The film answers back : an historical appreciation of the cinema (1939)

ance in the symbolic expression of the social consciousness as the fair-ground. The Vortex, a play written in England by Noel Coward about the same period, may be placed in the same category of subconscious symbolism. In the early 1920's, Louis Delluc made three films with these significant titles: Thunder, Fever, Flood. Each was expressive of pathos, dissatisfaction with life, illusion, the feeling that all is vanity. There was the same attitude of throwing up the hands in despair that we saw in Germany. One point of great interest may be noted. The French films of the Dr. Caligari type, the type that reflects the deepest trough of social despond, did not arrive before about 1 92 1. The Germans knew the fruits of war when the war ended, but it took several years for the first flush of victory and elation to evaporate from the French, before they began to suspect that the peace was possibly only an uneasy interval between one war and the next. The difference in the nature of the social consciousness between Germany and France at the immediate cessation of the war may be gauged by the difference between The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the French serial film Judex, which came at about the same time. Directed by Louis Feuillade, it featured Rene Creste as Judex, the redresser of wrongs, who always escaped from the tightest situations after the most terrific struggles. This serial was very popular with the French public. Judex was the male prototype of the woman wonder in the American serial of the type of The Exploits of Elaine. The American films circulated widely in France, and the healing influence of the Chaplins and the Westerns did very much to keep the French people from slipping into the greater depths of morbidity that had been reached in Germany. Despite the fact that France had been invaded for nearly 210