about the Splendor Pictures, in chapters five, six, and seven. This is an
element constantly re-illustrated in a magnificent but fragmentary way by
the News Films. Any picture of a seagull flying so close to the camera
that it becomes as large as a flying machine, or any flying machine made
by man and photographed in epic flight captures the eye because it is
architecture and in motion, motion which is the mysterious fourth
dimension of its grace and glory. So likewise, and in kind, any picture
of a tossing ship. The most superb example of architecture-in-motion in
the commercial history of the films is the march of the moving war-towers
against the walls of Babylon in Griffith's Intolerance. But Griffith is
the only person so far who has known how to put a fighting soul into a
moving tower.
The only real war that has occurred in the films with the world's
greatest war going on outside was Griffith's War Against Babylon. The
rest was news.