The Chicago studio of this concern is one of the wonders of cinematography, for not only has it a great building in which indoor plays are filmed, but a great land reserve for outdoor productions. In one place are artificial hills built in the natural forest, and upon them artificial feudal castles. In another are log cabins for frontier scenes, and in yet another a barren stretch for other kinds of scenes. The Los Angeles company is close to the mountains, the ocean, and the Great American Desert, so that it can furnish material for an endless amount of exciting Wild West shows. One of the big films made in Europe was "The Fall of Troy," produced by the Itala Film Company, which reproduced the great wooden horse, the walls of Troy, and all other historical details. The great French, German, and English companies also have made big films. In the production of plays built on well-known novels the motion-picture industry has found one of its most successful fields. Dickens's great novel, "A Tale of Two Cities," afforded the Vitagraph Company of America, one of its best films, while James Fennimore Cooper, Alexander Dumas, and even Shakespeare, and grand opera have been transferred to the cinematograph. From the great Biblical stories also have been taken films that have been shown by missionaries, and others interested in religious work, all over the world. The "Passion Play" was one of the first long films ever shown and it made a tremendous success. Big spectacles are always popular and to fulfill the demand two locomotives have been run together at high speed, the motion-picture concern buying the machines outright for the purpose and leasing the railroad for a day; an automobile has been driven over the Palisades of the Hudson River, ships have been towed out into the ocean and blown up and whole towns of flimsy stage construction have been built only to be burned, while the motion-picture photographer recorded the whole thing on a film. One concern even got permission from the Los Angeles Fire department during a big fire, and dressing an actor as a fireman cinematographed him as he heroically rushed up a ladder amidst the flames and rescued a screaming woman from an upper window. The woman was an actress who had risked her life to go into the burning building and be rescued.