The Unconscious Humor of the Movies

THE conscious humor of the movies is a perfectly straightforward article. There is no mistaking its intention, no difficulty in following its clue. Either because subtlety is an asset of speech, or because film directors mistrust the intelligence of their audiences, every jest is exposed with painstaking bareness to our apprehension. Hogarth is not more explicit than is the comic reel; and if Charlie Chaplin be the only comedian capable of suggesting for a brief moment the tragic shadows that fall on Hogarth’s fun, and if no living comedian can touch for even a moment his vigorous humanity, it must be admitted that the cinema is admirably adapted for carrying to their conclusions the multitudinous mishaps and misadventures which enter largely into his robust conception of humor. The pie-dish carried on the head of the flirtatious servant wench in ‘Noon,’ and ‘tottering like her virtue,’ could in the film meet its inevitable fall. The pilfering rogues in ‘The March to Finchley’ could really bore the keg, and drink the stolen beer. The stout and nervous candidate balanced so precariously in ‘Chairing the Member’ could be overturned with a great kicking of plump, tight-gaitered legs; and the little pigs scampering with their agitated mother over the bridge could really tumble into the water. In the matter of detail, the moving picture has points of vantage over the picture which does not move.

These are the high lights of the cinema. Unlike Dr. Holmes, it need never hesitate to be as funny as it can. So highly and so widely appreciated is this fun that we have Douglas Fairbanks’s word for it that on the rim of the desert Arab children may be seen trying, with shouts of laughter, to imitate Charlie Chaplin’s inimitable shuffle — a tribute unsurpassed since the days of Lalla Rookh: —

Mr. Fairbanks also tells us that the Right Honorable Winston Churchill told him that India could be conquered (meaning, I presume, Europeanized) in two years by a judicious application of films, an influence surpassing the seductions of Lalla Rookh as easily as it surpasses the valor of Clive and the diplomacy of Curzon.

Pending the accomplishment of this lofty purpose, this ‘inspired propaganda’ destined to revolutionize the world, the movie disports itself on an easy level of irresponsibility. The life it portrays is not precisely the life of the stage, which has a setting of inflexible limitations (people have to be pushed together in the right place at the right time to the discrediting of ci rcumstance); but which commands and interprets the whole range of human emotions. Neither does it in the least resemble the life we know about us, which is both complex and commonplace. The film enjoys a limitless control of accessories, and uses them with skill, artistry, and daring. The exodus of the Jews in ‘The Ten Commandments’ was a thing of beauty. The passage of the Red Sea was a thing of wonder. But the American men and women who obeyed and disobeyed the Commandments were puppets jerked by cords, compared with whom Italian marionettes appear refreshingly spontaneous and intelligent.

Perhaps it is because the marvels of the screen affect us so strongly that we are disposed to resent the unconcern of the actors. To film a story like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World would seem impossible; and apparently it had nothing but impossibility to recommend it. A small group of daring scientists explore a South American plateau, inhabited by prehistoric monsters which have successfully resisted the march of progress and preserved intact their conservative habits and traditions. Now an imaginative author can write about Dinosauria sixty feet long as easily as about field mice and sticklebacks; but to put such creatures through their paces on the screen, and make them appear truly alarming, requires remarkable ingenuity. The producer has succeeded in doing this; and to add to the vraisemblance of the pictures he has engaged the services of a small but notable group of contemporaneous beasts and reptiles, including the highest-salaried boa constrictor in the world, a crocodile which stands at the head of its profession, and a very charming and accomplished monkey.

These distinguished supernumeraries live up to their reputation. The boa constrictor hangs itself in graceful coils from a low-branching tree, the monkey shivers and chatters with terror on catching sight of it, the crocodile swims the shallow stream, and a superb tigress (an unlooked-for denizen of that locality) steps hungrily from her lair. When the plateau is reached, horrors multiply themselves. Gigantic and terrible shapes crash through the forests, engage one another in hideous conflict, and tear their bleeding prey asunder. The audience gasps, but the actors remain unmoved. Their serious business is love-making, and they take this unpropitious time and place for its endearments. At each fresh peril, one or other of the suitors enfolds the girl — who has been brought along for the purpose — in a close and protective embrace. When she makes her choice, a discreet caption informs us that the young couple will be married by one of the party who is duly authorized to perform the ceremony, and will set up housekeeping in an entourage which has been best described by Bret Harte’s soothing lines: —

It remains to be observed that, amid fearful dangers and hardships, the lovers preserve an immaculate nattiness of costume; and that, when rescued finally from surroundings which might well have driven them to idiocy, they and their companions emerge with the refreshed and hilarious air of excursionists who have been taking a week’s holiday at Margate.

