THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER
IN a very important particular the title first chosen for this little
book was a misnomer, a fact that grows more apparent to the author as he
approaches the end of the task he has essayed. “A Biography of the
Movie,” the name I had selected for my projected volume, implies, at
this period of the evolution of the picture screen, either too much or
too little—too much if it suggests a comprehensive history of a life
that has but recently begun, too little if it fails to show that the
facts and figures available regarding the development of the motion
picture demonstrate the dynamics of the screen as a medium for racial
intercommunication. There came, of course, to the writer the temptation
to dwell in detail upon the romantic story of the rise of the movie from
insignificance to world-dominion, from poverty to affluence, from a
plaything to a power, to mention names made famous by the screen, to
maintain, in short, the same attitude of mind toward the cinema and all
its works that impelled Merton of the Movies to idealize the new art and
industry whether he looked at them through a telescope or a microscope.
That a work based upon the more personal aspects of the movie’s
evolution can be both readable and timely has been proved of late by the
success achieved in book form by the personal reminiscences of one of
the leading producers in the motion picture realm. But had I succumbed
to the inclination to give what may be called the lure that lies in
gossip to this little volume, I should have taken merely the path of
least resistance and have left wholly undone the real task I have
essayed, namely, that of getting an idea, a prophecy, a promise, a
possibility—whatsoever you may be pleased to call it—into the minds of
my readers, to the end that the project referred to in the first chapter
of this book may receive eventually the consideration to which I, with
all due modesty, believe it is entitled.
In other words, I have been endeavoring to explain briefly how the toy
kinetoscope of a quarter of a century ago by becoming a universal medium
of expression has made what men and nations say to each other in this
new world-language of crucial significance to the future of
civilization.
Now just here we come face to face with the most significant, the most
tragically important, feature of the tremendous subject with which we
are dealing. Is Man, triumphant at last over the evils that befell him
at the Tower of Babel, possessing for the first time in his racial
career a universal language, actually in possession of soul-stirring
truths that, reaching the race at large, shall overcome the powers of
darkness menacing our modern civilization? Let me repeat the concluding
sentence of the preceding chapter: “While the screen may minimize
eventually the evils springing from a world-wide confusion of tongues,
it can permanently eradicate those evils only by the dissemination of a
message that shall exert an uplifting influence upon the perturbed soul
of humanity.”
Shall Christ or Cæsar, idealism or materialism, altruism or animosities,
progress or reaction dominate the screen? The importance of the answer
that the future makes to this query can not be conceivably
over-estimated. To repeat an assertion I made in a preceding chapter,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are struggling for domination over the soul of
the screen and the issue of the conflict is still in abeyance.
A timely truth finding lodgment in the perturbed souls of men might
conceivably save the race from destruction. By means of a modern
invention an idea, opportunely dropped from the clouds by heroic airmen
behind the German lines, destroyed the morale of the cohorts of reaction
and brought victory to the Allied arms. Two things were here essential
to success—the message itself and the medium for its dissemination. Of
the two, the message is, of course, infinitely the more important. But
Wilson’s words, at that special crisis, would have been futile had they
not been given wings by Wright.
Civilization stands in sore need of a message of a unifying and
peace-begetting nature. The screen offers it a medium whereby such a
message could be carried to the ends of the earth, to be known of all
mankind through the Esperanto of the Eye. But whence shall this message
come? By what authority, by what sanction, shall it force itself upon
the minds and hearts and souls of all men? If the screen falls
eventually wholly into the control of demagogues, a medium for
enlightenment that might save the race from the threatening evils of the
future will not merely fail to fulfill its highest mission but will
become the most powerful weapon of those who would undermine and
presently destroy existing civilization.
As an uplifting, educational, civilizing force, the movie appears to be
approaching the parting of the ways. As has been shown in preceding
chapters, it has vastly enlarged its scope and possibilities as an
influence, direct or indirect, upon the daily lives of millions of human
beings. It has of late solved the major mechanical problems that
confronted it. At its present rate of progress, the cinema will soon
become more powerful as an influence upon the minds of the masses than
are the newspaper, the novel and the play taken together.
