The daily worker., 1926-08-18
Reaction in the
Movies
BY V. T. cALvERroN.

Il
gressive in technique but static in
substance. Its skill with the devices
of portrayal has far exceeded in beauty
and finish the materials which it has
created and selected to portray. The
development Of the new movie, in
spired by De Forrest, in which acting
and talking become automatically
synchronous, and the characters are
detached from the pathetic obvious
ness of the curtain, has marked the
achievement of a three-dimensional
cinema. The mechanisms for accelera-
tion and retardation of motion and a
score of similar contrivances-all have
given the moving picture type OF
technical perfection that is such a,
sweeping contrast to the crudity Of
substance that it is driven to project.
THE American moving picture is a
piddling, sentimental flash of scenes
and situations that sicken by their
sugariness and startle by their melo-
drama. With the exception of such
German pieces as Variety" and pas
sion," the American movie audience
has been fed upon cheap thrills and
bankrupt conceptions. The movie has
been used to exploit a national vice
and class philosophy. Patriotism has
been stressed. Dollar diplomacy has
been defended. Militarism has been ex-
tolled and war glorified! "The Big
Parade" is but single exception. In
dividualism has been exalted. and
Communism denounced. In other
words, the moving picture has been
used as medium for the expression
of the class conceptions of the bour-
geoisie.
THIS is no attack upon the moving
picture as a new art. 1t is an at
tack upon the moving picture as it
has been used as an instrument for
class propaganda and persuasion. The
possibilities of the cinema are still
enormous. Its potentialities as a new
and more intense because more direct
and inclusive art still remain signif-
cant. It's possible educative value is
very great and promising. Its almost
illimitable capacity as a form of COM
munication, beautified by trappings
more attractive than speech, suggests
its Importance to the radical in his
struggle for control. AS an inspira-
tion to action it's power is immense.
The way Soviet Russia has used the
film, for example. is illustrative OF
what has already been done with it
as an educative weapon.
PEGINNING with the wild west
~ mania and racing thru the brother
against brother" motif of the Civil
War, the movie only lately, and that
chiefly in the German films, has en-
deavored to approach a genuine real
ism of situation. The putrid exaggera-
ton of the Birth of a Nation" has
been the prevailing tendency. One of
the marked semtimentalities of the
movie has been it's bourgeois affection
for. the happy ending. Why do we
call this bourgeois? Because the ten
dency developed with the bourgeoisie
who wished to escape reality in its
enameled art While 10000 children.
under nine, were being exploited by
English capitalists, English reviewers
attacked Oliver Twist because it dealt
with the outcasts of humanity" and
destroyed that innocence of ignor-
ance" which made for bourgeois vir-
tue.
Altho the novel and the drama of
today have comparatively escaped
from this lettering influence of
course the popular novel still panders
to this artistic depravity-the moving
picture perpetuates it.
WTHEN "The Last Laugh" finally
w went round the country, its end
ing was changed so as not to leave
an unhappy feeling in the hearts of
its audiences. Hardy's novel, "Tess of
the D'Urbervilles," was changed in the
same way when it was pictured. Sin
clair Lewis Main Street" suffered the
same fate. Even THE Big Parade"
to suit the bourgeois fear of reality,
was made to end happily. Andreyev's
He Who Gets Slapped" also was doc
tored for the movie patients. The or
dinary run Of movies, of course, un-
varyingly follows this prescription.
MERE anna Karenina" to be movie
W lied the suicidal Anna would GER
tainly be saved from the wheels Of the
train by a courageous Vronsky who
would kill her husband in duel and
carry Anna off to the priest in prepa-
ration for the final fade-away kiss as
the ship carried them to a happier
cline.
AS long as the moving picture con-
tinues this sentimental romanticism of
ending its value as a form of realistic
art will be less than little. ASlong
as it devotes itself to the other bour-
geois virtues It will continue to be a
reactionary art.
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