The soul of the moving picture (1924)

Record Details:

Title:
The soul of the moving picture
Date:
1924
Publisher:
New York : E. P. Dutton & Company
Volume:
The soul of the moving picture
Leaf #:
000175
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
December 21, 2023
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The Compass oi Poetry 117 ing Helena. A lover In a motion picture who would show himself superior to the simple, unaffected ways of love would cut a ridiculous figure. The love of the moving picture strikes but few strings, and these strings are gentle. This art is not wreathed about with the roseate play of lovely thoughts. Those poets whose hearts do not overflow with an abundance of visions paint, in the motion picture, nothing more than the tiring and monotonous picture of a colorless and brutal giving and taking. But just as the great Garrick could move his audience to tears through the mere recital of the alphabet, just so can a fiery soul fill the violin of the motion picture with more nearly inner and more truly intimate notes than a soul that is halt and blind can fill the entire orchestra of the stage. Passion is pure ; it is clean. Wherever the soul is moved, and whenever it moves with the action, there is purification. But just as the legitimate stage may lose itself in the frigid chill of unanimated intellectuality, so does the motion picture run at all times the danger — if its poet is a bellowing and garrulous individual — of sinking into the fiery swamp of unanimated sensuality. When this is the case, the unwholesome passion of mere sexual perversities becomes a play of social life that is poles removed from real art. In the foul