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CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM. WHY THE NEW SPIRIT?
Not long ago, hearing that I was preparing the present book, and noting the title, Mr. John Galsworthy inquired of me, " Is there a New Spirit in the Cinema? " The question is a natural one for two reasons. In the first place, the film is still so crude in many particulars, its subject retains so many of its early rudimentary characteristics, that it is hard to believe that a new spirit has actually made its appearance. In the second place, many persons regard the Cinema as a wonderful thing that was born yesterday and therefore is much too near the date of its birth to manifest anything but the spirit with which it was born. There has not been time for the old spirit to give place to a new one. Just as many of us think that writers are still too near the great war to produce the truly great war epic, and that, therefore, authors of so-called great war books like " All quiet on the Western Front," by Remarque, " The Case of Sergeant Grischa," by Arnold Zweig, have accomplished only what the present-day perspective has enabled them to accomplish.
Perhaps the term " New Spirit " is perplexing. It is one of those significant terms which have come to lose their meaning through ignorant misuse. But it must be admitted that the word " spirit is a vague one like the word " soul " which it is now the fashion to use at random. Recently, Mr. J. L. Garvin made the astounding discovery that his newspaper has a soul.1 No more sensational discovery has been made since the. celebrated Mr. Hannen Swafrer discovered that he was about
i " The Soul of a Newspaper." Observer. 17 November, 1929.