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THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE REVIEW
New York City, New York, U.S.A.
29 July 1917
(page 8)
DAYLIGHT AND BAD TASTE.
Some of the motion picture
producers are fighting death, others are fighting taxes, and
all of them are fighting the “More Daylight” movement.
Delegations of motion picture men have journeyed to
Washington to help ward off the proposed Federal “daylight”
bill. Their attitude is disclosed by “The Moving Picture
World,” which says:
“The members of the Senate and the
House of Representatives who are advocating this measure do
not realize what it will mean to the motion picture
business. It is a menace which is not exceeded even by a
heavy war tax—‘daylight saving’ would mean the cutting in
half of the receipts from theatres and open-air parks.
“In an interview with the
Washington correspondent of ‘The Moving Picture World’ a
prominent, nationally known exhibitor said: ‘I hope that the
exhibitors of the United States will awaken to the fact that
“daylight saving” is pending—that id the Calder bill is
adopted by the Senate, or the original Borland bill, or its
substitute amended, is passed by the House, and one or the
other agreed upon by both, it will be found that the motion
picture business will be hampered to an extent undreamed of.
Everywhere that they have ‘daylight saving’ and motion
pictures you will find that the former is accomplishing
little, while the latter is losing much.”
At the same time the picture men
are in fear of special taxes on admissions or upon total
earnings. But the biggest fight which confronts them,
according to Aleister Crowley, is the fight against artistic
degeneration. Mr. Crowley says, in “Vanity Fair”: [What's Wrong with the Movies?]
“It is bad taste—and not the world
war—which is killing the movies. Bad taste in every
direction. In the first place, the wretches in power, when
they get a perfectly competent author—say a novelist of
great repute—will not trust him at all. The great writer’s
story has always been a ‘movie’—on the screen of the
author’s mind. It was complete in every picture, before he
ever put pen to paper. But the producing wretches do not
know that. They do not realize that he has done the thing
right. They do not even realize this in the case of a famous
novel—or play—where a long success has proved it. These
preposterous people do not understand that they insult the
public and make themselves ridiculous into the bargain when
they offer to ‘improve’ Victor Hugo, to bring Dumas ‘up to
date,’ to put ‘punch’ into Ibsen, or to ‘alter’ history a
bit in order to give Joan of Arc an earthly lover.”
From Japan, from China and from
Russia come reinforcements to the real art side of motion
pictures. A Russian company proposes the filming of the
great Russian dramatic pieces. Of this movement “The
Dramatic Mirror” says:
“The works of Tolstoy, Dostoivsky, Turgenieff, Sienkiewicz,
Pushkin, Ostrovsky and Andrieff in filmed form will soon be
as familiar to the patrons of American motion picture
theatres as they are now familiar in book form to the
cultured publics of all the European countries. The Russian
Art Film Corporation has just started a campaign for the
popularization of these authors in this country.
“It is generally acknowledged that
the Slav novelists tower head and shoulders above any other
national school of fiction. Great Britain and France alone
excepted. Tolstoy has celebrated the glories of Russia
rolling back the tide of Napoleonic invasion; Sienkiewicz,
the martial grandeur of antique Poland in age-long wars with
all its neighbors and with itself.
“No one can fail to realize the
spectacular possibilities of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’ or,
on the other hand, Sienkiewicz’s mighty trilogy, ‘With Fire
and Sword,’ ‘The Deluge’ and ‘Pan Michael.’
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