rld and all its wonders, have gone
to the bottom of the sea and up to the clouds; they have surprised the
beasts in the jungles and in the Arctic ice; they have dwelt with the
lowest races and have captured the greatest men of our time: and they
are always haunted by the fear that the supply of new sensations may be
exhausted. Curiously enough, they have so far ignored the fact that an
inexhaustible wealth of new impressions is at their disposal, which has
hardly been touched as yet. There is a material and a formal side to the
pictures which we see in their rapid succession. The material side is
controlled by the content of what is shown to us. But the formal side
depends upon the outer conditions under which this content is exhibited.
Even with ordinary photographs we are accustomed to discriminate between
those in which every detail is very sharp and others, often much more
artistic, in which everything looks somewhat misty and blurring and in
which sharp outlines are avoided. We have this formal aspect, of course,
still more prominently if we see the same landscape or the same person
painted by a dozen different artists. Each one has his own style. Or, to
point to another elementary factor, the same series of moving pictures
may be given to us with a very slow or with a rapid turning of the
crank. It is the same street scene, and yet in the one case everyone on
the street seems leisurely to saunter along, while in the other case
there is a general rush and hurry. Nothing is changed but the temporal
form; and in going over from the sharp image to the blurring one,
nothing is changed but a certain spatial form: the content remains the
same.

As soon as we give any interest to this formal aspect of the
presentation, we must recognize that the photoplaywright has here
possibilities to which nothing corresponds in the world of the stage.
Take the case that we want to produce an effect of trembling. We might
use the pictures as the camera has taken them, sixteen in a second. But
in reproducing them on the screen we change their order. After giving
the first four pictures we go back to picture 3, then give 4, 5, 6, and
return to 5, then 6, 7, 8, and go back to 7, and so on. Any other
rhythm, of course, is equally possible. The effect is one which never
occurs in nature and which could not be produced on the stage. The
events for a moment go backward. A certain vibration goes through the
world like the tremolo of the orches