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A Plea for the Photoplay
By Ada Barrett
THE photoplay form of entertainment is in keeping with our modern method of getting thru with everything as quickly as possible. Even our pleasures have to be taken in doses, as it were, and to be disposed of as quickly and easily as possible. We have learned to eliminate distance and time by means of the four-day ocean liner and 80-mile an hour train, by the telegraph and the telephone ; if we wish to hear selections from the opera, we can have them brought to us by means of the phonograph, and with equal facility can we see tragedy or comedy portrayed by the photoplay.
This country is composed of many different nationalities, yet the moving picture play speaks to all alike. There is no language that the eye cannot interpret. Pictures are like figures — they tell facts. It is remarkable to see the interest manifested by a mixed east-side audience in the pictured plays presented to them. All nationalities are represented in the audience, and the realistic portrayal of life — so much more vivid than when presented in the theaters — the absolute absence of "effects/' the real life action shown in these picture plays, appeals alike to the warm southern and the more phlegmatic northern temperaments. The love of pictures must be inherent in most of us, if we judge from the emotions displayed by these mixed audiences, for in them we find all sorts and conditions of persons; and yet, all are more or less affected by a simple photoplay, which is only telling them vividly, tho without words, what they can perhaps see for themselves in their everyday lives, or what their friends
across the seas are doing in the land they have left. To the foreigner some of the plays give an accurate representation of the customs and habits of the country of his adoption. He may not understand one word of the English language, but the photoplay tells him all he wants to know. His eyes cannot deceive him, and the pictures are eloquent of the life into which he will be or now is thrown. They give him an insight into his new surroundings such as no other medium could do, and he sees in these pictured stories of life the same types as are in the audience of which he is one. These wordless, silent stories would seem to prove that the silence, which is golden, can speak more eloquently than the combined language of all nations. It is literature, drama and amusement, brought into the life of the poorest and most ignorant. Would not our forefathers have laughed at such an idea, yet it is so. Just as the first printing press opened for the human race an illimitable field of knowledge, so did the photoplay open an equally illimitable vista of the world and its wonders, natural and artificial, the habits of other nations, the opportunity of seeing our daily life depicted in a vivid manner, and of enjoying an accurate representation of our favorite tragedies and comedies. Moving pictures have brought the world more vividly before our vision than any other agency. The public has demonstrated very plainly that it wants good, clean, high-class plays, be they serious or comic, instructive or otherwise. It does not cost the photoplay makers any more to prepare a good, well acted drama than it does to prepare a cheap,
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