Hawthorne's tale. Even a chair can reach
this estate. For instance, let it be the throne of Wodin, illustrating
some passage in Norse mythology. If this throne has a language, it speaks
with the lightning; if it shakes with its threat, it moves the entire
mountain range beneath it. Let the wizard-author-producer climb up from
the tricks of Moving Day to the foot-hills where he can see this throne
against the sky, as a superarchitect would draw it. But even if he can
give this vision in the films, his task will not be worth while if he is
simply a teller of old stories. Let us have magic shoes about which are
more golden dreams than those concerning Cinderella. Let us have stranger
castles than that of Usher, more dazzling chairs than the Siege Perilous.
Let us have the throne of Liberty, not the throne of Wodin.

There is one outstanding photoplay that I always have in mind when I
think of film magic. It illustrates some principles of this chapter and
chapter four, as well as many others through the book. It is Griffith's
production of The Avenging Conscience. It is also an example of that rare
thing, a use of old material that is so inspired that it has the dignity
of a new creation. The raw stuff of the plot is pieced together from the
story of The Tell-tale Heart and the poem Annabel Lee. It has behind it,
in the further distance, Poe's conscience stories of The Black Cat, and
William Wilson. I will describe the film here at length, and apply it to
whatever chapters it illustrates.

An austere and cranky bachelor (well impersonated by Spottiswoode Aitken)
brings up his orphan nephew with an awkward affection. The nephew is
impersonated by Henry B. Walthall. The uncle has an ambition that the boy
will become a man of letters. In his attempts at literature the youth is
influenced by Poe. This brings about the Poe quality of his dreams at the
crisis. The uncle is silently exasperated when he sees his boy's
writing-time broken into, and wasted, as he thinks, by an affair with a
lovely Annabel (Blanche Sweet). The intimacy and confidence of the lovers
has progressed so far that it is a natural thing for the artless girl to
cross the gardens and after hesitation knock at the door. She wants to
know what has delayed her boy. She is all in a flutter on account of the
overdue appointment to go to a party together. The scene of the pretty
hesitancy on the step, her knocking, and the final impatient tapping with
her foot is one