CHAPTER XXI

Many artists have found the field of motion picture directing exceedingly attractive. The majority of them have entered the new field in the capacity of art directors, planning and supervising the construction and the dressing of the settings. Several others have graduated from such posts to the positions of directors.

Perhaps the artistic side of picture production is the one which had developed less than any of the others. For a long time art directors, interior decorators and artistic designers were unknown elements in a motion picture studio. The early picture public demanded sensation and action. When an interior setting was used furniture was thrown in it indiscriminately. The more, the better. Grand Rapids and Louis IV furnishings were thrown in regardless. An early biblical picture showed the scene of the last supper with the assembled Apostles seated in a variety of modern furniture from the factories of the middle western states.

It is only of comparative recency that real artists and architects have entered the production field. Today all the larger studios have extensive art departments that co-operate with the director and his staff in the preparation of the settings. Accuracy distinguishes the majority of the work of these departments. Errors in period pictures are seldom to be discerned even by the most watchful.

But as yet the art director has failed to put in an appearance where he is needed quite as much as in the preparation of the interior settings; I refer to the exterior. Beautiful as are many of the exteriors seen in the modern pictures they often lack the proper balance. Any art student could tell you and point out where the composition of many exteriors is faulty.

It is too much to ask that every motion picture director be an art director besides. A man might be perfect as a dramatic director and still be utterly lacking with respect to composition. But if the director cannot be versed in both the arts there should be, and doubtless will be in time, an art director working along with the dramatic director on every scene, interior or exterior.

The former artists now actually directing are few in number. Perhaps the foremost of them all is Maurice Tourneur who came from France several years ago and who was previous to his stage and screen work in that country, a mural decorator. His early productions here attracted widespread interest in the art itself because of the evident touch of an artistic hand. “The Blue Bird” was a triumph from the standpoint of pictorial artistry. So were several others he made at the same time. But they didn't make money. So Mr. Tourneur turned to the production of frankly melodramatic subjects. These he endowed too with all the art at his command and so lifted melodrama to a higher plane than it ever reached before.

Perhaps the fate of Mr. Tourneur's “The Blue Bird” is timely to recall now. Those today who clamor for more artistic and better things on the screen and who opine that no director or producing company has the courage to attempt such things and who insist that if such things were attempted they would be eagerly received, will do well to heed the pathetic fate of “The Bluebird.” The picture director and producer are always willing to strive for something a little finer on the screen but to date the public hasn't given them any appreciable amount of encouragement.

Hugo Ballin and Penhryn Stanlaws are among the artists now directing who have attained prominence in both fields. The latter has made long strides in the short time he has been in a picture studio and gives promise of attaining the same heights in the newer art that he attained in his original line of creative endeavor.