University of Virginia Library

THE ART OF THE MOVING PICTURE

CHAPTER I

THE POINT OF VIEW

This book is primarily for photoplay audiences.
It might be entitled: "How to Classify
and Judge the Current Films." But
I desire as well that the work shall have its
influence upon producers, scenario-writers, actors,
and those who are about to prepare and
endow pictures for special crusades.

While many leading players and producers
are mentioned, I do not presume to attempt a
rigid roll of honor, but rather to supply a way
of approach to the moving picture field.

Many of the productions discussed are but
recently on the market, or lately reissued.
In such neighborhoods as the book has the
honor to be read enterprising local managers
might combine to send for them, in the order
named.

According to this work, there are three types

of photoplays: pictures of (1) Action, (2)
Intimacy, and (3) Splendor. The Action Pictures
are those where the outpouring of physical
force at high speed is the main source of drama.
The Spoilers, from the novel of Rex Beach, is
an example. It is the chronicle of a fight for
a Klondike mine, played by William Farnum,
Kathlyn Williams, and others. The Intimate
Pictures are based on the ability to photograph
and magnify small groups "close up."
They give us idyls, genre pictures, village
comedies, and the like. An example is Enoch
Arden, played by Alfred Paget and Lillian
Gish. The Splendor Pictures may be subdivided
into four sorts: (1) The Fairy Tale
Splendor is such a production as Cinderella,
played by Mabel Taliaferro. (2) The Patriotic
Splendor is such a one as Cabiria, a story
of ancient Italy. Gabriel D'Annunzio is the
writer and producer thereof. (3) The Crowd
Splendor is the panorama where the principal
dramatic asset is in showing the changing moods
of informal public gatherings, and putting the
different types of mobs and assemblies in contrast
with one another while they wave their
characteristic flags, rags, or torches. Such
gatherings of men are found in The Italian,
the leading part of which is acted by George
Beban. (4) The photoplay of Religious Splendor
is such a one as The Death of Thomas
Becket. He dies in Canterbury Cathedral in
his priestly vestments, surrounded by long-robed
monks, a martyr-priest, defending his
order.

Action, intimacy, and splendor blend in every
kind of reel, but some one of these qualities is
dominant in each production. To keep his
action from becoming hysterical, the fastidious
scenario-writer or producer should study those
standard sculptures that are depicted in motion,
such as the work of Myron of the ancient time,
or MacMonnies of the present day. On the
other hand the maker of the Intimate Photoplay
should let his mind dwell upon the work of
such artists as the Dutch Little Masters of
Painting. Here he finds interiors that are
close-up, well composed, delineated with a
realism that is quaint and kindly. But the
maker of Splendor Pictures could key them with
profit to standard mural painting and architecture.
And I go on to suggest in another chapter
that the makers of trick pictures of jumping
furniture and the like evolve them into real
fairy-tales, with fewer things moving, and give

those things a ritualistic and architectural dignity.
And completing the analogy, my position
is that religious and patriotic pageants should
be in the mood of nature-cathedrals like Stonehenge,
or metropolitan Cathedrals, like Notre
Dame, whatever the actual materials and subject-matter.

In short, by my hypothesis, Action Pictures
are sculpture-in-motion, Intimate Pictures are
paintings-in-motion, Splendor Pictures are architecture-in-motion.

This work tries to show that whatever the
seeming emphasis on dramatic excitement, the
tendency of the best motion pictures is to
evolve quite a different thing; the mood of
the standard art gallery, the spirit of Tintoretto
rather than that of Molière. The ripe
photoplay is the art exhibition, plus action.
The speed limit is soon reached. But the limit
of pictorial beauty cannot be reached. This is
the substantial effect of the book to this point.
Then follows chapter twelve giving a summary
that is in part a review: thirty points of difference
between the spoken drama and the photoplay.

Then I endeavor to show a certain surprising
parallelism between Egyptian hieroglyphics

and this new silent drama, a suggestion I
owe in its inception to my friend, James Oppenheim.
The development of the argument is
confidently based on the diagram under the
word Alphabet in the Standard Dictionary.
Here ends the first and more dogmatic part of
the book. The principal headings thus far are
proposed as a basis for photoplay criticism in
America.

The rest of the work is a series of afterthoughts
and speculations not brought forward
so dogmatically. In this more informal section
I begin by airing my opinion that the best
censorship is a public feeling for beauty. To
this end the chapter advocates the acknowledgment
of the photoplay house as an art
gallery, the suppressing of the music, and
making the moving picture audience even more
conversational by taking a nightly ballot on
the favorite film or episode.

Then since the restitution of picture-writing
revives the cave-man point of view on a higher
plane, I advocate the endowment of certain
special films likely to be neglected by commerce,
films that this cave-man needs.

The various types of plays suggest particular
social thoughts. The Action Play, it seems to

me, is especially adapted to the moral crusader.
The Intimate Play is adapted to endowment
and development by the pure æsthete, and is
tentatively recommended to the imagist poets.
Meditation in another field, that of the Crowd
Picture, brings me to the contemporary fact
that the cheap photoplay house is the best
known rival and eliminator of the slum saloon,
the erstwhile poor man's club. On this turns
some political speculation.

Then I show how California, as the natural
moving picture playground, has the possibility
of developing a unique cultural leverage upon
America. Then I bring forward the proposition
that the photoplay is such a good natural medium
for architectural propaganda that architects
could use it to stimulate the rebuilding of
America into a sort of perpetual World's Fair,
if they had the courage of such persons as
Alexander, Julius Cæsar, or Napoleon. In the
course of the effort to bring about a greater
range of Fairy-Tale and Religious Splendors I
advocate specifically a deeply considered rendition
of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, or as
it is better entitled: The Chapters on Coming
Forth by Day.

The last discourse is on the forecasters of a

newer civilization, and shows how Jules Verne,
Edward Bellamy, and H. G. Wells need more
mystical and less mechanical successors when
we formulate our America of Tomorrow. And
maintaining that the photoplay cuts deeper
into some stratifications of society than the
newspaper or the book have ever gone, I try
to show that the destiny of America from many
aspects may be bound up in what the prophet-wizards
among her photoplaywrights and producers
mark out for her, for those things which
a whole nation dares to hope for, it may in the
end attain.