erchiefs wave around her! In the battle the
hero represents the cowardice that all the men are resisting within
themselves. When he returns, he is the incarnation of the hardihood they
have all hoped to display. Only the girl knows he was first a failure.
The wounded general honors him as the hero above all. Now she is radiant,
she cannot help but be triumphant, though the side of the house is blown
out by a shell and the dying are everywhere.

This one-reel work of art has been reissued of late by the Biograph
Company. It should be kept in the libraries of the Universities as a
standard. One-reel films are unfortunate in this sense that in order to
see a favorite the student must wait through five other reels of a mixed
programme that usually is bad. That is the reason one-reel masterpieces
seldom appear now. The producer in a mood to make a special effort wants
to feel that he has the entire evening, and that nothing before or after
is going to be a bore or destroy the impression. So at present the
painstaking films are apt to be five or six reels of twenty minutes each.
These have the advantage that if they please at all, one can see them
again at once without sitting through irrelevant slapstick work put there
to fill out the time. But now, having the whole evening to work in, the
producer takes too much time for his good ideas. I shall reiterate
throughout this work the necessity for restraint. A one hour programme is
long enough for any one. If the observer is pleased, he will sit it
through again and take another hour. There is not a good film in the
world but is the better for being seen in immediate succession to itself.
Six-reel programmes are a weariness to the flesh. The best of the old
one-reel Biographs of Griffith contained more in twenty minutes than
these ambitious incontinent six-reel displays give us in two hours. It
would pay a manager to hang out a sign: "This show is only twenty minutes
long, but it is Griffith's great film 'The Battle.'"

But I am digressing. To continue the contrast between private passion in
the theatre and crowd-passion in the photoplay, let us turn to Shaw
again. Consider his illustration of Iago, Othello, and Lear. These parts,
as he implies, would fall flat in motion pictures. The minor situations
of dramatic intensity might in many cases be built up. The crisis would
inevitably fail. Iago and Othello and Lear, whatever their offices in
their governments, are essentially pri