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A Forecast of Future Films
In which the screen reviewer peeps into the future and hazards a prophecy for 1920.
By Herbert Howe
THE past is like a funeral gone by ; the future is a welcome guest. I take the film adapter's license with the simile of Gosse to suit the public attitude toward the evanescent shadows of the
screen.
What new type of plays may we expect in 1920? Who will be the dominating stars?
Which of the directors will deliver the goods, which the hookum ?
It requires no Delphic pretensions to forecast film tendencies. The best prophet of the future is the present. The successes of to-morrow are indicated by the successes of to-day.
THE SPIRITUAL DRAMA.
While the stage holds a hand mirror up to a segment of nature, the screen is a gigantic pier glass reflecting life as it streams by. The war tragedy turned humanity from a quest for those things which satisfy the senses to those that satisfy the spirit.
"Sorrow is salutary. It never leaves us where it found us."
This spiritual renaissance is mirrored on the screen by three of the best 1919 pictures, progenitors of the Nazimova 1920 drama. These three are "The Miracle Man," continues "The Turn in the Road," and "Broken Blossoms." The the sorceress first two are to be indexed as spiritual drama, while of the "Broken Blossoms" endeavored to manifest spiritual celluloid.
import by its interpretative subtitles, reminding us that unkind words are oftentimes as brutal as the lash of Burrows.
By consensus of opinion "The Miracle Man," by Frank L. Packard, is one of the finest of camera creations. Under the megaphonic wand of George Loane Tucker this inspiring subject was visualized in an inspiring and reverential manner. Mr. Tucker will continue to produce thematic drama. "Ladies Must Live" is one of his pictures which will issue from the projector after the old year fade-out.
King Vidor, creator of "The Turn in the Road," is achieving precocious success because he is doing what has been deemed impractical by "practical" picture manufacturers. He presents a play with a moral. He insists that a play must be based on a principle. The picture which commands interest only while on the luminous square is not for him. It must project thought worthy of retention after the plot has faded from the mind.