The real death in the photoplay is the ritualistic death, the real birth is the ritualistic birth, and the cathedral mood of the motion picture which goes with these and is close to these in many of its phases, is an inexhaustible resource.

The film corporations fear religious questions, lest offence be given to this sect or that.  So let such denominations as are in the habit of cooperating, themselves take over this medium, not gingerly, but whole-heartedly, as in mediaeval time the hierarchy strengthened its hold on the people with the marvels of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.  This matter is further discussed in the seventeenth chapter, entitled “Progress and Endowment.”

But there is a field wherein the commercial man will not be accused of heresy or sacrilege, which builds on ritualistic birth and death and elements akin thereto.  This the established producer may enter without fear.  Which brings us to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, issued by the American Vitagraph Company in 1911.  This film should be studied in the High Schools and Universities till the canons of art for which it stands are established in America.  The director was Larry Trimble.  All honor to him.

The patriotism of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, if taken literally, deals with certain aspects of the Civil War.  But the picture is transfigured by so marked a devotion, that it is the main illustration in this work of the religious photoplay.

The beginning shows President Lincoln in the White House brooding over the lack of response to his last call for troops. (He is impersonated by Ralph Ince.) He and Julia Ward Howe are looking out of the window on a recruiting headquarters that is not busy. (Mrs. Howe is impersonated by Julia S. Gordon.) Another scene shows an old mother in the West refusing to let her son enlist. (This woman is impersonated by Mrs. Maurice.) The father has died in the war.  The sword hangs on the wall.  Later Julia Ward Howe is shown in her room asleep at midnight, then rising in a trance and writing the Battle Hymn at a table by the bed.

The pictures that might possibly have passed before her mind during the trance are thrown upon the screen.  The phrases they illustrate are not in the final order of the poem, but in the possible sequence in which they went on the paper in the first sketch.  The dream panorama is not a literal discussion of abolitionism or states’ rights.  It illustrates rather the Hebraic exultation applied to all lands and times.  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”; a gracious picture of the nativity. (Edith Storey impersonates Mary the Virgin.) “I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps” and “They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps”—­for these are given symbolic pageants of the Holy Sepulchre crusaders.