We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
INTPwODUCTION 15
for, regardless of the strength of your feeling, loftiness of your thought, you cannot paint a great picture, compose a sonata or write a good book or play unless you are skilled in the practice of those arts.
The motion picture which tells a story endeavors to awaken certain emotions in an audience; whether these emotions be of mirth, delight, sadness, terror, or a mixture of them all, does not matter, since it expresses or endeavors to express emotion, it is a work of art. The manner in which it accomplishes this is a measure of its artistic quality.
A motion picture can tell a story and not be a work of art only when it is unmistakably an imitation of some other picture or play, for imitation is no part of art. Art is creation. A copy, however skillful or perfect it may be, is not a work of art. A photographed play, regardless of the popularity it may achieve with the public for the quality of its drama or comedy, the skill of the players, the excellence of the photography and sound recording, could not in any sense be considered a work of art, because it has created nothing, is merely a reproduction of something already existing.
Only when it tells a story in the language of the cinema: when it creates new values and emotions, and presents them in a manner unique, peculiar to itself, can a motion picture be called a work of art. The quality of the emotions presented, and the manner in which they are expressed, determines whether it is trivial or great art.
While we have endeavored to show that a motion picture is essentially a work of art, we are aware that no one considers the creation of motion pictures to be anything but an industry.
A motion picture is a complex product, the fabrication of which requires a large and varied group of specialists, the construction of huge, expensively equipped studios, the employment of scores of carpenters, painters and others to build the required settings, thousands to work in them, magnificent theatres in which to exhibit the pictures.
As all this requires the expenditure of vast sums of money, it is but natural to think of the motion picture only as an industry.
The need for the industrial organization that has been built around the interesting but still questioned art of the motion picture is self-evident; for, to it the motion picture owes its present state of development, its dominant position in the world of entertainment. On the other hand, this industrial organization of the motion picture would never have thrived and progressed to its present powerful state had it not been for certain notable examples of motion picture art.
For example: What was the motion picture industry before the advent of the great picture "The Birth of a Nation?" Every great picture that followed has served to bring thousands of new patrons to the theatres — and keep them coming, thereby increasing the revenue, stabilizing the business, placing it on such a firm foundation that