That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future (1923)

THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD 53 Man's evolution from slime to Shakespeare. On a large canvas it is the same picture that the movie presents in miniature from grime to Griffith. The great weakness of the motion picture industry throughout its formative years, a weakness still too much in evidence, is at the top and not at the bottom. The movies for years lost the support of the more enlightened classes of the community not because camera-men, carpenters, electricians and stage hands were not competent but because the powers in control of the completed output, the "bosses" of the new industry, failed to make the best use of the power that had come to them. Says the producer who recently made his public confession through the pages of Collier's Weekly: The directors were hard to deal with. They reflected the one greatest fault of the entire industry: they knew not that they knew not. Without adequate background, for the most part, without adequate training or knowledge of human character, without even a rudimentary philosophy or idealism, or sense of real values, to qualify them for leadership, they were given money and authority and power and told to make films for the multitude. Surrounded by minor sycophants, they soon came to believe themselves almost above criticism. A sincere critic was more apt than not to be regarded as an enemy. There is something grimly ludicrous in the fact that for years after the screen had proved con