stock companies were forced out of existence, while the prospect of making a profitable tour with a metropolitan success was rendered more and more precarious.
An American dramatic critic has cited the case of his home town, Pittsfield, Mass., a city of 40,000 pop., and the situation that de- veloped there may be taken as typical of what was happening all over the United States and elsewhere as well. Before the advent of the motion-picture Pittsfield had one theatre devoted to the legiti- mate drama ; here were presented at intervals many of the plays that had attained success on Broadway. But the cinema changed all that; the one legitimate theatre was transformed into a motion- picture " palace," and four new " movie " theatres were opened. Friends of the cinema urged that the casualties brought about by the onward sweep of the new art were on the whole richly merited.
Certainly the grave apprehensions once entertained for the future of the dramatic art were ill-founded ; it was natural that the new form of amusement should menace the existence of the cheaper and usually inferior grades of theatrical production, but it became equally evident that each form of dramatic story-telling had its place, and neither one, if properly conducted, need fear the other. It might even be urged that in some respects the competition pro- duced a beneficial effect on the stage. The alleged menace of the cinema came into prominence in a new form in 1919 when an American film company (Famous Players-Lasky) purchased the theatrical business of Charles Frohman, Inc., which included control of the Empire theatre in New York City. It was assumed that this invasion of the legitimate stage might result in making the latter a mere appendage of the cinema theatre, but less than a year after the purchase of the Empire Jesse L. Lasky confessed that " the experiment has not been a great success; we have found that the screen can borrow very little from the stage " (North American Review, Aug. 1920).
Technique of Production. While aesthetic theory and practice remained in a somewhat chaotic state, the technique of produc- tion had been brought to a very high degree of perfection. In 1920 at least 80% of American films were produced in or near Los Angeles, where the brilliant sunlight makes it possible to operate the cinema camera almost continuously without the aid of expensive artificial lighting. In the early days whole film companies were transported to the supposed scene of the action, even when the scene was laid in a foreign country; after the outbreak of the World War, however, this practice was abandoned, and remote scenes came to be represented as nearly as possible by the aid of the carpenter and scene-painter. A thousand workmen would sometimes be employed to construct a single sham village, while theatrical agencies were developed to supply almost every variety of foreign " type " that the imagination of the scenario writer or the exigencies of pro- duction could demand. Nothing better illustrates the illiteracy that still clung to certain phases of the business than the ab- surdities and anachronisms which these made-to-order settings not infrequently disclosed; as, for example, that widely exhibited picture in which the great pyramid appeared with certain im- provements that Cheops had neglected to provide, notably a very convenient stairway rising to the top.
An early discovery was that the film would lend itself to a great variety of tricks. A typical example very common in " slapstick " comedy, was that in which a man, caught under the wheels of a steam roller, is merely flattened out by the experience, and by means of a seeming piece of legerdemain is restored to his normal shape. It is hardly necessary to explain that in taking such a picture the camera is stopped at the appropriate moment and a dummy sub- stituted as the victim of the steam roller. Another artifice introduces at the proper juncture certain ghost-like figures which hover in uncanny fashion about the scene, or still more uncannily, perhaps, shows us an actor apparently shaking hands with himself. In each case the effect is produced by taking two pictures on the same film (or sometimes by printing two negatives on the same positive). It is an artifice which was sometimes employed by actors to play two important r&les in the same scene; an actress, for example, would appear as both mother and daughter. The most successful of such pictures, however, scarcely ever rose above the level of an interesting tour de force. Other peculiar effects were produced by increasing or decreasing the speed with which the film is normally run through the camera. Increasing the speed in the camera reduces the relative rate of projection; this has the effect of separating each motion of an object into its component parts, and the result is not only in- teresting in itself but valuable for scientific and educational pur- poses. The wing movements of a bird, for instance, can be ex- amined in a manner that would otherwise be impossible. By the reverse method, the opening of a flower can be presented continuous- ly within a few minutes, though the separate pictures may have been
