Indeed, it seems to me that the greatest achievement of the film is its triumph over time. Some amateurs may find its chief charm in the perfect “Cupid’s bow” of its heroines’ mouths; others in the remarkable English prose of its explanatory accompaniments; others, again, in its exquisite humour of protagonists smothered in flour or soap-lather or flattened under runaway motor-cars. I admit the irresistible fascination of these delights and can quite understand how they come to be preferred to the high-class opera company which has been introduced at the Capitol, New York, to entertain “between pictures.” But I still think the prime merit of the film—the real reason for which last year more than enough picture films to encircle the earth at the Equator left the United States of America for foreign countries—lies in its ability to play as it will with time. The mere acceleration of pace (which is the ordinary game it plays)—the fierce galloping of horses across prairies, the miraculous speed of motor-cars, elephants scuttling about like antelopes—gives a sharp sense of exhilaration, of victory over sluggish nature. And even here there is an educational result that ought to console Dr. Lyttelton. The rate of plant growth is multiplied thousands of times so that we are enabled actually to see the plants growing, expanding from bud to flower under our eyes. But there is also the retardation of pace, which is even more wonderful. A diver is shown plunging into the water and swimming at a rate which allows the minutest movement of the smallest muscle to be clearly seen. This is an entirely beautiful thing; but I should suppose that the film, by its power of exhibiting movements naturally too quick for the eye at whatever slower rate is desired, must have extraordinary use for scientific investigations. This, at any rate, is a better use for the film than that sometimes claimed for it in the field of morality. I look with suspicion on those films, as I do on those “spoken” plays, that propose to do us good by exhibiting the details of this or that “social evil.” Some philanthropic societies, I believe, have introduced such pictures in all good faith. But many of their producers are, like the others, merely out to make money, and in every case I imagine their patrons to be drawn to them not by any moral impulse, but by a prurient curiosity—the desire to have a peep into the forbidden. But to return to the question of time. It has its importance, too, in the “spoken drama,” but it ceases to be a question of visible pace. You cannot make real men and women scuttle about like antelopes. You can only play tricks with the clock. The act-drop is invaluable for getting your imaginary time outstripping your real time:— jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass.