Have we, in fact, cause for optimism regarding the future of the amusement screen? We find to-day the press, the pulpit and the playwrights denouncing the shortcomings of the movies, chastising their secret faults and their open transgressions; editors, preachers, dramatists posing as Savonarolas at a spiritual crisis in the career of a young but alarmingly potent world power. These are portents in the sky that promise well for the future of the screen. If our leading thinkers, writers and publicists, yes, and picture producers, were indifferent to the sins of omission and commission attributable for a quarter of a century to the movie its case would be hopeless. But it is worth saving, as the best minds in our country well know, and the criticism that it is always undergoing is a most encouraging phenomenon.
The regeneration of the movies must be both through external and internal sources. A producer who recently relieved his over-burdened soul in Collier’s Weekly puts the whole matter in a nut-shell when he says:
We must have better pictures. And to get them we need these two things: inside the industry, the higher standards and leadership that can only come in with intelligent capital; and outside the industry, the support and encouragement of such good pictures as are already made. We of the motion-picture industry who stand for more intelligent pictures can only provide them if you on the outside, in addition to criticising in no uncertain terms the stupid films that offend you, will take the trouble to hunt up, and go to see, and boost, the photoplays that are good enough to merit your interest. When you do that we can have better movies.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY
Its Rise from Mush to Masterpieces—Its Debt to D. W. Griffith—“The Birth of a Nation”—A New Way to Tell Old Tales—“The Three Musketeers”—“The Count of Monte Cristo”—“The Four Horsemen”—How Book-Worms May Renew their Youth.
CHAPTER VI
THE MOVIE AND THE LIBRARY
Dr. Jekyll has begun belatedly to make his elevating influence felt in the movies. Press, pulpit, producers, are backing him in his fight against Mr. Hyde. But the latter seems to be a psychological cat with nine lives. The power which he has exercised for evil in the realm of the photoplay for a quarter of a century he refuses to relinquish without a fight, and an immediate and complete victory for Dr. Jekyll only the most optimistic dare to predict.