It is the exemplary habit of screen actors to keep their clothes in order: —

is ever their rule of life. When the young American is pitched by rude Nubians into the Nile (‘A Café in Cairo’), we observe him half drowned, but inviolably correct, from well-cut waistcoat to pressed trousers and patentleather shoes. No vulgar, twisted disarray such as might conceivably happen to a man struggling for his life. In ‘The Covered Wagon,’ that magnificent triumph of photography, where the long wavering line of prairie schooners stands for all that is dauntless and adventurous in the history of our land, the hero, who serves as scout, leader, and special Providence to the emigrants, with the superadded duty of saving the heroine and foiling the villain every other day, always finds time and hot water for a shave. It is to the credit of human nature that a man so hard driven and so sore beset should have so smooth a chin. As for the much-rescued heroine, she emerges from her wagon in the wedding garments of sophistication. Whatever hardships these pioneers suffer, a lack of proper habiliments is happily not one of them.

There are two classes of people who write about moving pictures, and both of them write a great deal, having always a keen and attentive public. The first class tells us of the marvels of mechanism and the dizzy cost of production; the second class, of the lofty ideals which animate producers, and of the educational value of films. We hear of pictures costing well over a million dollars, ‘and every dollar showing,’ and of cameras so immense that, they cannot be worked for less than a thousand dollars a minute. These details are very satisfactory. Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word ‘ million ‘ is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

But when we leave business for benefactions, when we cease to contemplate vast expenses and vaster revenues, and are solemnly assured that ‘the impression made by the films is greater and deeper than that of any other circulating medium,’ we ask ourselves what on earth this impression is, and of what value to those who are impressed. We are even more at sea when a contributor to Current History, who is obviously serious, and obviously sincere, assures us that the picture-hall is the ‘people’s university,’ and that the picture itself is ‘an instrument destined to take its place alongside of the written alphabet and the printed word, as among the modern world’s most far-reaching social forces.’

This is saying so much that it is but fair to conclude that some meaning underlies the words. The alphabet and the printing press gave form and substance to the secret thinking of humanity, carrying it through space and time to the bookshelf on our wall, so that the least and last of us may, if he so chooses, live under ‘the distant influence of exalted minds.’ What have the moving pictures done to so vivify the world? Mr. Hays and Mr. Fairbanks are the only enthusiasts I know who courageously face this question, and they make the same reply. The film is to be the peacemaker of the future. Mr. Hays says that it ‘will do more than any other existing agency to unite the peoples of the earth, to bring understanding between men and women, and between nation and nation.’ He does not, however, make clear the character of this understanding, nor explain how the battling nations and the battling sexes are to be turned into friends by the good offices of the cinema. Mr. Fairbanks is more explicit. He says that the film — the American film especially — will go further than the Geneva Conference in establishing international relations, because it represents ‘ the pure drama of life,’ and because it shows the inhabitants of countries far remote ‘how alike we all are.’

If Mr. Fairbanks means that people in moving pictures are alike, he is correct. They are. They even look alike, the women especially, because they all paint their mouths the same shape, which is not the shape that any human mouth (a self-revealing feature) was ever known to be. But if he means that living people all over the world are alike, he is in error. They are not. If ever they come to love, or even to tolerate one another, it will not be on a basis of similarity.

No Oriental, for instance, would understand the ‘Thief of Bagdad.’ He would recognize its setting, its fantasies, the marvelous adroitness with which a difficult tale is told; but not the pure American sentiment which is the keynote of the telling. The ennobling and purifying influence of woman, a commonplace with us, is unfamiliar to the East. It took the wise Scheherazade a thousand and one nights to tame her ferocious lord and save her neck from the bowstring; but one look at a beautiful princess turns the Thief of Bagdad, like the good American he is, into the paths of righteousness and knight-errantry.

So firmly established is this feminine tradition, this simple and amiable reverence for woman as the nursery governess of the Western world, that a sorrowing critic in Argentina has recently censured our moving pictures because they fait to support so noble and consolatory a creed, because they do not consistently present ‘the splendid characteristics of American women.’ It is hard to portray the ‘ pure drama of life,’ and keep in mind an especial line of guaranteed virtues. The millionaire’s wife who, in the movies, neglects her little golden-haired boy (a nice, clean, gracefully affectionate little boy who wants her to hear him say his prayers) for the pursuit of fashionable dissipation may represent ‘the pure drama of life,’ but not ‘the splendid characteristics of American women.’ The millionaire’s daughter (the moving-picture world is congested with millionaires) who abandons the sumptuous home of her unscrupidous father, and a perfectly new ermine coat, to live in a flat with the young husband of her choice, and do her own housework in a costume of studied simplicity and with a coiffure of studied elegance, may represent ‘the splendid characteristics of American women,’ but not ‘the pure drama of life.’ And neither can do much toward uniting the nations of the world in a bond of friendly and sympathetic understanding.

