What’s Wrong with the Movies? by Aleister Crowley in Vanity Fair, Jul 1917.

“MODERN opera is suffering in the same way. The only pains taken at the Metropolitan, let us say, is with the hiring of the singers; but they are not stunned, carried out themselves by the glory of witnessing a really artistic operatic creation. There is everywhere evident this same blind fatuity in the movies.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “See the wealthy New York man of fashion, dressing for a dinner at Mrs. De Peyster Stuyvesant’s! See how deftly he shoots on his detachable cuffs and snaps on his elastic tie. See how charmingly he wears his derby hat with his evening coat. He even retains it, possibly fearing that it may be stolen in Mrs. Stuyvesant’s drawing room, which is, of course, furnished in the manner of the gentlemen’s lounge on a Fall River boat.”
  2. “TO return to the question of the author. Who invented modern musical comedy? Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert insisted–made it a point in every contract or license–that his libretto was to have no cuts, no modifications, no gags; even his minutest stage directions were to be followed implicitly.–Take it or leave it. Most of his stuff is therefore as strong and sound and playable today as it ever was.”
  3. “Tinker with the whole, bring in one inharmonious element and the entire conception goes by the board. A Zulu chief is a magnificent object–but you must not exchange his gum-ring for Charlie Chaplin’s derby hat.”
  4. “ANOTHER point is the question of ‘new stuff.’ One enterprising movie manager did actually go so far as to engage a set of competent artists–at $150 per diem, all told–to get out new ideas for him: original costumes, lights, scenery, and all the rest of it. They produced new ideas. ‘Fine! Fine!’ cried he. Then a horrid doubt seized him. ‘But this isn’t a bit like what we’ve been used to!’ he stammered. ‘No,’ they said, ‘it’s new. You said ‘new,’ you know!’ ‘That’s right, I did,’ he cried, ‘but, say, the public wouldn’t stand for this, it’s too new.'”
  5. “O, purblind crew of miserable men, cannot you see that the only way to succeed in the movies, or in any art, is to get the men who really know how, to create new effects of art, and then to trust them implicitly? The worst author is better, as an author, than the best ‘producer’ or ‘director,’ however highly paid, unless he sticks to his business of visualizing, with sympathy and fidelity, the author’s conceptions and ideals. The only good films, the only popular films, are those by living authors of repute, who have somehow been able to insist upon having their conceptions literally carried out, and not meddled with by a band of misguided and inartistic managers.”