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

MOVIE AND CONTINUITY WHITER 101 the public has begun to realize vaguely that the screen is becoming something of more vital importance to mankind than merely a plaything that serves only as a time-killer. The fact to which the provincial manager above quoted called my attention, namely, that movie audiences are constantly emphasizing their demand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth possesses a significance that is entitled to the most earnest consideration. Is it possible that Man has come finally into possession of an art-form enabling him to come nearer to solving the riddle of the Sphinx we call Life than has been hitherto possible? There will be those among my readers, I fully realize, who will feel that my inclination all through this book has been to take the screen too seriously, to overrate its psychical dynamics and to underrate its gross materialism, to prophesy for it a future that could be made possible only if producers became archangels and movie patrons pilgrims to a shrine where the soul of the race became no longer of the earth earthy. Well, so be it. Perhaps, as regards the subject in hand, I am allowing my naturally optimistic liver to dominate my habitually pessimistic brain. But neither I nor my critics will live long enough to know which of us was in the right. A conviction, nevertheless, has come to me of late