May 3, 1924
They say I am a realist—a man who functions best when reproducing in the films life as he sees it or knows it. Whereupon the editor promptly assumes that fantasy will be perfectly easy for me, and propounds a question that scarcely can be answered by anything other than a dream. Fortunately, I have my fancies.
“What,” asks the editor in substance, “will be the status of the motion pictures one hundred years hence?”
I have wondered that very thing many times myself, and since I am one of those persons who sometimes respond to their own imagery with answers, I can at least give an opinion. I may qualify this by adding that it is the opinion of one who has devoted a large part of his life to the subject.
In the year 2024 the most important single thing which the cinema will have helped in a large way to accomplish will be that of eliminating from the face of the civilized world all armed conflict. Pictures will be the most powerful factor in bringing about this condition. With the use of the universal language of moving pictures the true meaning of the brotherhood of man will have been established throughout the earth. For example, the Englishman will have learned that the soul of the Japanese is, essentially, the same as his own. The Frenchman will realize that the American’s ideals are his ideals. All men are created equal.
It is not to be presumed that I believe one hundred years from now the pictures will have had time to educate the masses from discord and unharmony. What I do mean to say is, by that time war, if there is such a thing, will be waged on a strictly scientific basis, with the element of physical destruction done away with entirely. My theory is that conflict, if and when it arises, will find itself governed by scientific rules and regulations to which both sides of the controversy will subscribe. Armies outfitted with boxing gloves, man to man, may, I think, go into “battle” to determine the victor. I am not smiling with you now. I am quite sincere. 1t will be a matter of science and fair play to the last letter. I am just as sincere when I predict that after the “battle” the warriors will repair to a prearranged cold-drink canteen and have grape juice. Just as the old English debtors’ prison was wiped out by education, so will armed conflict be wiped out by education.
There is little question that a century ahead of us will find a great deal more of the so-called intimate drama presented on the screen, although there will always be a field set apart for the film with a vast background such as “The Birth of a Nation” and “America.”
You will walk into your favorite film theatre and see your actors appearing twice the size you see them now, because the screens will be twice as large, and the film itself twice as large also. With these enlargements, “close-ups” will be almost eliminated, since it will be relatively easy to picture facial expression along with the full figure of the performer. It will always be necessary to picture the face in pictures. It is the face which reflects the soul of a man.
Our “close-ups,” or “inserts,” as I call them, are sometimes cumbersome and disconcerting. I invented them, but I have tried not to overuse them, as many have done. It is a mechanical trick, and is of little credit to anyone.
We shall say there are now five elaborate first-run picture theatres on one New York street, Broadway. In 2024 there will be at least forty. Cities of 1,000 will average at least six. Cities of 20,000 and thereabout will have over a hundred. By virtue of its great advantage in scope, the motion picture will be fitted to tell certain stories as no other medium can. But I must add that the glory of the spoken or written word in the intimate and poetic drama can never be excelled by any form of expression.
In the year 2024 our directors of the better order will be men graduated from schools, academies, and colleges in their curriculum courses in motion-picture direction. Our actors and actresses will be artists graduated from schools and colleges either devoted exclusively to the teaching and study of motion-picture acting or carrying highly specialized courses in acting before the camera. This is inevitable.
I am well aware of the fact that the present cumbersome and haphazard method by which screen talent is selected (and by screen talent I mean to say directors, designers, actors, and camera men) will not endure long. Time will find this matter adjusted upon a basis of merit and equipment.
Probably on an average of a dozen times each week persons ask me if I think color photography in the motion pictures will be perfected and made practical. Most assuredly, I do think so. Certainly all color processes and tint methods at present in use are wrong. They are not arrived at with any degree of inventiveness, and they cannot last. At present the colored pictures we see are made by the use of gelatines on the film or by the use of varicolored lenses which fly before the film. Thus we find a great lack of harmony and accuracy. I am willing to confess that I have tried them. But I should be the last to speak of my color effects seriously. We have been merely exploring and speculating.
Only through one method will color be naturally and properly given to objects and persons in the motion pictures. This is a method which will develop a film so sensitive that it will record the natural tints and colors as the picture is being photographed.
Of course, to the man or woman untrained in these lines, this seems remote and hardly possible. Still, consider the conquering of the air—the discovery of a means whereby the human voice may be projected through air three thousand miles! When we realize what has been done in the wireless it seems utter folly to suppose that color photography—natural, permanent color photography—may not be found for the films. One hundred years from now the color of a woman’s eyes and hair, the tint of the sea, the hues of the rainbow itself will be a natural part of every motion-picture play.
On the other hand, I am quite positive that when a century has passed, all thought of our so-called speaking pictures will have been abandoned. It will never be possible to synchronize the voice with the pictures. This is true because the very nature of the films foregoes not only the necessity for but the propriety of the spoken voice. Music—fine music—will always be the voice of the silent drama. One hundred years from now will find the greatest composers of that day devoting their skill and their genius to the creation of motion-picture music.
There will be three principal figures in the production of a picture play—the author first, the director and music composer occupying an identical position in importance.
