And now for book two, at length.  It is a detailed analysis of the films, first proclaimed in 1915, and never challenged or overthrown, and, for the most part, accepted intact by the photoplay people, and the critics and the theorists, as well.

BOOK II—­THE UNCHALLENGED OUTLINE OF PHOTOPLAY CRITICAL METHOD

CHAPTER I

THE POINT OF VIEW

While there is a great deal of literary reference in all the following argument, I realize, looking back over many attempts to paraphrase it for various audiences, that its appeal is to those who spend the best part of their student life in classifying, and judging, and producing works of sculpture, painting, and architecture.  I find the eyes of all others wandering when I make talks upon the plastic artist’s point of view.

This book tries to find that fourth dimension of architecture, painting, and sculpture, which is the human soul in action, that arrow with wings which is the flash of fire from the film, or the heart of man, or Pygmalion’s image, when it becomes a woman.

The 1915 edition was used by Victor O. Freeburg as one of the text-books in the Columbia University School of Journalism, in his classes in photoplay writing.  I was invited several times to address those classes on my yearly visits to New York.  I have addressed many other academic classes, the invitation being based on this book.  Now I realize that those who approach the theory from the general University standpoint, or from the history of the drama, had best begin with Freeburg’s book, for he is not only learned in both matters, but presents the special analogies with skill.  Freeburg has an excellent education in the history of music, and some of the happiest passages in his work relate the photoplay to the musical theory of the world, as my book relates it to the general Art Museum point of view of the world.  Emphatically, my book belongs in the Art Institutes as a beginning, or in such religious and civic bodies as think architecturally.  From there it must work its way out.  Of course those bodies touch on a thousand others.

The work is being used as one basis of the campaign for the New Denver Art Museum, and I like to tell the story of how George W. Eggers of Denver first began to apply the book when the Director of the Art Institute, Chicago, that it may not seem to the merely University type of mind a work of lost abstractions.  One of the most gratifying recognitions I ever received was the invitation to talk on the films in Fullerton Hall, Chicago Art Institute.  Then there came invitations to speak at Chicago University, and before the Fortnightly Club, Chicago, all around 1916-17.  One difficulty was getting the film to prove my case from out the commercial whirl.  I talked at these three and other places, but hardly knew how to go about crossing the commercial bridge.  At last, with