These definitions, both of them, may be very aptly applied to the work of the photoplaywright. The theme is the subject or topic on which you intend to base your screen drama. It is also the "short melody" or central idea around which your story is to be woven, developed or built up.
But it is the common fault of some to regard theme as something in the nature of a sermon, a preachment, a proverb. Yet, to quote Mr. William Archer in his admirable text upon "Play Making," theme "may sometimes be, not an idea, an abstraction or a principle, but rather an environment, a social phenomenon of one sort or another."
Thus, you see, it is not necessary that you should set out with some such declaration as: "I shall write a photoplay based on prohibition, divorce, woman's suffrage, or bolshevism," as the case may be. In fact, should you begin your work with any such notion in mind, your photoplay story probably would sound much like a theological discourse, or a treatise that might go well before some mutual improvement society, but which would not likely attract the masses who go to the cinema, seeking relaxation and entertainment.
If I may be permitted, I will cite an instance of theme for a photoplay from one of my own stories, produced by Mr. Cecil B. De Mille. In "Don't Change Your Husband" I put the theme of the story into the title. Yet, "Don't Change Your Husband" was not a sermon—it was an entertainment, and was accepted as such, though there was the thread of a moral, as stated in the title, running through the entire story. A photoplay may instruct, may elevate, may inspire, and at the same time entertain. But the writer who sets out to put a sermon into a play is apt to make a sorry mess of it. When he finishes, he is unlikely to have either a good sermon or an entertaining photoplay.
Nevertheless, to get the best results—to respond to the
