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INTRODUCTION xxxiii
moving on, like Poor Jo. Now, it moves Londonward.
There is one other difficulty that demands to be mentioned. It is that of writing a book on the Cinema that shall not be out of date as soon as it is written. The Cinema is moving with unexpected rapidity. It advances and retreats by turns. The present change seems to say that it has gone back to scratch for a fresh start all over again, from the very point where years ago it began to take the wrong path. Twenty years or more of development have been crowded into the past fifteen months. The grand scale possibilities of the Cinema have become recognised as never before. Talkie after talkie, colour picture film after colour picture have appeared treading upon each other's heels to announce that something new is taking place, and to suggest that something is about to emerge the magnitude and importance of which is being predicted by the Film Kings in such terms as Grandeur Films, Giant Films, and so on. Maybe it is something that will enable the Cinema to solve its own problem, and thereby to fulfil its function for man, both separately and as an organic part of the theatre.
The book came to be written at a moment when, in fact, the Cinema was at the parting of the ways. It was a moment when one vast cinema building had reached completion and another, and perhaps vaster, was demanding to be erected.
These circumstances produced the problem of writing a book not only of the moment but of permanent value. The only solution was to