become a feature of the
vaudeville theater, the longing of the crowd for ever new entertainments
and sensations had to be satisfied if the success was to last. The mere
enjoyment of the technical wonder as such necessarily faded away and the
interest could be kept up only if the scenes presented on the screen
became themselves more and more enthralling. The trivial acts played in
less than a minute without any artistic setting and without any
rehearsal or preparation soon became unsatisfactory. The grandmother who
washes the baby and even the street boy who plays a prank had to be
replaced by quick little comedies. Stages were set up; more and more
elaborate scenes were created; the film grew and grew in length.
Competing companies in France and later in the United States, England,
Germany and notably in Italy developed more and more ambitious
productions. As early as 1898 the Eden Musee in New York produced an
elaborate setting of the Passion Play in nearly fifty thousand pictures,
which needed almost an hour for production. The personnel on the stage
increased rapidly, huge establishments in which any scenery could be
built up sprang into being. But the inclosed scene was often not a
sufficient background; the kinematographic camera was brought to
mountains and seashore, and soon to the jungles of Africa or to Central
Asia if the photoplay demanded exciting scenes on picturesque
backgrounds. Thousands of people entered into the battle scenes which
the historical drama demanded. We stand today in the midst of this
external growth of which no one dreamed in the days of the kinetoscope.
Yet this technical progress and this tremendous increase of the
mechanical devices for production have their true meaning in the inner
growth which led from trite episodes to the height of tremendous action,
from trivial routine to a new and most promising art.

CHAPTER II

THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOVING PICTURES

It was indeed not an external technical advance only which led from
Edison's half a minute show of the little boy who turns on the hose to
the "Daughter of Neptune," or "Quo Vadis," or "Cabiria," and many
another performance which fills an evening. The advance was first of all
internal; it was an esthetic idea. Yet even this does not tell the whole
story of the inner growth of the moving pictures, as it points only to
the progress of the photoplay. It leaves out of account the fact that
the moving pictures appea