e. The book illustration may be said to
come in through the ear, by reading the title aloud in imagination. And
the other is effective with no title at all. The scenario writer who will
study to the bottom of the matter in Whistler's Gentle Art of Making
Enemies will be equipped to welcome the distinction between the
old-fashioned stage, where the word rules, and the photoplay, where
splendor and ritual are all. It is not the same distinction, but a
kindred one.

* * * * *

But let us consider the details of the matter. The stage has its exits
and entrances at the side and back. The standard photoplays have their
exits and entrances across the imaginary footlight line, even in the
most stirring mob and battle scenes. In Judith of Bethulia, though the
people seem to be coming from everywhere and going everywhere, when we
watch close, we see that the individuals enter at the near right-hand
corner and exit at the near left-hand corner, or enter at the near
left-hand corner and exit at the near right-hand corner.

Consider the devices whereby the stage actor holds the audience as he
goes out at the side and back. He sighs, gestures, howls, and strides.
With what studious preparation he ripens his quietness, if he goes out
that way. In the new contraption, the moving picture, the hero or villain
in exit strides past the nose of the camera, growing much bigger than a
human being, marching toward us as though he would step on our heads,
disappearing when largest. There is an explosive power about the mildest
motion picture exit, be the actor skilful or the reverse. The people left
in the scene are pygmies compared with each disappearing cyclops.
Likewise, when the actor enters again, his mechanical importance is
overwhelming. Therefore, for his first entrance the motion picture star
does not require the preparations that are made on the stage. The
support does not need to warm the spectators to the problem, then talk
them into surrender.

When the veteran stage-producer as a beginning photoplay producer tries
to give us a dialogue in the motion pictures, he makes it so dull no one
follows. He does not realize that his camera-born opportunity to magnify
persons and things instantly, to interweave them as actors on one level,
to alternate scenes at the slightest whim, are the big substitutes for
dialogue. By alternating scenes rapidly, flash after flash: cottage,
field, mountain-top, field, mo