Vachel Lindsay

The Patriotic Picture need not necessarily be in terms of splendor. It generally is. Beginning the chronicle is one that waves no banners.

Especially as Viewed from the Heights of the Civic Centre at Denver, Colorado, and the Denver Art Museum, Which Is to Be a Leading Feature of This Civic Centre

As far as the photoplay is concerned, religious emotion is a form of crowd-emotion. In the most conventional and rigid church sense this phase can be conveyed more adequately by the motion picture than by the stage. There is little, of course, for the anti-ritualist in the art-world anywhere. The thing that makes cathedrals real shrines in the eye of the reverent traveller makes them, with their religious processions and the like, impressive in splendor-films.

The outline is complete. Now to reënforce it. Pictures of Action Intimacy and Splendor are the foundation colors in the photoplay, as red, blue, and yellow are the basis of the rainbow. Action Films might be called the red section; Intimate Motion Pictures, being colder and quieter, might be called blue; and Splendor Photoplays called yellow, since that is the hue of pageants and sunshine.

This chapter is founded on the delicate effects that may be worked out from cosy interior scenes, close to the camera. It relates directly to chapter three.

While the Intimate-and-friendly Motion Picture may be in high sculptural relief, its characteristic manifestations are in low relief. The situations show to better advantage when they seem to be paintings rather than monumental groups.

The Action Pictures are sculpture-in-motion, the Intimate Pictures, paintings-in-motion, the Splendor Pictures, many and diverse. It seems far-fetched, perhaps, to complete the analogy and say they are architecture-in-motion; yet, patient reader, unless I am mistaken, that assumption can be given a value in time without straining your imagination.

This chapter is a superstructure upon the foundations of chapters five, six, and seven.

The stage is dependent upon three lines of tradition: first, that of Greece and Rome that came down through the French. Second, the English style, ripened from the miracle play and the Shakespearian stage. And third, the Ibsen precedent from Norway, now so firmly established it is classic. These methods are obscured by the commercialized dramas, but they are behind them all. Let us discuss for illustration the Ibsen tradition.

I have read this chapter to a pretty neighbor who has approved of the preceding portions of the book, whose mind, therefore, I cannot but respect. My neighbor classes this discussion of hieroglyphics as a fanciful flight rather than a sober argument. I submit the verdict, then struggle against it while you read.