The Art of the Moving Picture

THE GENERAL PHOTOPLAY SITUATION IN AMERICA, JANUARY 1, 1922, ESPECIALLY AS VIEWED FROM THE HEIGHTS OF THE CIVIC CENTRE AT DENVER, COLORADO, AND THE DENVER ART MUSEUM, WHICH IS T...

THE OUTLINE WHICH HAS BEEN ACCEPTED AS THE BASIS OF PHOTOPLAY CRITICISM IN AMERICA, BOTH IN THE STUDIOS OF THE LOS ANGELES REGION, AND ALL THE SERIOUS CRITICISM WHICH HAS APPEAR...

The Art of the Moving Picture, as it appeared six years ago, possessed among many elements of beauty at least one peculiarity. It viewed art as a reality, and one of our most fa...

In the second chapter of book two, on page 8, the theoretical outline begins, with a discussion of the Photoplay of Action. I put there on record the first crude commercial film...

that remain in the memory with any sharpness in 1922, except The Faith Healer, founded on the play by William Vaughn Moody, the poet, with much of the directing and scenario by...

of chapter two. The Photoplay of Action. Like the Action Film, this aspect of composition is much better understood by the commercial people than some other sides of the art. So...

of chapter three, The Intimate Photoplay. Charlie Chaplin has intimate and painter's qualities in his acting, and he makes himself into a painting or an etching in the midst of...

continuation of the chapter on Fairy Splendor. In this field we find one of the worst failures of the commercial films, and their utterly unimaginative corporation promoters. Ag...

about the Splendor Pictures, in chapters five, six, and seven. This is an element constantly re-illustrated in a magnificent but fragmentary way by the News Films. Any picture o...

argument of the whole of the 1915 edition has been accepted by the studios, the motion picture magazines, and the daily motion picture columns throughout the land. I have read h...

the one preceding is that the fewer words printed on the screen the better, and that the ideal film has no words printed on it at all, but is one unbroken sheet of photography....

chapter, on page 189, I suggest suppressing the orchestra entirely and encouraging the audience to talk about the film. No photoplay people have risen to contradict this theory,...

monument, just as it was written, in 1914 and '15. It indicates a certain power of forecasting on the part of the writer. We drys have certainly won a great victory. Some of the...

paraphrased almost bodily as the preface to my volume of verses, The Golden Whales of California. "I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry," a song of some length recently publis...

stand as written in 1914 and '15. It shows the condition just before the war, better than any new words of mine could do it. The main change now is the growing hope of a backing...

been carried out on a limited scale, and as a result of the suggestion, or from pure American instinct, we now have handsome gasoline filling stations from one end of America to...

It has its direct relation to the Hieroglyphic chapter, page 171. I note that I say here it costs a dime to go to the show. Well, now it costs around thirty cents to go to a goo...

mean not only artists, such as are named in this chapter, but dreamers and workers like Johnny Appleseed, or Abraham Lincoln. The best account of Johnny Appleseed is in Harper's...

referring again to the same book, I assumed, in The Golden Book of Springfield, Illinois, that the Acceptable Year of the Lord would come for my city beginning November 1, 2018,...

While there is a great deal of literary reference in all the following argument, I realize, looking back over many attempts to paraphrase it for various audiences, that its appe...

I liked this Rochester idea. I felt that once it was started the films would take their proper place and dominate the project, disinterested non-commercial films to be classed w...

Let us assume, friendly reader, that it is eight o'clock in the evening when you make yourself comfortable in your den, to peruse this chapter. I want to tell you about the Acti...

Let us take for our platform this sentence: THE MOTION PICTURE ART IS A GREAT HIGH ART, NOT A PROCESS OF COMMERCIAL MANUFACTURE. The people I hope to convince of this are (1) Th...

Though the Intimate-and-friendly Photoplay may be carried out of doors to the row of loafers in front of the country store, or the gossiping streets of the village, it takes its...

Just as the Action Motion Picture has its photographic basis in the race down the high-road, just as the Intimate Motion Picture has its photographic basis in the close-up inter...

A special development of this aptitude in the hands of an expert gives the sea of humanity, not metaphorically but literally: the whirling of dancers in ballrooms, handkerchief-...

The Typhoon, a film produced by Thomas H. Ince, is a story of the Japanese love of Nippon in which a very little of the landscape of the nation is shown, and that in the beginni...

As far as the photoplay is concerned, religious emotion is a form of crowd-emotion. In the most conventional and rigid church sense this phase can be conveyed more adequately by...

The outline is complete. Now to reënforce it. Pictures of Action Intimacy and Splendor are the foundation colors in the photoplay, as red, blue, and yellow are the basis of the...

While the Intimate-and-friendly Motion Picture may be in high sculptural relief, its characteristic manifestations are in low relief. The situations show to better advantage whe...

The Action Pictures are sculpture-in-motion, the Intimate Pictures, paintings-in-motion, the Splendor Pictures, many and diverse. It seems far-fetched, perhaps, to complete the...

production of The Avenging Conscience. It is also an example of that rare thing, a use of old material that is so inspired that it has the dignity of a new creation. The raw stu...

I have said that it is a quality, not a defect, of the photoplays that while the actors tend to become types and hieroglyphics and dolls, on the other hand, dolls and hieroglyph...

The stage is dependent upon three lines of tradition: first, that of Greece and Rome that came down through the French. Second, the English style, ripened from the miracle play...

I have read this chapter to a pretty neighbor who has approved of the preceding portions of the book, whose mind, therefore, I cannot but respect. My neighbor classes this discu...

screen, is as useful in the moving picture alphabet as the letter D in the printed alphabet. This hand may open a lock. It may pour poison in a bottle. It may work a telegraph k...

At this point I climb from the oracular platform and go down through my own chosen underbrush for haphazard adventure. I renounce the platform. Whatever it may be that I find, p...

Whenever the photoplay is mixed in the same programme with vaudeville, the moving picture part of the show suffers. The film is rushed through, it is battered, it flickers more...

This is a special commentary on chapter five, The Picture of Crowd Splendor. It refers as well to every other type of moving picture that gets into the slum. But the masses have...

The moving picture captains of industry, like the California gold finders of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have the same glorious irresponsibility and oc...

The moving picture goes almost as far as journalism into the social fabric in some ways, further in others. Soon, no doubt, many a little town will have its photographic news-pr...

Many a worker sees his future America as a Utopia, in which his own profession, achieving dictatorship, alleviates the ills of men. The militarist grows dithyrambic in showing h...

If he will be so indulgent with his author, let the reader approach the photoplay theatre as though for the first time, having again a new point of view. Here the poorest can pa...

The whirlwind of cowboys and Indians with which the photoplay began, came about because this instrument, in asserting its genius, was feeling its way toward the most primitive f...

Without airing my private theology I earnestly request the most sceptical reader of this book to assume that miracles in a Biblical sense have occurred. Let him take it for gran...