We do not want now and we never shall want the human voice with our films. Music, as I see it within that hundred years, will be applied to the visualization of the human being’s imagination. And, as in your imagination those unseen voices are always perfect and sweet, or else magnificent and thrilling, you will find them registering upon the mind of the picture patron, in terms of lovely music, precisely what the author has intended to be registered there. There is no voice in the world like the voice of music. To me those images on the screen must always be silent. Anything else would work at cross purposes with the real object of this new medium of expression. There will never be speaking pictures. Why should there be when no voice can speak so beautifully as music? There are no dissonant r᾿s and twisted consonants and guttural slurs and nasal twangs in beautiful music. Therefore the average person would much prefer to see his pictures and let the voice which speaks to him be the voice of music—one of the most perfect of all the arts.
I seem a little emphatic on this particular point, and I mean to be.
In the year 2024 we shall have orchestras of many kinds playing for the pictures. Each motion-picture theatre will have several orchestras of diversified character. The big, robust, outdoor pictures will have more than one orchestra in attendance at all times. String quartets will play for the mood of a string quartet; sighing guitars and thumpety banjos will play for their mood in the picture play; symphonic orchestras of greater proportions than we now dream of will be employed for moods to fit the sublime and the grand.
We have scarcely an inkling of what the development of music is going to be in the film play.
It really seems to me a little bit humorous now to realize how narrow a place in our everyday life the film is playing, despite the great rise in attendance in the last few years. One hundred years hence, I believe, the airplane passenger lines will operate motion picture shows on regular schedule between New York and Chicago and between New York and London. Trains, which will be traveling twice or three times as fast as they do now, will have film theatres on board. Almost every home of good taste will have its private projection room where miniatures, perhaps, of the greater films will be shown to the family, and, of course, families will make their albums in motion pictures instead of in tintypes and “stills.” Steamships will boast of first runs, which will be brought to them in mid-ocean by the airplanes, and I may add that almost all subjects in our schools will be taught largely with the use of picture play and the educational animated picture.
By the time these things come to pass, there will be no such thing as a flicker in your film. Your characters and objects in pictures will come upon the screen (which by then may not even be white, and certainly may not be square, or look anything like what it does now), and they will appear to the onlookers precisely as these persons and objects appear in real life. That much discussed “depth” in pictures, which no one as yet has been able to employ successfully, will long since have been discovered and adopted. The moving canvas will not appear flat, but if a character moves before a fireplace you will recognize the distance between the character and the fireplace. Likewise, in landscapes, you will feel the proper sense of distance. Your mountain peaks will not appear to rise one on top of the other, but will appear exactly as if you stood and looked at them. Of course these are merely details that will require long and intense study and experiment, but they will come. In other words, from the standpoint of naturalness, motion pictures one hundred years from now will be so nearly like the living person or the existing object pictured that you will be unable, sitting in your orchestra seat, to determine whether they are pictures or the real thing.
By a perfection of the studio lighting system, film will be as smooth before the eye as if it were a stationary lighted picture. By that time the studios will have changed greatly, and instead of actors being forced to work before great blinding lights, which now at times register 117 degrees of heat, we shall have “cold” lights. We are experimenting in these already. Our studios will be great spreading institutions, as large as many of the cities surrounding New York. I think that one hundred years from now there will be no concentrated motion-picture production such as our Hollywood of today. Films will be made in various cities, most of which will be located near to New York.
It nettles me at times when I am asked if I do not think that in time the popularity of the motion pictures will subside. It seems to me ridiculous. As ridiculous as to assume that the popularity of music, or painting, or acting on our spoken stage will go out.
No. I not only do not think the popularity of motion pictures will decrease; I am already on record as predicting that the popularity of pictures will increase and keep on increasing. Consider my own “Birth of a Nation.” It was revived two years ago, after having been off for ten years, and it was as great a success in revival as in the original. The popularity of motion pictures (which are a natural form of dramatic expression) will ride higher and higher as the quality of motion pictures rises higher and higher. One hundred years from to-day we shall have novelists devoting all their energies toward creating motion-picture originals. By this I mean that the novelists giving their exclusive time to the films will create characters and situations and dramatic plots in terms of pictures. Motion-picture historians will have been developed, and they will be a great help to production. Motion-picture artists of all kinds will have grown up. It will all make for a more natural, dignified, sincere result, because we shall have all our different branches devoting their time and efforts toward the completion of a single object—a motion picture.
I have no hesitancy in saying that the radio has claimed its share of amusement audiences. Unquestionably it has kept many persons away from both the films and the spoken stage. It is a great, useful discovery—a glorious medium. One hundred years from now there will be no confusion as between the radio and the motion picture. There cannot possibly be a connection nor a conflict. It is just possible there may be conflict as between radio and spoken stage, but never between radio and film. Each occupies its own exclusive place in our lives.
Now let us prepare for a small-sized shock. One hundred years from today it will cost perhaps twice as much as it costs to-day to see the really first-class cinema. It is perfectly proper that it should. Time, effort, energy, and preparation put into pictures at that time will have advanced greatly. I am just honest enough to say that I do not at the moment understand how more time, effort, energy, and preparation could have been put into my own pictures; but, then, for the average large picture play this will hold true. The average supposedly high-class film play in 2024 will be on view at not less than $5 a seat.
In looking into the crystal I have seen many things which I have not touched upon here. Perhaps they would be too tedious to bring out and discuss. But of one thing I may place myself on record plainly and without qualification. The motion picture is a child that has been given life in our generation. As it grows older it will develop marvelously. We poor souls can scarcely visualize or dream of its possibilities. We ought to be kind with it in its youth, so that in its maturity it may look back upon its childhood without regrets.