CHAPTER XII

Earlier in these chapters reference was made to the number of capable and skilled men, as yet unproven with respect to the extent of their emotional experience, who were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to step into the limelight with a pictorial masterpiece. In only a little over the last twelve months two such men were given the opportunity and both proved themselves, emerging from their experiences as directors whose names now stand for the best in motion pictures. Of and from one of these men, Rex Ingram, we have already heard.

The other is Frank Borzage who in the short space of a year has given picture audiences “Humoresque” and “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford,” both artistic and financial successes. Mr. Borzage is obviously a born director, that is a born creator, a born artist. The qualities are to be observed in him merely on a chance conversation. It is easy to see that here is a man with a great groundwork of emotional experience to serve him in his art. And Mr. Borzage is one of those who subscribe to the theory set forth in the first chapter of this book; that without a full background of emotional experience a director can never rise to the heights of his craft.

Mr. Borzage's method of working may not be distinctly individual with him but at least no other director has stated as clearly what he believes to be one of the secrets of making good pictures. Mr. Borzage believes that behind every face he sees there is some sort of a story. Unable to find out exactly what this story is, he will draw it in part from the face itself. The face will tell him certain things, the rest will be supplied from the imagination.

“Characterization is what makes pictures attractive,” Mr. Borzage says, “Sincere, true characterization. There isn't enough of it in the average picture of today. There is too much dealing with the surface things, the superficial things. The majority of directors don't go deep enough into the personalities with which they deal.

“I believe in developing every character, no matter how small, that there is in my story if that development is to prove interesting. And by interesting I don't mean the blood-and-thunder sort of interest. A character doesn't have to have committed a murder or betrayed a friend, or to have won a battle in a war or politics to be interesting. It is the commonplace little things in that character's life that can be thrown up on the screen and made interesting, absorbing, living.

“It is my aim to develop characters on the screen that everyone in an audience will recognize. I want a man to say when he sees a character in one of my pictures, 'Well, that's awfully like Johnny Jones,' or I want him to say, 'Gosh, I did the same thing myself, yesterday.' That is the kind of a character that makes a hit on the screen. A character that everybody recognizes and immediately loves. In every face I see I find a story. It doesn't seem hard. The story is right there lying on top, easily visible. You can take it and make something real, vital out of it. And by face I don't mean face literally when it comes right down to directing pictures. Then by face I mean the characters in my story.

“So many times even in the best of stories, written by the best of writers and prepared by the best of continuity writers, it seems to me that opportunities have been overlooked for the development of character. It is probably because the majority of authors don't realize the extent to which you can go on the screen in developing a characterization. They are still thinking in terms of the printed page. They don't know quite how to think in pictures.

“And so if a minor character can be developed without crowding plot interest and the important characters (and certainly minor characters can be developed in this fashion) why I always want to do it and do do it.

“Again I say it is in these homely, plain, average characters that there lies the real interest for the majority of audiences. The average picture deals with a hero and heroine who are not average people. They are generally very superior in everything they do. Most producers and directors believe that audiences like such people and no other kind because they have always gone to see them on the screen and continue to do so. These superior people are in the majority of plays and pictures and stories that we see and read.

“But just stop and see where the plain, average character when elevated to the position of importance in a film or a play, has captured the hearts of thousands, millions. I refer to the plays, 'Lightnin',' and 'The First Year' and to 'Humoresque,' the picture. Here were plain, everyday people, just like all of us and just because they were so like all of us we like them better than we like swashbuckling heroes in modern adventure pictures and entirely too wide-eyed and pretty heroines in pictures supposed to be representing life.

“Of course, a dramatic picture with average people in it is the hardest thing in the world to write. That is, it seems to be from its scarcity. Perhaps though the writers proceed on the idea that audiences want fantastically heroic heroes and heroines because they believe people like to see themselves as they would like to be. This is a sound theory and no doubt is responsible for the popularity of the average picture but I think people really like to see themselves as they are. There are stories, and dramatic stories in real peoples' lives but of course they are hard to find. It's all very well to say that there's drama in the life of the man who delivers the milk and in the lives of those in the apartment next door. It's there all right. But find it! That's what I try to do and that's what I try to do in my pictures. That makes them a little bit different from the usual picture perhaps.”

Mr. Borzage's “Humoresque” and his more recent picture from the Cohan play and the Chester stories, “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford” bear silent witness to his ideas on picture making with respect to character development. “Humoresque” contained some of the keenest character studies ever screened. Its first half, dealing with Jewish family life in New York City's Ghetto was doted with gems of true characterization, recognizable as representing actually the average Jewish family of the east side. Much of this characterization was drawn from the work of the author, Fannie Hurst, and Mr. Borzage is the first to recognize this fact, and much more was supplied by the director himself. The manner in which he built up the character of the Jewish father, for instance, instilling into it the proper amount of sympathy, humor and racial characteristic, is a lasting tribute to its work.

There is an interesting story with respect to “Humoresque” that has often been told. The picture had cost a deal of money and was watched with particular interest by everyone in the studio where it was made from William R. Hearst, down to the merest property man. It was something of an experiment.

When it was finally completed and in readiness to be put before the public the heads of the organization decided not to put it out! They were afraid of it! Why? Well, because it dealt solely with Jewish characters, it didn't contain the ordinary type of motion picture plot, in brief, it was something quite apart from the usual type of picture. Therefore those who stood sponsor for it trembled lest it fail financially and trembled to the point where they decided it shouldn't be released at all.

And then someone spoke up and started to champion the picture. It may have been Mr. Borzage. But whoever it was the picture went into a theatre and from the first performance started to break records. And such has been the case with a number of the best pictures produced. “The Birth of a Nation” and “The Miracle Man” were considered by those supposed to know as failures before they were released. They would never make a penny. And all three of these pictures went out and cleaned up the shekels for their sponsors!

Mr. Borzage has a few words to say on the subject of directing which also stamp him as a man from whom greater successes still are to be expected in the future. “Every type of picture,” he says, “whether drama, melodrama, comedy or farce can be treated in the same way with respect to characterization. By this I mean that all such types of pictures are based primarily on the sincerity of their characterizations. If I were making slapstick pictures I would pay just as much attention to characterization as I do now. Look at Chaplin. Characterization, true characterization, is at the bottom of his success. It is what makes his pictures more than mere comedies but masterpieces of picture art.

“As for melodrama, I think it a vastly belittled type of entertainment. Of course the old melodrama, the type disparagingly referred to as 'ten, twenty, thirty' contained little merit beside its ability to thrill. Then there was no characterization except that which rose from the situations themselves. Situations created character, true to the rule of melodrama. But today in the pictures we have the old melodramatic situations fitted out decently with true characterizations. Critics are inclined to belittle them and call them cheap. But they don't seem to sense the idea that life is made up largely of melodrama. The most grotesque situations rise every day in life. Read the newspapers, talk with your friends and see if I'm not right. Coincidence runs rife in the life of everyone. And yet when these true to life situations are transferred to the screen they are sometimes laughed down because they are 'melodrama.'

“If this is true then all life is a joke and while some humorists hold to this idea, I am not one of those who believe it so.”