Filmed Literature.
The “movies” make their appeal through the rapidity with which the plot of the story is carried along, and the exaggerated emphasis with which the different points are brought out. It is a primary or kindergarten for the schooling of those people into the region of emotional experiences. By co-operating with the “movies” the Library in time might be able to grade the work so that a brief and simple love-story might be heard or read with understanding. The repetition of the visual presentation of the idea possible in a moving picture would help to make its meaning clear.
Take a novel as an example: in this case Ethel M. Dell’s “The Keeper of the Door.” The chief character is the doctor or surgeon, who makes every endeavour to retain life in the human body, he being the keeper of the door, not allowing the spirit to depart. There is something really beautiful as this picture is portrayed: the vigilance of the doctor, and the kindness and patience of the nurse; yet in spite of all this attention the activity of the patient is slowly waning, and then the last breath is taken and human life ceases to be.
Other features create interest—the surroundings, the way the characters play their part, and the emblematical representations all create a longing to read the book. In reading, the whole scenes return as witnessed; greater interest is created, and one cannot imagine a person losing his place of reading, or the inability to fit the characters in their places, even after some considerable time has elapsed.