e film play introduced the
"close-up" and similar new methods. As every friend of the film knows,
the close-up is a scheme by which a particular part of the picture,
perhaps only the face of the hero or his hand or only a ring on his
finger, is greatly enlarged and replaces for an instant the whole stage.
Even the most wonderful creations, the great historical plays where
thousands fill the battlefields or the most fantastic caprices where
fairies fly over the stage, could perhaps be performed in a theater,
but this close-up leaves all stagecraft behind. Suddenly we see not
Booth himself as he seeks to assassinate the president, but only his
hand holding the revolver and the play of his excited fingers filling
the whole field of vision. We no longer see at his desk the banker who
opens the telegram, but the opened telegraphic message itself takes his
place on the screen for a few seconds, and we read it over his shoulder.

It is not necessary to enumerate still more changes which the
development of the art of the film has brought since the days of the
kinetoscope. The use of natural backgrounds, the rapid change of scenes,
the intertwining of the actions in different scenes, the changes of the
rhythms of action, the passing through physically impossible
experiences, the linking of disconnected movements, the realization of
supernatural effects, the gigantic enlargement of small details: these
may be sufficient as characteristic illustrations of the essential
trend. They show that the progress of the photoplay did not lead to a
more and more perfect photographic reproduction of the theater stage,
but led away from the theater altogether. Superficial impressions
suggest the opposite and still leave the esthetically careless observer
in the belief that the photoplay is a cheap substitute for the real
drama, a theater performance as good or as bad as a photographic
reproduction allows. But this traditional idea has become utterly
untrue. _The art of the photoplay has developed so many new features of
its own, features which have not even any similarity to the technique of
the stage that the question arises: is it not really a new art which
long since left behind the mere film reproduction of the theater and
which ought to be acknowledged in its own esthetic independence?_ This
right to independent recognition has so far been ignored. Practically
everybody who judged the photoplays from the esthetic point of view
remained at