The soul of the moving picture

Transcriber’s Notes
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
Scene from The Nibelungs .
BY WALTER S. BLOEM
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN
BY ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1924 By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The influence of the moving picture on the souls of the various peoples of the earth has become so great that an attitude of indifference toward this marvelous invention is no longer permissible. We see ourselves forced to take a definite stand for it or against it; we are obliged to line up as friend or foe of the film. It is, however, no longer sufficient to oppose the moving picture in a spirit of indulgent contempt or fanatic hostility. All the world knows that there are more bad moving pictures than good ones, and that the moral and aesthetic tendency of a great many films is of a quite negligible nature. But if the moving picture were in reality the offspring of the Devil, as many theologians and academic demi-gods the world over contend, thinking people would be at once confronted with this insoluble problem: How does it come that thousands upon thousands of human beings scattered over the earth are laboring, with intense resignation and passionate zeal, to the end that the film may be made more perfect artistically and cleaner from a purely moral point of view? The striving after money has naturally something to do with their efforts. To offer this, however, as a final explanation of this unusual situation would be an idle method of reasoning. You cannot explain the joy these men are taking in their creative efforts in this way, for their souls are in their work.
To many thinking people, the real nature of the moving picture is wrapped in mystery; it is a brilliant and enigmatic riddle to them. They recognize, though they fail to comprehend, the fact that the moving picture, despised without restraint and condemned on general principles only the other day, has won an incomparable victory over the hearts of men—a victory, too, that will be all the greater and more beautiful once the psychic and moral perfection of the moving picture has been accomplished.