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

Record Details:

Title:
That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future
Date:
1923
Publisher:
New York : G. P. Putman's Sons
Volume:
That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future
Leaf #:
000124
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Media History Digital Library
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
December 21, 2023
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110 THAT MARVEL— THE MOVIE in Oscar Wilde's "Salome." Leaving ethics wholly out of the discussion, and placing the problem strictly upon a business and financial basis, there seems to be overwhelming evidence to the effect that an investment in clean pictures is safer than in soiled. Of course, the regeneration of the photoplay must be, of necessity, a slow process. We must look facts and figures in the face and admit at the outset that the millions of Americans who daily attend movie theatres are not, on the average, highly intellectual, nor over-prudish as critics. They pay their money to the box-office to be amused, not instructed nor uplifted, to get recreation rather than rescue. A stream cannot rise higher than its source, nor can a picture-play win success if it soars above the head and heart of the average movie fan. Until recently, the producers, as a class, underrated the intelligence of that head and the responsiveness of that heart to the highest that is in mankind's complicated make-up. One of them said to me recently that that crosssection of our American civilization represented by the young men drafted for the World War had proved, as statistics showed, that the percentage of illiteracy in this country is so great that a movie-manager who produced a really high order of photoplays was surely destined to "go broke." That his rivals in the screen drama have successfully controverted his