The Art of the Moving Picture | Page 9

my first draft of The Art of
the Moving Picture. Here now is literature and art. When they become
one art as of old in Egypt, we will have New Mexico Hieroglyphics
from the Hendersons and their kind, and their surrounding Indian
pupils, a basis for the American Motion Picture more acceptable, and
more patriotic, and more organic for us than the Egyptian.
And I come the same month to Denver, and find a New Art Museum
projected, which I hope has much indeed to do with the Acceptable
Year of the Lord, when films as vital as the Santa Fe songs and pictures
and architecture can be made, and in common spirit with them, in this
New Arabia. George W. Eggers, the director of the newly projected
Denver Art Museum, assures me that a photoplay policy can be

formulated, amid the problems of such an all around undertaking as
building a great Art Museum in Denver. He expects to give the
photoplay the attention a new art deserves, especially when it affects
almost every person in the whole country. So I prophesy Denver to be
the Museum and Art-school capital of New Arabia, as Santa Fe is the
artistic, architectural, and song capital at this hour. And I hope it may
become the motion picture capital of America from the standpoint of
pure art, not manufacture.
What do I mean by New Arabia?
When I was in London in the fall of 1920 the editor of The Landmark,
the organ of The English Speaking Union, asked me to draw my map of
the United States. I marked out the various regions under various
names. For instance I called the coast states, Washington, Oregon, and
California, New Italy. The reasons may be found in the chapter in this
book on California. Then I named the states just west of the Middle
West, and east of New Italy, New Arabia. These states are New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. These are the
states which carry the Rocky Mountains north toward the Aurora
Borealis, and south toward the tropics. Here individualism, Andrew
Jacksonism, will forever prevail, and American standardization can
never prevail. In cabins that cannot be reached by automobile and
deserts that cannot be crossed by boulevards, the John the Baptists, the
hermits and the prophets can strengthen their souls. Here are lonely
places as sweet for the spirit as was little old New Salem, Illinois, one
hundred years ago, or the wilderness in which walked Johnny
Appleseed.
Now it is the independence of Spirit of this New Arabia that I hope the
Denver Art Museum can interpret in its photoplay films, and send them
on circuits to the Art Museums springing up all over America, where
sculpture, architecture, and painting are now constantly sent on circuit.
Let that already established convention--the "circuit-exhibition"--be
applied to this new art.
And after Denver has shown the way, I devoutly hope that Great City
of Los Angeles may follow her example. Consider, O Great City of Los

Angeles, now almost the equal of New York in power and splendor,
consider what it would do for the souls of all your film artists if you
projected just such a museum as Denver is now projecting. Your fate is
coming toward you. Denver is halfway between Chicago, with the
greatest art institute in the country, and Los Angeles, the natural capital
of the photoplay. The art museums of America should rule the
universities, and the photoplay studios as well. In the art museums
should be set the final standards of civic life, rather than in any musty
libraries or routine classrooms. And the great weapon of the art
museums of all the land should be the hieroglyphic of the future, the
truly artistic photoplay.
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