The really big thing about American films abroad—in Europe, in Asia, in Africa and South America—is that they carry American ideas, and American ideals and American influence, around the world.
To-day the American girl is known all over the globe. The faces of our screen actresses—Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge, Lillian Gish, and many more—are watched in Calcutta and Petrograd, Cape Town and Budapest.
Doesn’t that make it seem a fortunate thing that Mary Pickford, with her charming smile, has come at least as near as she has to representing the real heart of America—all that is cleanest and kindest and best in us? For, when all is said and done, she more truly, perhaps, than any other one living person represents America in foreign lands.
And on the other hand, doesn’t it seem a pity, and more than a pity—yes, a great misfortune, a terrible calamity—that so many films, made by commercial-minded producers with apparently no spark of the real spirit of service or patriotism, go forth across the face of the world and spread abroad their idiocies, and meannesses, and lack of idealism, and even uncleannesses, as representatives of America?
Think of that, next time you happen to pay money to watch a worthless movie; it may be representing America abroad!
To-day the country that sends its films into foreign lands is leading the thought of the world.
It is probably not too much to say, although the bare thought itself is a staggering one, that to-morrow the country that excels in the production of popular motion pictures will dominate the world.
Fortunately, in the early days of the picture industry in this country there was a man known as David Griffith, who was something of an actor, a little of a writer, and possessed no small measure of real power as a story-teller.
From the very start, the mechanical and inventive end, as well as the commercial and organization end, of the industry in this country outstripped competition. Combined with Griffith’s story-telling ability, this technical supremacy and commercial organization put American films in front of those produced elsewhere.
American movie-palaces mushroomed into existence by the hundreds, and we developed a huge domestic market that made possible extravagant spectacle-productions costing first tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of dollars. The name of David Wark Griffith became known all over the world; the supremacy of American films became everywhere acknowledged; pictures from the United States went to every corner of the globe, carrying American prestige and influence, increasing American commercial prosperity and development.