the old comparison between the film and the graphophone. The
photoplay is still something which simply imitates the true art of the
drama on the stage. May it not be, on the contrary, that it does not
imitate or replace anything, but is in itself an art as different from
that of the theater as the painter's art is different from that of the
sculptor? And may it not be high time, in the interest of theory and of
practice, to examine the esthetic conditions which would give
independent rights to the new art? If this is really the situation, it
must be a truly fascinating problem, as it would give the chance to
watch the art in its first unfolding. A new esthetic cocoon is broken;
where will the butterfly's wings carry him?

We have at last reached the real problem of this little book. We want to
study the right of the photoplay, hitherto ignored by esthetics, to be
classed as an art in itself under entirely new mental life conditions.
What we need for this study is evidently, first, an insight into the
means by which the moving pictures impress us and appeal to us. Not the
physical means and technical devices are in question, but the mental
means. What psychological factors are involved when we watch the
happenings on the screen? But secondly, we must ask what characterizes
the independence of an art, what constitutes the conditions under which
the works of a special art stand. The first inquiry is psychological,
the second esthetic; the two belong intimately together. Hence we turn
first to the psychological aspect of the moving pictures and later to
the artistic one.

PART I

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PHOTOPLAY

CHAPTER III[1]

DEPTH AND MOVEMENT

[1] Readers who have no technical interest in physiological
psychology may omit Chapter III and turn directly to Chapter IV on
Attention.

The problem is now quite clear before us. Do the photoplays furnish us
only a photographic reproduction of a stage performance; is their aim
thus simply to be an inexpensive substitute for the real theater, and is
their esthetic standing accordingly far below that of the true dramatic
art, related to it as the photograph of a painting to the original
canvas of the master? Or do the moving pictures bring us an independent
art, controlled by esthetic laws of its own, working with mental appeals
which are fundamentally different from those of the theater, with a
sphere of its own and with ideal aims of its own? If