The soul of the moving picture (1924)

The Compass of Poetry 133 ency that prompts the American to avoid those diseased and unwholesome themes which would be understood only by the spectator who is likewise diseased and unwholesome. It is expediency that moves him to avoid purely and rigidly intellectual themes, such as are appropriate for private audiences only. It is expediency that suggests to him cheerful, vigorous, bright, and fanciful themes in which the world is made to shine and flash. It is expediency that causes him to fill even the gloomiest theme with a good measure of happiness. There are, indeed, many roads that lead to idealism. The American does not seem to be at all familiar with the word "Art" when he takes and makes a motion picture. He uses, instead of art, the word "effect." This may seem a bit primitive, even uninspired, but it gets desirable results. That is good which is effective; the ineffective is bad; whatever pleases is allowed. These seem to be his shibboleths. He has, for this very reason, been spared the humiliation attendant upon the film that would-be art, and which has brought bankruptcy to its champions and producers. For the American the soul is merely a means toward an effect. He never overworks the soul; he does not splash it all over the individual scene. He uses it just in so far as it is necessary to make