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483F
Vienna, Berggasse 191
9 June 1925
Dear Friend,
First of all let me express the hope that by the time you receive this letter—written an hour after receiving yours—you will be out of bed and have the use of your voice again. My news is not bad, I have my
usual small complaints to put up with, but on the whole I am better. I stop work on the 27th inst.
I do not feel comfortable about the magnificent project. Your argument that if we do not do it, it will be done by others seemed at first irresistible. But then it struck me that what these people are willing to pay for is obviously the authorization. That they can get only from us. If they do something completely wild because we refuse, we cannot stop them and are not implicated. After all, we cannot stop anyone from making such a film without obtaining our consent.
After settling this argument, the matter can at least be discussed. My chief objection is still that I do not believe that satisfactory plastic representation of our abstractions is at all possible. We do not want to give our consent to anything insipid. Mr Goldwyn was at any rate clever enough to stick to the aspect of our subject that can be plastically represented very well, that is to say, love. The small example that you mentioned, the representation of repression by means of my Worcester simile, would have an absurd rather than an instructive impact.
I am naturally completely confident that you yourself would never approve of anything susceptible to such or similar objections. As you seem not disinclined to engage in the matter, I suggest that you do the following. Tell them that I do not believe in the possibility that anything good can be produced and therefore for the time being cannot give my authorization. But if examination of the script should satisfy you, and me also, of the opposite, I shall be willing to give it afterwards. I do not deny that I should prefer my name not to come into it at all.
If, contrary to expectations, everything were to