suggestions in the detailed action, we cannot overlook the fact that the theater is extremely limited in its means.  A series of events on the stage may strongly force on the mind the prediction of something which must follow, but inasmuch as the stage has to do with real physical beings who must behave according to the laws of nature, it cannot avoid offering us the actual events for which we were waiting.  To be sure, even on the stage the hero may talk, the revolver in his hand, until it is fully suggested to us that the suicidal shot will end his life in the next instant; and yet just then the curtain may fall, and only the suggestion of his death may work in our mind.  But this is evidently a very exceptional case as a fall of the curtain means the ending of the scene.  In the act itself every series of events must come to its natural ending.  If two men begin to fight on the stage, nothing remains to be suggested; we must simply witness the fight.  And if two lovers embrace each other, we have to see their caresses.

The photoplay can not only “cut back” in the service of memories, but it can cut off in the service of suggestion.  Even if the police did not demand that actual crimes and suicides should never be shown on the screen, for mere artistic reasons it would be wiser to leave the climax to the suggestion to which the whole scene has led.  There is no need of bringing the series of pictures to its logical end, because they are pictures only and not the real objects.  At any instant the man may disappear from the scene, and no automobile can race over the ground so rapidly that it cannot be stopped just as it is to crash into the rushing express train.  The horseback rider jumps into the abyss; we see him fall, and yet at the moment when he crashes to the ground we are already in the midst of a far distant scene.  Again and again with doubtful taste the sensuality of the nickel audiences has been stirred up by suggestive pictures of a girl undressing, and when in the intimate chamber the last garment was touched, the spectators were suddenly in the marketplace among crowds of people or in a sailing vessel on the river.  The whole technique of the rapid changes of scenes which we have recognized as so characteristic of the photoplay involves at every end point elements of suggestion which to a certain degree link the separate scenes as the afterimages link the separate pictures.

CHAPTER VI

EMOTIONS

To picture emotions must be the central aim of the photoplay.  In the drama words of wisdom may be spoken and we may listen to the conversations with interest even if they have only intellectual and not emotional character.  But the actor whom we see on the screen can hold our attention only by what he is doing and his actions gain meaning and unity for us through the feelings and emotions which control them.  More than in the drama the persons in the photoplay are to us first of all subjects of emotional experiences.  Their joy and pain, their hope and fear, their love and hate, their gratitude and envy, their sympathy and malice, give meaning and value to the play.  What are the chances of the photoartist to bring these feelings to a convincing expression?