For the sun never sets upon the screen! Day and night, in all parts of
the civilized, and an increasing portion of the uncivilized, globe the
motion picture is making its imprint upon the minds and souls of
countless millions of men, women and children. It has taken possession
of a polyglot world and is speaking daily to the human race in a tongue
that is understood as readily on the Congo as at Cambridge. But what is
it saying? “Ah, there’s the rub!” Is the screen merely a mirror in which
Man looks upon his own face and turns away heedless of what his
countenance might have taught him? Has the race finally found a way to
that self-knowledge which might mean its eventual salvation only to
misuse, as its wont has been, its newest medium for advancement? Can
nothing be learned from the screen by the restless, harassed,
apprehensive millions of the earth that shall make this first universal
method of communication worthy of the possibilities for world-wide
uplift that it possesses?
The answer to these queries depends largely upon your personal point of
view, upon the philosophy of life which dominates your mental processes.
If you are influenced by that widely-accepted generalization to the
effect that “human nature never changes” you will not be inclined to
take seriously our contention that by forcing Man to observe and study,
by means of the screen, the blunders, idiocies, crimes and tragedies of
his past he may be forced eventually to repent and reform, to make of
his future something less reprehensible than his past has been. But
human nature is not fixed—it is fluid. It has changed, and it is always
in the process of changing. In fact, the time may not be far distant
when not only the individual but the race at large, hitherto at the
mercy of endocrinal glands, will find in the laboratory methods whereby
thyroids and pituitaries and adrenals and the other chemical arbiters of
the fate of men and nations may be so dominated by science that human
nature will not merely change with heartbreaking slowness for the better
but will spring at a bound into its supermanhood.
The above fantastic possibility is not, at this stage of the new
biology, to be taken very seriously, but the suggestion thrown out
serves, at least, to call attention to the fact that never before in the
history of the race has Man been more concerned in his destiny than he
is to-day, more inclined to turn away from old methods of solving the
riddle of his being, methods that have long played him false, and to
turn hopefully to new teachers, new sciences, new hopes, new horizons.
And, lo, at this great moment, when, as never before, Man craves all
knowledge that he may know himself, chance—if such there be—has
vouchsafed to him the one thing needful for a racial self-revelation,
namely, a universal language.
As I wrote the above, this morning’s newspapers were making the
following announcement to their readers:
Plans for carrying on the work toward international peace by the
Carnegie Endowment in Europe, Inc., became known yesterday when
Justice Guy of the New York Supreme Court approved an
application for the incorporation of that organization. Among
the objects to be attained by the corporation are: To advance
the cause of peace among nations, to hasten the abolition of
international war, and to encourage and promote peaceful
settlement of international differences. In particular to
promote a thorough and scientific investigation and study of the
causes of war and of the practical methods to prevent and avoid
it. To diffuse information and to educate public opinion
regarding the causes, nature and effect of war, and means for
its prevention and avoidance. To cultivate friendly feelings
between the inhabitants of the different countries and to
increase the knowledge and understanding of each other by the
several nations, etc.
Praiseworthily lofty and noble as the projects outlined above may be, it
is no disparagement of their promoters to assert that there is nothing
startlingly new in the design they have at heart. In all generations
there have been altruists who envisaged a world freed from war, but
always has it happened that they have been aroused from dreams by the
thunder of the guns. From one point of view at least, the saddest of
countless sad sights in Europe after August 2, 1914, was the Peace
Palace at the Hague.
But if there is nothing especially novel in what we may call the
Carnegie creed as above worded, there is this to be said for the peace
promoters of to-day that they have one great advantage over all their
predecessors, even over those of ten years ago. A new medium for
preventing Man from repeating his former errors and crimes is, by leaps
and bounds, reaching a marvellous state of development. There is every
reason to believe that the message above referred to, which a
blood-stained race sorely needs, is that which the Carnegie Foundation
is desirous of bringing to the minds and souls of men. But have the
powers of evil and unrest, the promoters of international jealousies and
hatreds, selfish demagogues craving always more power that they may make
the worse appear the better reason, out-generaled the forces of
righteousness and placed the screen in bondage to their pernicious
designs? If they have, and the Esperanto of the Eye is to speak for Mr.
Hyde instead of Dr. Jekyll, then has another great calamity befallen a
race that had no need of more.
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