Hands of Hollywood (1929)

Hands of Hollywood Yet, even with this concrete proof of motion picture achieve ments, we hear one constant criticism, phrased usually in the form of a query: "Why, for every great picture produced, are there so many ordinary or even poor ones shown?" Let us answer that question by asking another: "Why, for every great masterpiece in the other arts, are there so many ordinary or even poor creations? Among the hundreds of thousands of "best sellers" and books of all kinds, how many really great pieces of literature have been written in the last twenty-five years? Among the thousands of poems appearing in magazines, newspapers and books of verse, how many really great poems have been written in the last twenty-five years? Look at the stage! What do you find? How many truly great plays have been produced among the thousands of ordinary ones? How much genuine progress has the stage made in the last twenty-five years? Consider the countless paintings. If all the daubed canvasses of the last twenty-five years were placed end to end, they would reach up to the moon and down the other side again. But where are your Michel Angelos, your Murillos, your Rembrandts, among these? In the realm of music, perhaps, the loveliest of all the arts, how many great compositions have been created, compared to the neverending stream of cheap ballads and jazz numbers? Yet, all these arts : literature, poetry, drama, painting, and music, have had not years but centuries of development, technique and tradition behind them, whereas the Motion Picture was born only yesterday. In a practical sense, it is barely twenty-five years old. When Homer was writing his "Iliad," Mary Pickford had not worn her first pinafore, and when Shakespeare was engaged on "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE," the cobbler was not yet born who was to nail the soles on Charlie Chaplin's funny shoes. [16]