The cry for more censors is but the cry for the man with the broom.
Sometimes it is a matter as simple as when a child is scratching with a
pin on a slate. While one would not have the child locked up by the chief
of police, after five minutes of it almost every one wants to smack him
till his little jaws ache. It is the very cold-bloodedness of the
proceeding that ruins our kindness of heart. And the best Action Film is
impersonal and unsympathetic even if it has no scratching pins. Because
it is cold-blooded it must take extra pains to be tactful. Cold-blooded
means that the hero as we see him on the screen is a variety of amiable
or violent ghost. Nothing makes his lack of human charm plainer than when
we as audience enter the theatre at the middle of what purports to be the
most passionate of scenes when the goal of the chase is unknown to us and
the alleged "situation" appeals on its magnetic merits. Here is neither
the psychic telepathy of Forbes Robertson's Cæsar, nor the fire-breath of
E.H. Sothern's Don Quixote. The audience is not worked up into the
deadly still mob-unity of the speaking theatre. We late comers wait for
the whole reel to start over and the goal to be indicated in the
preliminary, before we can get the least bit wrought up. The prize may
be a lady's heart, the restoration of a lost reputation, or the ownership
of the patent for a churn. In the more effective Action Plays it is often
what would be secondary on the stage, the recovery of a certain glove,
spade, bull-calf, or rock-quarry. And to begin, we are shown a clean-cut
picture of said glove, spade, bull-calf, or rock-quarry. Then when these
disappear from ownership or sight, the suspense continues till they are
again visible on the screen in the hands of the rightful owner.
In brief, the actors hurry through what would be tremendous passions on
the stage to recover something that can be really photographed. For
instance, there came to our town long ago a film of a fight between
Federals and Confederates, with the loss of many lives, all for the
recapture of a steam-engine that took on more personality in the end than
private or general on either side, alive or dead. It was based on the
history of the very engine photographed, or else that engine was given in
replica. The old locomotive was full of character and humor amidst the
tragedy, leaking steam at every orifice. The original is in one of the
Southern Civil War museums. This engine in its capacity as a principal
actor is going to be referred to more than several times in this work.
The highest type of Action Picture gives us neither the quality of
Macbeth or Henry Fifth, the Comedy of Errors, or the Taming of the Shrew.
It gives us rather that fine and special quality that was in the
ink-bottle of Robert Louis Stevenson, that brought about the limitations
and the nobility of the stories of Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and the
New Arabian Nights.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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