epic flight captures the eye because it is
architecture and in motion, motion which is the mysterious fourth
dimension of its grace and glory. So likewise, and in kind, any picture
of a tossing ship. The most superb example of architecture-in-motion in
the commercial history of the films is the march of the moving war-towers
against the walls of Babylon in Griffith's Intolerance. But Griffith is
the only person so far who has known how to put a fighting soul into a
moving tower.

The only real war that has occurred in the films with the world's
greatest war going on outside was Griffith's War Against Babylon. The
rest was news.

Chapter XII--Thirty Differences between the Photoplays and the Stage. The
argument of the whole of the 1915 edition has been accepted by the
studios, the motion picture magazines, and the daily motion picture
columns throughout the land. I have read hundreds of editorials and
magazines, and scarcely one that differed from it in theory. Most of them
read like paraphrases of this work. And of all arguments made, the one in
this chapter is the one oftenest accepted in its entirety. The people who
dominate the films are obviously those who grew up with them from the
very beginning, and the merely stage actors who rushed in with the
highest tide of prosperity now have to take second rank if they remain in
the films. But most of these have gone back to the stage by this time,
with their managers as well, and certainly this chapter is abundantly
proved out.

Chapter XIII--Hieroglyphics. One of the implications of this chapter and
the one preceding is that the fewer words printed on the screen the
better, and that the ideal film has no words printed on it at all, but is
one unbroken sheet of photography. This is admitted in theory in all the
studios now, though the only film of the kind ever produced of general
popular success was The Old Swimmin' Hole, acted by Charles Ray. If I
remember, there was not one word on the screen, after the cast of
characters was given. The whole story was clearly and beautifully told by
Photoplay Hieroglyphics. For this feature alone, despite many defects of
the film, it should be studied in every art school in America.

Meanwhile "Title writing" remains a commercial necessity. In this field
there is but one person who has won distinction--Anita Loos. She is one
of the four or five important and thoroughly artistic brains in the
photoplay game. Among them is the distin