The technology of motion pictures

Any graphic art seems to involve an element of the dimension of time. For example, printing allows us to review in our imagination the happenings of previous times or the prediction of future happenings; paintings indicate to us things that happened in the past, and to happen in the future; likewise sculpture seems to contain that “mysterious” element of either preserving or reproducing happenings in time. In the motion picture, which may be called a graphic art, certainly the element of time is more intimately involved than in any of the other three arts mentioned. A reel of film may contain pictures of the dead villain, the live villain, and the unborn villain; it contains the beginning and the end; and that is all contained in that one reel of film at that very same time. In that reel of film those things have happened or they are going to happen. You can make it go backward or frontward. You can cut out a piece in the middle; you can stick it together and have that which happened previously happen today and then show the retrospect. You can delay the action and shift it further along in the story. You can take the element of time and just move it anywhere you wish. Time without geographic solidity and actual physical body would be as listless as physical body would be without time, so in the motion picture we have to put something tangible on the screen. We have to make an entertainment out of it. I believe the question of appeal of motion pictures to the general public is based on two main factors: One might be called the “mysterious” element of time involvement, and the other the presentation of realistic geographic records. That is, when you see a motion picture you feel that you are seeing something that either did happen, or could happen if it is a good one.