Von Stroheim: "A Synonym for Piffle"

Director Erich Von Stroheim on the need for realism in motion pictures:

“I concede that there must always be entertainment in a screen venture. Some exhibitors have misused the word until it has become a synonym for piffle. There will always be a demand for the production the merely gratifies and soothes the tired business man, the blasé society woman and the weary working girl. Just as there always will be magazines with stupid stories and far-fetched detective yarns; they are cheap word narcotics.

“I want to bring to the screen some great characters. The screen must be life’s mirror, part of the time, anyway. It is possible to tell a great story in motion pictures in such a way that the spectator forgets he is looking at beauteous little Gertie Gefelta, the producer’s pet, and discovers himself intensely interested, just as if he were looking out a window at life itself. He will come to believe that what he is gazing at is real—a camera man was present in the household and nobody knew it. They went on with their daily life with their joys, fun and tragedies, and the camera stole it all . . ."

["Screen Needs Realism," New York Times, August 5, 1923, p.X2]