mountains long enough to do it ?
For till we get some such reaction as
his, in the kind of life that Anita Loos,
say, could sketch for him, with the
kind of neighborhood and sweetheart
and business office and above all the
kind of mother that such a Yankee
would leave behind him and what that
leaving cost all Of them and what it
paid and how what he went to struck
him, we never shall recognize our
selves in film. AS our dear Crouch
tells us, he keeps running round after
our war, in pictures and never catch
ing tive never got in. But when we
do
at needs something more than the
Americanist Americanism to haul off
what war MEANS" the Permanent
Crouch ungraciously emitted. at takes
time"
"Time 2"
Things are green yet, raw, that's
what's the matter. Yes Time, with a
capital T-you know, the historical
perspective"
We could but pause. And we went
back to The Birth of Nation andI
saw what time it had taken to grow,
that moment when, after four years of
war. the brother and the grown sister,
whom he left little, adoring girl,
say to each other. That meeting and :,
then the melting of that barrier-in'
the whole film harvest of the great war
there is nothing to compare with them
in human significance or tender prob