Edward Sedgwick — Who is Responsible? (1926) 🇺🇸

Upon whom is to develop the responsibility for “better pictures”? Are better pictures a real issue? What is it all about anyway?

by Edward Sedgwick

Inevitably these and similar questions arise in one’s mind in considering the subject, and if better pictures are needed, who is to be the final arbiter? Upon whom must the responsibility for these better pictures rest?

They say the public wants them. Some people say the reason pictures aren’t better is because the public wants ’em the way they are. Some yearn for a higher art on the screen; others say that this or that cause is responsible for stereotyped screen drama — and a myriad theories, guesses, demands and suggestions cloak this mysterious subject vaguely referred to as better pictures.

As a matter of fact, pictures are better — and always getting better. And the destiny of the motion picture is a glorious one; one that will take it to the highest pinnacle among the arts.

And in connection with this fact, there is another. Every picture director has a direct responsibility for the fate of the motion picture art. The director who says to himself, “Well, I might as well leave the problems of better pictures to someone else and do what I’m given” is contributing his bit to the delay of the ultimate in picture art. He can’t stop it; he can only do one of two things — help advance it or help delay it.

The making of a motion picture is a complicated task, involving a hundred different elements, from the time a certain story — usually at this period in a very nebulous shape so far as picture adaptability is concerned — is chosen to the showing of the finished product on the screen. First, a treatment of the story is prepared, by a writer who translates it into a sort of running description of what will be seen on the screen. This in turn is written into a detailed scenario, or description of each scene to be filmed. Titles are inserted to suggest ideas for the writer who, in the final stage, will title the picture.

While technical experts, casting director, and technicians are working out details of cast and locales, the director’s responsibility begins. And, after all, it is up to him as to just what the picture will be, he visualizes each scene — and, if he is alive to his responsibility, seeks to better it. He must guard against many things in a story — it is not art to portray objectionable scenes; and it is not even good business.

I believe that the best psychology is for the director to imagine himself sitting in an audience viewing the imaginary picture. Thus he can visualize what he’d like to see, as an audience, on the screen. For, after all, we can’t always give an audience what’s good for it, to our notion. We have to give the audience what it wants to see — to be successful. But — we can put in much of what is good while doing this — by thinking a little instead of adopting the line of least resistance and “shooting” whatever is set before us.

The great picture successes of today are significant, in that they show a trend upward in the taste of audiences. They want human stories — the relation of a boy and a girl, for instance, if the boy is just a natural, human boy instead of a typical sheik — and the girl a wholesome, human girl — can be of more interest than a battle of great armies. Why? because it is showing the audience something in which every person visualizes himself or herself.

It is the innate tendency of every one of us to dramatize ourselves — put ourselves in the shoes of the characters on the screen — that gives the director and the producer their immense power for good or evil over the masses.

A boy in an orchestra seat is going to dramatize himself — as one of the characters he sees on the screen before him. He won’t mentally emulate a bad man — if that bad man’s character is so portrayed that the boy can see what is bad in him. None of us like to think of ourselves as deliberately evil. If we admit we have evil in us — we have extenuating circumstances, tucked away in our minds, to justify it.

To show the joys of villainy and cloak it with these extenuating circumstances on the screen, therefore, can be cited as an instance of dangerous preaching — dangerous because it is insidious.

A director can do untold harm to the girls of today by directing a character that gilds vice — no matter how politely.

These are matters of ethics — I believe the time will come when the screen directors will see that their duty in this regard is one higher than the duty even of the teacher or the ministers. The director can do so much more good — or so much more evil.

But aside from his duty to the race, the director should consider his duty to the screen. Sometimes a bad picture makes a temporary sensational success. But — unless it is fundamentally wholesome, it does not live. Unless it is good at its foundations it does not bring its creator a lasting fame.

But this ultimate goal is a responsibility to every one of us who are in the business of creating pictures. Every director must accept his share of it — if he would do his duty by the art that gives him a livelihood. Every producer must accept his share of this great and glorious responsibility — as must every actor, from the greatest star to the lowliest extra.

The public is our master — but we are responsible for serving that master the best we know how — for our own sakes and the sake of the art that is ever climbing to glittering heights.

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Better Pictures

For the past decade and more “Better Pictures” has been the cry that has come from many communities and from all sorts of civic, social and religious organizations. If better pictures constitute an issue, in what way should they be made better? What are existing faults and how may they be remedied?

Edward Sedgwick, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer director, brings up this issue and discusses it from the director’s viewpoint. But is it wholly the director’s problem. Does the entire responsibility for better pictures fall upon him. Or is it the producer who is the responsible party and the man to whom the motion picture world must look for the initiative in bringing about the desired result. Or, again, is it the public who, in the final analysis, registers the deciding vote and upon whom the responsibility really falls?

What is the real feeling of the theatre patrons on this subject? Aren’t they after all the ones from whom a definite expression of opinion should be received? And who should constitute themselves a judge of what “Better Pictures” really are?

These are questions in which every one connected in any way with the motion picture industry, whether directly or indirectly, as producer, director, player, writer, exhibitor or theatre patron is concerned. The Motion Picture Director as the voice of the industry and the representative magazine of the motion picture world is directly interested in this subject and in any solution to the question that may be achieved. What are your views?

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Collection: Motion Picture Director, July 1926