The
intellectual background of most photoplays is insipid. By telling the
plot without the subtle motivation which the spoken word of the drama
may bring, not only do the characters lose color but all the scenes and
situations are simplified to a degree which adjusts them to a
thoughtless public and soon becomes intolerable to an intellectually
trained spectator.
They force on the cultivated mind that feeling which musical persons
experience in the musical comedies of the day. We hear the melodies
constantly with the feeling of having heard them ever so often before.
This lack of originality and inspiration is not necessary; it does not
lie in the art form. Offenbach and Strauss and others have written
musical comedies which are classical. Neither does it lie in the form
of the photoplay that the story must be told in that insipid, flat,
uninspired fashion. Nor is it necessary in order to reach the millions.
To appeal to the intelligence does not mean to presuppose college
education. Moreover the differentiation has already begun. Just as the
plays of Shaw or Ibsen address a different audience from that reached by
the "Old Homestead" or "Ben Hur," we have already photoplays adapted to
different types, and there is not the slightest reason to connect with
the art of the screen an intellectual flabbiness.
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