But at least the theater is not forced to be
satisfied with such degrading comedies and pseudotragedies. The world
literature of the stage contains an abundance of works of eternal value.
It is a purely social and not an esthetic question, why the theaters
around the "White Way" yield to the vulgar taste instead of using the
truly beautiful drama for the raising of the public mind. The moving
picture theaters face an entirely different situation. Their managers
may have the best intentions to give better plays; and yet they are
unable to do so because the scenario literature has so far nothing which
can be compared with the master works of the drama; and nothing of this
higher type can be expected or hoped for until the creation of
photoplays is recognized as worthy of the highest ideal endeavor.
Nobody denies that the photoplay shares the characteristic features of
the drama. Both depend upon the conflict of interests and of acts. These
conflicts, tragic or comic, demand a similar development and solution on
the stage and on the screen. A mere showing of human activity without
will conflict might give very pleasant moving pictures of idyllic or
romantic character or perhaps of practical interest. The result would be
a kind of lyric or epic poem on the screen, or a travelogue or what not,
but it would never shape itself into a photoplay as long as that
conflict of human interests which the drama demands was lacking.
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