As a matter of fact, historical and informatory films are not the ones which travel most successfully from continent to continent. Charlie Chaplin is the delight of Arab children. Jackie Coogan is the delight of French, Belgian, English, and Irish adults. It was impressive to read in all our papers that the League of Nations knocked off work when Jackie visited Geneva, that, he was honorably received by Sir Eric Drummond and photographed under the memorial tablet to President Wilson. If there were anything in Mr. Hays’s theory of moving pictures and a cemented world, surely the United States would have entered the League the next day.

Mary Pickford is as overwhelmingly popular in Europe as at home. A fair proportion of the eight hundred thousand letters which she has received in the past five years, and which have failed to depress her spirits or destroy her belief in the sanity of the human race, have come from foreign enthusiasts. But only two years ago ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ one of the most successful of American films, was suppressed in France; perhaps out of deference to the black troops, perhaps from fear lest it should suggest to some imitative madman the murder of the French president. It was richer in knowledge and understanding than ninety-nine out of a hundred movingpicture plays; but it did not present itself as a bond of sympathy between the American and the Gallic mind, nor as a welcome proof of ‘how alike we are.’

It would be unwise and ungrateful to doubt the educational value of the film. Only an expert can speak with assurance on this point. Since I read in the veracious pages of the Nineteenth Century that ‘slow motion’ illustrations of lawn tennis have helped players to improve their stroke, I am prepared to respect any utility claim. But education is a side issue in the gigantic business of making moving pictures. It is not to educate the public that billions of dollars are invested in this industry. The million-dollar film, ‘with every dollar showing,’ is not an educational film. The fabulous salaries are not paid to men, women, and children who are imparting information. The uncounted throngs who go to moving-picture halls do not go to be educated. The uncounted halls make no pretense of educating them.

Whatever is meant by the phrase ‘people’s university,’ it must not be taken to imply any avenue to knowledge. ‘Le monde où l’on s’ amuse’ is now everybody’s world; and the task of amusing everybody, apart from the task of educating anybody, is the biggest business going.

There is nothing reprehensible about the daily search for amusement, if it is not called education. There is nothing repellent about the childishness of the average film, if it is not called an influence. The unconscious humor of the movie consists often in the contrast between the thing as we know it and the thing as we have it described to us. Sentimentalism is not a regenerative force, any more than debauched history is a source of universal enlightenment. If, by the rarest of all rare chances, a film is produced which is beautiful, interesting, and accurate, the producers, doubtful of our capacity to appreciate its worth, proceed to insult our intelligence by advertising it in terms which are reminiscent of Barnum in the forties.

A case in point is ‘Grass,’ the most remarkable performance ever achieved by the camera. It tells a tale of sober truth which is as adventurous as an epic. It shows us, with a wealth of beautiful detail, the migration of the Baktyari, a nomadic Persian tribe of unknown ancestry, in search of food for their herds; of the perils they brave, the hardships they endure, the traditions they follow. Nothing simpler or more serious could be conceived. Nothing bolder or more determined could be recorded.

Is it really necessary to headline this accurate narrative as ‘written by an angry God, staged by fear, adapted by disaster’? Is it well to describe the stars as ‘doubting,’ the sun as ‘laughing in cynical glee,’ the snow as ‘burning like the fires of Hell,’ the sunshine as ‘ freezing the blood in the veins,’ the herdsmen themselves, who do as their fathers did before them, as ‘fighting a finish battle with a Mad God, on a battlefield planned by the hand of cruel destiny, and commanded by the angel of disaster’?

This is a deplorable way to write. It is not fair to the innocent stars, or to the unconscious sun, or to the snow which is like snow the world over, or to the uncomplaining Baktyari, or to God. The habit of ascribing to God our owm point of view is not, as we might suppose, confined to simple savages. Highly educated people are sometimes content that He should supplement their intelligence. Mrs. Stowe ascribed to Him the authorship of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her only excuse for the statement is that she meant it to be complimentary.