taken at the rate of one an hour over a period of days or weeks. By the use of magnifying lenses minute organisms could be photo- graphed; and similarly, by employing telephoto lenses, motion- pictures showing various heavenly bodies could be obtained. In farcical or melodramatic films the ability to increase relative speed was employed to make various " stunts " involving horses, railway trains and automobiles seem more dangerous than they really were. Another illusion often used for the same purpose is that obtained by projecting the film backward. By this means a man is made to seem to jump to the top of a building or to defy the law of gravitation in some equally astonishing manner. It is a trick also employed in those pictures in which knives are apparently thrown with such skill that they almost, but do not quite, strike a person standing against a wall ; the scene actually photographed is one in which the knives are being withdrawn from the wall by fine, black threads. For a few years these artifices were in great vogue, but they presently grew tiresome, especially after audiences learned that they were frequently victimized by elaborate pieces of deception. One result was to discount nearly every scene in which an actor performed a seemingly hazardous feat; audiences refused to be thrilled, and such " stunts," fortunately for the artistic advance of the moving-picture, fell somewhat into disrepute. Nevertheless there were film companies which continued to exploit devices of this kind, and a special class of performers, known as " hazard people," was employed.
The possibilities of the animated cartoon were first suggested by the well-known illusion in which chairs and other objects are made to seem to move of their own volition. This illusion was effected by stopping the camera while the position of the object was actually being shifted. The animated cartoon is achieved somewhat similarly by photographing a series of drawings, each showing a slight advance over the other. In the earliest examples as many as 8,000 separate drawings were made for each 500 ft. of film, and the process, as thus evolved, was extremely slow and laborious. Later methods were developed whereby only moving parts of the picture were redrawn, and in this way the number of drawings could be reduced to less than one thousand. Even with this simplification a staff of artists was required to complete an animated drawing or cartoon, and the artist to whom it was attributed rarely did more than furnish the outline of the story or a few preliminary sketches. The method employed in making animated cartoons was soon adapted to other subjects; it was found of particular value in illustrating new in- ventions, or in depicting the operation of certain kinds of mechanism too intricate to be easily photographed from original models.
Early pictures purporting to be taken under the sea were actually photographed through the side of a glass tank. In 1913, however, the so-called submarine tube, which had been devised to lower beneath a boat for observation purposes, was adapted for cinema photography, and the first actual submarine pictures were taken. By this means the under-sea scenes of Jules Verne's Twenty Thou- sand Leagues Under the Sea were filmed, and later some remarkable pictures were made of divers fighting with sharks. Interesting cin- ema views were also obtained of many varieties of ocean fish and submarine plant life.
Educational Use. With the development of cinema tech- nique it came to be seen that the moving-picture .might be used as a valuable aid to education. The hopes of many people tnat the commercialized cinema would undertake this work on a large scale were of course not realized. Nevertheless, in most cinema theatres it became customary to exhibit excellent pictures of current events, travel, or similar subjects in addition to the regular programme; and the educational value of such pictures should not be overlooked. The British Cinema Commission of Inquiry found that, other conditions being equal, the fund of general knowledge possessed by children who frequent the pictures is far wider and far richer than that possessed by those who do not. This information covered a wide range, including facts of geography, literature, natural science, industrial pro- cesses, social life, current events, etc. Moreover, the ideas formed from a moving-picture were often demonstrably more accurate than those which the children had previously acquired from an oral or printed description.
It is obvious that, wherever the intention is to impart infor^ mation which is concerned primarily with visual impressions, the motion-picture is greatly superior to any other form of in- struction. Words are only an inadequate substitute for pictures in giving correct ideas of landscape, natural or mechanical processes, foreign customs and the like. For this reason, ten minutes in a motion-picture theatre will often give a better grasp of such subjects than several hours devoted to text-books. Knowledge acquired in this way has a vividness and an in- terest that do not attach to other forms of instruction; con- sequently it is acquired with less mental friction and with less
