It is one of the few deaths in moving pictures that have given me the sense that I was watching a tragedy.  Most of them affect one, if they have any effect, like exhibits in an art gallery, as does Josef Israels’ oil painting, Alone in the World.  We admire the technique, and as for emotion, we feel the picturesqueness only.  But here the church procession, the robes, the candles, the vaulting overhead, the whole visualized cathedral mood has the power over the reverent eye it has in life, and a touch more.

It is not a private citizen who is struck down.  Such a taking off would have been but nominally impressive, no matter how well acted.  Private deaths in the films, to put it another way, are but narrative statements.  It is not easy to convey their spiritual significance.  Take, for instance, the death of John Goderic, in the film version of Gilbert Parker’s The Seats of the Mighty.  The major leaves this world in the first third of the story.  The photoplay use of his death is, that he may whisper in the ear of Robert Moray to keep certain letters of La Pompadour well hidden.  The fact that it is the desire of a dying man gives sharpness to his request.  Later in the story Moray is hard-pressed by the villain for those same papers.  Then the scene of the death is flashed for an instant on the screen, representing the hero’s memory of the event.  It is as though he should recollect and renew a solemn oath.  The documents are more important than John Goderic.  His departure is but one of their attributes.  So it is in any film.  There is no emotional stimulation in the final departure of a non-public character to bring tears, such tears as have been provoked by the novel or the stage over the death of Sidney Carton or Faust’s Marguerite or the like.

All this, to make sharper the fact that the murder of Becket the archbishop is a climax.  The great Church and hierarchy are profaned.  The audience feels the same thrill of horror that went through Christendom.  We understand why miracles were wrought at the martyr’s tomb.

In the motion pictures the entrance of a child into the world is a mere family episode, not a climax, when it is the history of private people.  For instance, several little strangers come into the story of Enoch Arden.  They add beauty, and are links in the chain of events.  Still they are only one of many elements of idyllic charm in the village of Annie.  Something that in real life is less valuable than a child is the goal of each tiny tableau, some coming or departure or the like that affects the total plot.  But let us imagine a production that would chronicle the promise to Abraham, and the vision that came with it.  Let the film show the final gift of Isaac to the aged Sarah, even the boy who is the beginning of a race that shall be as the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea for multitude.  This could be made a pageant of power and glory.  The crowd-emotions, patriotic fires, and religious exaltations on which it turns could be given in noble procession and the tiny fellow on the pillow made the mystic centre of the whole.  The story of the coming of Samuel, the dedicated little prophet, might be told on similar terms.