If we heard less about the making of films, we should probably be more contented when we see them. If we were not led to expect the impossible, we should never dream of asking it. All moving-picture men know the popularity of animals. Every kind of beast or bird, from a kitten which we can see at home to a goat or a hen which we never want to see at all, delights us on the screen. Its naturalness of demeanor contrasts favorably with the facial contortions and irrepressible gestures of the actor. Why, then, when we are so easily pleased, should one of the producers of ‘Quo Vadis’ think it wise to tell us that the lions employed in this spectacle were not circus lions or zoölogicalgarden lions, but captives from the Sudan, ‘absolutely wild, and in their ferocious natural state.’ As if this were not terrifying enough, we were furthermore informed that the creatures were maddened by starvation and by the smell of warm blood before being turned into the arena; in consequence of which one of them leaped the twenty-foot barrier, and devoured a rehearsing Roman.

Well, lions will be lions, and it was unreasonable, so said the producer, for the family of the victim to raise a row over the perilous nature of the performance. It was equally unreasonable for us to be disappointed because these furious animals, when screened, appeared calm and collected, distressingly indifferent to the Christians, and disposed to stand around in groups and discuss the situation. They were certainly handsome, but they were of the cricket rather than of the football order of players.

An American film director has recently admitted (in the Literary Digest) that actors who have to do with lions are not paid high salaries, because they are in no great peril. A lion, it seems, has, like Mr. Wilson, a singletrack mind. His method of assault is always the same, and, when understood, can be avoided. A tiger is temperamental, and consequently dangerous; a lion is dependable, and consequently safe.

It is the habit of moving-picture magnates to lay the blame for most of their absurdities on the shoulders of the censors, who are the privileged meddlers and muddlers of the country. A big New York producer said last year that no Pennsylvanian had any business to find fault with the movies, because he or she had yet to see one as it emerged unspoiled from the studio. We have no doubt that the unconscious humor of the censor rivals, though it cannot surpass, the unconscious humor of the producer. Perhaps the inimitable touch of the ‘Lost World’ marriage came from the censor’s hand. A valiant effort was made recently in Philadelphia to film a sermon, to illustrate with pictures the preaching of a highly successful evangelist who had been telling — or rather reminding — a forgetful world that the wages of sin is death. The Pennsylvania Board of Censors, disliking or distrusting sermons out of church, — and who can blame them? — cut these pictures so liberally that they told no story at all, and left a bored and mystified audience in doubt as to the lesson they were meant to convey.

When ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ was produced, a strange rumor went the rounds that Tess was hanged in one state and reprieved in another, according to the prejudices of the censors. The Pennsylvania Board has been known to strike out the word ‘anarchist’ and substitute the word ‘fanatic,’ as illustrating its own standpoint; while in Ohio a parrot was prohibited from saying ‘Give him hell, Dickey!’ lest it scandalize the ears of maturity.

But after all what is a marriage, or a hanging, or a sermon, or a swearword, more or less? Mrs. Gerould is doubtless right when she says that nobody fit to be a censor would ever consent to be a censor. He has to see to it that the average film resembles Mrs. Inchbald’s celebrated description of her own countenance, ‘voluptuous without indelicacy,’and the line of demarkation is a difficult one to draw. Few reformers bring to their work anything but good intentions; and good intentions have gone a long way toward wrecking the happiness of men and the blessed simplicities of freedom.

At their worst, however, the blunders of the censors are incidental. They can be trusted to spoil a scene or two, but they cannot destroy realism in what is already unreal. The blunder of the producer is fundamental. It is contempt for the public’s intelligence. This contempt may be justifiable, but it should not be so artlessly recorded. In the matter of titles it betrays itself in a nervous preference for words which mean nothing, and so cannot be misunderstood. When Barrie’s clever play, The Admirable Crichton, was screened, the management, apprehensive lest the name should suggest to Americans ‘something connected with the navy,’ changed it to ‘Male and Female,’ which had the advantage of being equally applicable to Hamlet, or Abie’s Irish Rose. The English comedy, Captain Applejohn, was adroitly rechristened in New York Captain Applejack; but, when turned into a movie, this title was considered as too intoxicating, and was changed again to ‘Strangers of the Night.’ Ever and always the managers and producers of motion pictures act on the assumption that their public, if not actually feebleminded, is

Even the captions seem written for the blackboard of a child’s school rather than for the ‘people’s university.’ ‘The winter was long in passing, but it passed’ (‘Tides of Passion’), swings us back to the chapter on ‘Verbs and Their Tenses’ in our first little grammar. ‘Like a knight of old, inspired by a shining star, Jimmy ventures forth to slay the Dragon’ (‘Bad Company’), has the familiar inaccuracy of a second reader. If, as Current History tells us, ‘the movies are peculiarly fitted to the age in which we live,’ what is the intellectual status of our day?