It used to be thought that “great” pictures could be made by unlimited expenditure in “mob” scenes and “big sets.” This scene, however, is from one of the films that helped disprove it; costing nearly half a million, it proved to be a comparative failure.
CHAPTER IX
AMERICAN MOVIES ABROAD
Have you ever happened to think: the world has at last found a universal language!
The men who created Esperanto, or any of the other so-called “universal” languages, little imagined that before their product even reached its twenty-fifth birthday the old world would have unconsciously accepted an entirely new method of interchanging ideas—and that the “new” method would be the oldest language of all. “Say it with pictures.”
Long before the Romans began to roam—even before the Athenians settled down in Greece—men talked to each other in pictures. The Eskimos scratched their tales on bone, and the Egyptians carved pictures of eagles and lions into solid rock, and from such crude beginnings, little by little, the various languages evolved.
Now, we have a chance, in a way, to go back to the beginning, without losing the later developments.
The human face is a document that all may read. An expression of sorrow is not confined to any one language. A smile goes round the world. Fear—anger—hope—excitement—can readily be recognized, whether the face that expresses them is white or black, man or woman or child, long or thin, or round and slant-eyed.
A boy laughing in Southern California may make a Hindu in India smile in sympathy, when that laugh appears upon a Bombay screen. Tears are universal. So is a grin.