But the screen presentation of “The Four Horsemen” was absolutely free from the shortcomings above ascribed to the novel. Not only was it marvellously effective in its appeal to the eye, but the logical and dramatic unfolding of the basic story was a striking revelation of the valuable service that an expert scenario-writer may render, now and then, to the professional writer of novels. For the many outrages that fictionists have received at the hands of the film-makers some atonement is offered at times, and “The Four Horsemen” as a photoplay proves that the pot may sometimes be unjust in calling the kettle black. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The screen may commit—yes, frequently has committed—mayhem, assault and battery and actual murder upon the revered form of some great masterpiece of narrative literature; but you who are well-read, you who love the “old melodious lays that softly melt the ages through,” and the tales told by the great romancers, pause before you recklessly indict a new art, groping its way toward a full realization of its possibilities and powers. By turning your haughty back upon a photoplay made from some famous novel, you may conceivably lose an opportunity for drinking again from that Fountain of Eternal Youth which you, more fortunate than Ponce de Leon, discovered one day in a library when you were still a boy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS _Ravenous for Screen-Food—A Ghoul Exhausting the Grave-Yards—Contemporary Novelists Fail to Supply the Demand—A New Art, a New Technique and a New Possibility—Scenario-Writing To-Day and To-Morrow—Will the Screen Beget its own Hugos and Barries?_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII THE MOVIE’S APPETITE FOR PLOTS THE need of motion-picture producers for new raw material for the screen grows apace, and is constantly harder to satisfy. Otherwise, the camera would not at present be endeavoring to make pictures of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. It is rumored that Bergson, Freud and Coué have been approached by hard-pressed producers on the subject of their movie picture rights. The dilemma confronting the photoplay promoters is more serious than that which for generations past has worried the theatrical managers. The appeal of the dramatist is to tens of thousands of people, that of the scenario-writer to millions. It doesn’t require much of a head for mathematics to realize that the food-supply of the screen is much more quickly exhausted than that of the stage.