Thoughts on the movies, therefore, must be rather thoughts on things that are currently shown us by means of the movies; thoughts also on some of the things that we might see and do not.  I have compared the screen above to a proscenium arch and a show window, but both of these are selective:  the screen is as broad as the world.  It is especially adapted to show realities; through it one may see the coast of Dalmatia as viewed from a steamer, the habits of animals in the African jungle, or the play of emotion on the faces of an audience at a ball game in Philadelphia.  I am pleased to see that more and more of these interesting realities are shown daily in the movie theatres.  There has been a determined effort to make them unpopular by calling them “educational,” but they seem likely to outlive it.  One is educated, of course, by everything that he sees or does, but why rub it in?  The boy who thoroughly likes to go sailing will get more out of it than he who goes because he thinks it will be “an educational experience.”  As one who goes to the movies I confess that I enjoy its realities.  Probably they educate me, and I take that with due meekness.  Some of these realities I enjoy because they are unfamiliar, like the boiling of the lava lake in the Hawaiian craters and the changing crowds in the streets of Manila; some because they are familiar, like a college foot-ball game or the movement of vessels in the North River at New York.

I like the realities, too, in the dramatic performances that still occupy and probably will continue to occupy, most of the time at a movie theatre.  Here I come into conflict with the producer.  Like every other adapter he can not cut loose from the old when he essays the new.  We no longer wear swords, but we still carry the buttons for the sword belt, and it is only recently that semi-tropic Americans gave up the dress of north-temperate Europe.  So the movie producer can not forget the theatre.  Now the theatre has some advantages that the movie can never attain—­notably the use of speech.  The movie, on the other hand, has unlimited freedom of scene and the use of real backgrounds.  We do not object to a certain amount of what we call “staginess” on the stage—­it is a part of its art; as the pigment is part of that of the painter.  We are surrounded by symbols; we are not surprised that costume, gesture and voice are also symbolic instead of purely natural.  But in the moving picture play it is, or should be, different.  The costume and make-up, the posture and gesture, that seem appropriate in front of a painted house or tree on a back-drop, become so out-of-place as to be repulsive when one sees them in front of a real house and real trees, branches moving in the wind, running water—­all the familiar accompaniments of nature.  The movie producers, being unable to get away from their stage experience, are failing to grasp their opportunity.  Instead of creating a drama of reality to correspond with the real environment