Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Annika Feilbach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE PHOTOPLAY A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY BY HUGO MUeNSTERBERG D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1916 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER PAGE 1. THE OUTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES 3 2. THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES 21 PART I. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PHOTOPLAY 3. DEPTH AND MOVEMENT 44 4. ATTENTION 72 5. MEMORY AND IMAGINATION 92 6. EMOTIONS 112 PART II. THE ESTHETICS OF THE PHOTOPLAY 7. THE PURPOSE OF ART 133 8. THE MEANS OF THE VARIOUS ARTS 155 9. THE MEANS OF THE PHOTOPLAY 170 10. THE DEMANDS OF THE PHOTOPLAY 191 11. THE FUNCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY 215 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE OUTER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES It is arbitrary to say where the development of the moving pictures began and it is impossible to foresee where it will lead. What invention marked the beginning? Was it the first device to introduce movement into the pictures on a screen? Or did the development begin with the first photographing of various phases of moving objects? Or did it start with the first presentation of successive pictures at such a speed that the impression of movement resulted? Or was the birthday of the new art when the experimenters for the first time succeeded in projecting such rapidly passing pictures on a wall? If we think of the moving pictures as a source of entertainment and esthetic enjoyment, we may see the germ in that camera obscura which allowed one glass slide to pass before another and thus showed the railway train on one slide moving over the bridge on the other glass plate. They were popular half a century ago. On the other hand if the essential feature of the moving pictures is the combination of various views into one connected impression, we must look back to the days of the phenakistoscope which had scientific interest only; it is more than eighty years since it was invented. In America, which in most recent times has become the classical land of the moving picture production, the history may be said to begin with the days of the Chicago Exposition, 1893, when Edison exhibited his kinetoscope. The visitor dropped his nickel into a slot, the little motor started, and for half a minute he saw through the magnifying glass a girl dancing or some street boys fighting. Less than a quarter of a century later twenty thousand theaters for moving pictures are open daily in the United States and the millions get for their nickel long hours of enjoyment. In Edison's small box into which only one at a time could peep through the hole, nothing but a few trite scenes were exhibited. In those twenty