Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/204

 CHAPTER X

MASTERY IN THE MOVIES

Who is the legitimate master in movie making? It is, of course, the director, and he should take complete command over the plot action of the photoplay, over the players and their accessories, over the settings and those who make the settings, over the camera men, over the cutters, joiners, and title writers; in short, over all those who are co-workers in photoplay making. If this mastery cannot be obtained; if writers and players and scene painters will not agree to shed their royal purple for the badge of service; if all those who co-operate in making a photoplay cannot see that the product must be judged by its total effect and not by mere details of performance, then, of course we shall never have art upon the screen.

But it is usually very difficult for the director to take and keep complete command. Among the first rebels against his authority is the writer of the story which is to be filmed. It would be best, of course, if the director could originate his own plot, as a painter conceives his idea for a painting, or if he could, at least, prepare his own scenario as studiously as the painter makes his own preliminary sketches for a painting. But, under the present system, these two tasks of movie making can only in exceptional cases be performed in detail by the same person. The next