_In both
cases the act which in the ordinary theater would go on in our mind
alone is here in the photoplay projected into the pictures themselves.
It is as if reality has lost its own continuous connection and become
shaped by the demands of our soul._ It is as if the outer world itself
became molded in accordance with our fleeting turns of attention or with
our passing memory ideas.
It is only another version of the same principle when the course of
events is interrupted by forward glances. The mental function involved
is that of expectation or, when the expectation is controlled by our
feelings, we may class it under the mental function of imagination. The
melodrama shows us how the young millionaire wastes his nights in a
dissipated life, and when he drinks his blasphemous toast at a champagne
feast with shameless women, we suddenly see on the screen the vision of
twenty years later when the bartender of a most miserable saloon pushes
the penniless tramp out into the gutter. The last act in the theater may
bring us to such an ending, but there it can come only in the regular
succession of events. That pitiful ending cannot be shown to us when
life is still blooming and when a twenty years' downward course is still
to be interpreted. There only our own imagination can anticipate how the
mill of life may grind.
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