mary school. Why should not a movie caption
be good literature? Some of them are. The Cabiria captions were fine:
though I do not admire that masterpiece. I am told that D'Annunzio
composed them with care, and equal care was evidently used in the
translation. The captions of the George Ade fables are uniformly good, and
there are other notable exceptions. Other places where knowledge of
language is required are inadequately taken care of. Letters from eminent
persons make one want to hide under the chairs. These persons usually sign
themselves "Duke of Gandolfo" or "Secretary of State Smith." Are grammar
school graduates difficult to get, or high-priced? I beg you to observe
that here again lack of realism is my objection.

But divers friends interpose the remark that the movies are already too
realistic. "They leave nothing to the imagination." If this were so, it
were a grievous fault--at any rate in so far as the moving-picture play
aims at being an art-form. All good art leaves something to the
imagination. As a matter of fact, however, the movie is the exact
complement of the spoken play as read from a book. Here we have the words
in full, the scene and action being left to the imagination except as
briefly sketched in the stage direction. In the movie we have scene and
action in full, the words being left to the imagination except as briefly
indicated in the captions. Where captions are very full the form may
perhaps be said to be complementary to the novel, where besides the words
we are given a written description of scene and action that is often full
of detail. The movie leaves just as much to the imagination as the novel,
but what is so left is different in the two cases. Do I think that
everyone in a movie audience makes use of his privilege to imagine what
the actors are saying? No; neither does the novel-reader always image the
scene and action. This does not depend on ignorance or the reverse, but on
imaging power. Exceptional visual and auditive imaging power are rarely
present in the same individual. I happen to have the former. I
automatically see everything of which I read in a novel, and when the
descriptions are not detailed, this gets me into trouble. On a second
reading my imaged background may be different and when the earlier one
asserts itself there is a conflict that I can compare only to hearing two
tunes played at once. Persons having already good visual imaging power
should develop their aud