That Marvel—The Movie: A Glance at Its Past, Its Promising Present and Its Significant FutureVan Zile, Edward S. (Edward Sims)
History
That Marvel—The Movie: A Glance at Its Past, Its Promising Present and Its Significant Future
Van Zile, Edward S. (Edward Sims)
Motion pictures
As the camera is more thorough and convincing in its revelations
of the drama of the jungle than is the pen so is it more
extravagant in its use of the material that makes the wild life
of the outlands interesting to the untravelled public. There may
remain untamed animals in Africa that the Snows have not
effectively screened, but a fair acquaintance with equatorial
fauna leads me to the conclusion that the camera can afford now
to rest upon its laurels in so far as the creatures of the
jungle are concerned.
Omnivorous, insatiable, the screen is sending out its camera-men
to all the corners of the known and the unknown earth, to the
end that you and I may learn eventually every secret that our
planet has hitherto concealed. The truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth—that’s why Man, who has become a
peripatetic photographer, is venturing to lands afar. And the
public is glad to confer applause, and more material rewards,
upon those who mirror for us some dramatic phase of life upon
earth to-day especially if, as is the case with the big game of
Africa, it bids fair to pass presently forever out of existence.
President Harding, whose present exalted position gives him unequalled
facilities for observing the potential tendencies of the day, has become
an enthusiastic believer in the uplifting possibilities that the screen
has begun to manifest. Much of what we study in our youth, says the
President, might be
made dramatically interesting if we could see it. Next in value
to studying history by the procedure of living through its
epochs, its eras and its periods, would be to see its actors and
evolutions presented before our eyes. If we are to understand
the present and attempt to conjecture the future, we need to
know a good deal about the backgrounds of the past. The Europe
of the later middle ages, of the period just before and at the
beginning of the Renaissance, could be wonderfully portrayed in
a series of pictures dramatizing “The Cloister and the Hearth.”
I do not know whether anybody reads “The Cloister and the
Hearth” any more, but I am sure that one family with which I am
pretty well acquainted would be glad to patronize a combination
of picture serials and really intelligent talks with this story
as the basis and with the purpose of giving a real conception
and understanding of the Europe of that epoch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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