Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

172 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN of art can exert its power only through that final form which comes in direct contact with the appreciator. And many of the others who desire to preserve their work intact must gnash their teeth at the thought that no matter how carefully they may cut and join a film, it is likely to be marred before it reaches the projecting machine. An example of the amazing lack of artistic cooperation in the movie world is furnished by the following press notice, sent out from one of the largest moving picture theaters on Broadway. "Audiences who see a film projected on the screen at the Theater, seldom take the details connected with its showing into consideration. It is a well-known fact that a photoplay is seldom presented at the in the form it is received from the manufacturer. Every foot of film is carefully perused and cuts are made, either for complete elimination or for replacement in a more appropriate part of the story." Add to such deliberate desecration the havoc wrought by censors and by the eliminations caused by fire or breakage and you have a prospect of butchery which is bad enough to make any artist drop his work in despair. There is no hope for him unless he can organize his photoplay so perfectly and make its definite final form so compellingly beautiful that even a dull mechanician in a projecting booth would recognize it as a sacred thing which must be kept intact as it came from the hands of the master. But a photoplay is often robbed of pictorial continuity long before it reaches the exhibitor. The "title-writer," who frequently combines his office with that of "cutter," is at best, a dangerous collaborator