Stages were set up; more and more
elaborate scenes were created; the film grew and grew in length.
Competing companies in France and later in the United States, England,
Germany and notably in Italy developed more and more ambitious
productions. As early as 1898 the Eden Musee in New York produced an
elaborate setting of the Passion Play in nearly fifty thousand pictures,
which needed almost an hour for production. The personnel on the stage
increased rapidly, huge establishments in which any scenery could be
built up sprang into being. But the inclosed scene was often not a
sufficient background; the kinematographic camera was brought to
mountains and seashore, and soon to the jungles of Africa or to Central
Asia if the photoplay demanded exciting scenes on picturesque
backgrounds. Thousands of people entered into the battle scenes which
the historical drama demanded. We stand today in the midst of this
external growth of which no one dreamed in the days of the kinetoscope.
Yet this technical progress and this tremendous increase of the
mechanical devices for production have their true meaning in the inner
growth which led from trite episodes to the height of tremendous action,
from trivial routine to a new and most promising art.
CHAPTER II
THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES
It was indeed not an external technical advance only which led from
Edison's half a minute show of the little boy who turns on the hose to
the "Daughter of Neptune," or "Quo Vadis," or "Cabiria," and many
another performance which fills an evening.
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