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Writing about the moving picture is one of the least rewarding jobs in the world. I have done it for more than twenty years, at various times, and I can honestly say that the only pleasure it has given me has been this: that I have had to remember the movies about which I wrote. It is comparatively easy to convey to a reader some idea of the quality of a book — you can tell the plot or quote a paragraph; it is possible with good illustrations to take a reader with you as you discuss painting or sculpture. But the moving picture, like music, cannot be quoted or illustrated on the printed page. The publisher of this book may be irritated by my saying so, but I hasten to soothe him. The collection of pictures to which this text is an accompaniment is the best instigator of memory. Even if the reader has never seen the particular movie from which a photograph is reproduced here, his familiarity with movies in general will start up in his mind the action of which the illustrations are a part. Just as in practice a book about music reproduces a few bars to illustrate a melody or a bit of counterpoint, which you can take to the piano and finger out if you do not read music easily, so the pictures in this book will recall to you things seen. Ideally a book about music should be accompanied by phonograph records and a book about movies by film and projector. As that is not possible, writers must try to convey the effect of music or the effect of the movies to their readers. If a man existed who had never heard a song in his life, the syllables "ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" would mean nothing to him; those who remember the song would sing it to themselves; and a person who knew what song was, but had never heard this particular song, would still know that they represented a melody of some sort. To give the sense of the movie is actually a little bit easier because in a moving picture there are palpable and familiar things: chairs and tables and motor-cars and rivers and trees and, above all, human beings, usually engaged in a story which can be easily retold. But all of these things miss the essential: the one thing which no written word can reproduce is the movement itself.
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CITY-FREE" LIBRARY
SACRAMENTO, CALU^