The soul of the moving picture (1924)

136 The Soul of the Moving Picture impulsive in character. It sinks itself with burning fervor into the depths of the heart, never rises to the chilly clarity of abstract thought, and rarely loses itself in moral fustian The Swedish film retains its perfect naturalness even when it concerns itself with urban personages and chooses, perforce, its decoration and setting from the fashionable drawing-rooms. When it does this it is a matter of secret mask. These men in evening dress, these decolletee ladies, remain after all peasant children who wear their foreign garb with naive gaiety. At times the Swede grafts an alien twig on the young wild tree of his motion picture art. When he does, it is German if subtle, French if erotic. The Swede paints his picture with a fine brush, embellishes each on rather broad lines, and coats every picture with a shimmer of hearty intimacy which to a film connoisseur of another country seems altogether unobtrusive. The film action, the ebb and flow of pictures, seems to him a matter of indifference. He avoids excitement; he shuns the raging of man against man. Invented, and therefore affected, action, be it never so refined, leaves him cold. He loves to see things grow; the secrets of the inner life are precious to him. His heroes encircle the coveted goal without bodily moving out of their tracks. All of this is at once an advantage and a disadvantage.