Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

Synopsis

If I look upon a motion picture as a kind of substitute for some stage play or novel, it seems to me a poor thing, only a substitute for something better; but if I look upon it as something real in itself, a new form of pictorial art in which things have somehow been conjured into significant motion, then I get many a glimpse of touching beauty, and I always see a great range of possibilities for richer beauties in future examples of this new art. Then I see the motion picture as the equal of any of the elder arts.

“Movie fans” in general are my audience, my hope being that they may find something new in this discussion, something, here and there, which they had not themselves thought of, but which will help them toward a conscious and keen enjoyment of beauty scarcely observed before, and to a more certain discrimination between genuine art on the screen and mere pretentious imitations of art.

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