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.
The Pictorial Lesson in "Carnival" | Marion F. Lanphier of The University of Chicago THERE has been a widespread and generally applied conclusion that foreign films are far superior to American films. This is an erroneous and an unfair criticism of American productions. If the few foreign films that have been imported were typical of the foreign producing field, then indeed would the conclusion be justified. As a matter of fact, however, American films as a whole are far superior to foreign films as a whole. Gen- erally our product, hopelessly limited by commercialism as it is, presents a fair degree of comparative excellence; foreign films, en masse, are exceedingly bad, and the oversea market is welcoming our artists more warmly than its own. But the occasionally good foreign film is of such flawless artistry that only the rarest of American productions can touch it. Three such films come to my mind—three involving the very difficult technique of mob scenes. Mob scenes, usually, are street scenes, and the street scene has no place in the ordinary film, theoretically speaking. Unity in the photoplay is a broad proposition but not so much so that we start nowhere. The unity of place, while desirable, can not be strictly maintained, be it rooms or cities, but the unity of type of place (or relation of place) can and ought to be observed, unless for some exceptional effect. Therefore, unless a film demand a street setting entirely, we should use but such exteriors as are closely con- nected with our interiors; gardens, verandahs, etc. Carry the character beyond such place relationships and you break unity of action. Therefore, the street scene, when it does occur, is an exacting task com- manding the most- accurate direction in itself, and should be introduced with nicest care. The American producer is apt to shoot the mob with no, or an insufficient amount of drilling, down to the last extra. The compiler finishes the blunder by inserting it as often and as casually as whim directs. A mob flash is a dangerous luxury. In the three latest foreign films mob scenes were used as effectively as such scenes can be used. Whether or not the foreign directors gave to them the accurate thought implied in the foregoing remarks, I can not say. The results, however, were the kind we never seem to get. In Carnival, Deception and Passion the mob scene and flash came only when they were logically the essential exception. The crowd was not flashed 18