The theater can show us only the events at one spot. Our mind craves
more. Life does not move forward on one single pathway. The whole
manifoldness of parallel currents with their endless interconnections
is the true substance of our understanding. It may be the task of a
particular art to force all into one steady development between the
walls of one room, but every letter and every telephone call to the room
remind us even then that other developments with other settings are
proceeding in the same instant. The soul longs for this whole interplay,
and the richer it is in contrasts, the more satisfaction may be drawn
from our simultaneous presence in many quarters. The photoplay alone
gives us our chance for such omnipresence. We see the banker, who had
told his young wife that he has a directors' meeting, at a late hour in
a cabaret feasting with a stenographer from his office. She had promised
her poor old parents to be home early. We see the gorgeous roof garden
and the tango dances, but our dramatic interest is divided among the
frivolous pair, the jealous young woman in the suburban cottage, and the
anxious old people in the attic. Our mind wavers among the three scenes.
The photoplay shows one after another. Yet it can hardly be said that we
think of them as successive. It is as if we were really at all three
places at once.
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