Summary

"This is a joyous and wonderful performance," said Francis Hackett, when he reviewed this book in the New Republic of December 25, 1915, "a bold and brilliant theory, really bold and really brilliant, and takes first place as an inspiration of the greatest popular aesthetic phenomenon in the world."

Author Biography

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago and then in New York with Robert Henri before becoming a poet. He was a member of the Modernist School (others included Ezra Pound,e. e. cummings, and Wallace Stevens) and published over a dozen collections of poetry.

Introduction to Modern Library: The Movies	p. v
Introduction	p. vii
A Word from the Director of the Denver Art Association	p. xxi
The General Photoplay Situation in America, January 1, 1922, 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	p. 1
The Outline Which Has Been Accepted as the Basis of Photoplay Criticism in America, Both in the Studios of the Los Angeles Region, and All the Serious Criticism Which Has Appeared in the Daily Press and the Magazines	p. 19
The Point of View	p. 21
The Photoplay of Action	p. 25
The Intimate Photoplay	p. 30
The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor	p. 38
The Picture of Crowd Splendor	p. 43
The Picture of Patriotic Splendor	p. 50
The Picture of Religious Splendor	p. 59
Sculpture-in-Motion	p. 65
Painting-in-Motion	p. 75
Furniture, Trappings, and Inventions in Motion	p. 84
Architecture-in-Motion	p. 95
Thirty Differences between the Photoplays and the Stage	p. 105
Hieroglyphics	p. 116
More Personal Speculations and Afterthoughts not Brought Forward so Dogmatically	p. 127
The Orchestra, Conversation, and the Censorship	p. 129
The Substitute for the Saloon	p. 139
California and America	p. 145
Progress and Endowment	p. 150
Architects as Crusaders	p. 161
On Coming Forth by Day	p. 166
The Prophet-Wizard	p. 171
The Acceptable Year of the Lord	p. 180
Appendix	p. 189
Index	p. 195
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Excerpts

INTRODUCTION

by Stanley Kauffmann

"This is a joyous and wonderful performance," said Francis Hackett when he reviewed this book in the New Republic of December 25, 1915. He then went on to call it "a bold and brilliant theory, really bold and really brilliant, and takes first place as an interpretation of the greatest popular aesthetic phenomenon in the world."

Hackett was certainly not alone in praising the book. Gordon Craig, the great man of the theater whom Lindsay urges to enter films, wrote to the author from-Rome suggesting that they found a film studio together. D.W. Griffith was moved to ask Lindsay to be his guest at the New York premiere of Intolerance. Victor 0. Freeburg, who taught what surely must have been one of the first college film courses-at the School of journalism of Columbia University-used the book as a text. Herbert Croly, the editor of the New Republic, invited Lindsay to be the magazine's film critic. (Lindsay wrote occasional reviews during 1917.) Comment on the book was wide and intense.

But it has virtually disappeared. Although most film historians know the book, very few contemporary film enthusiasts, in my experience, are even aware of its existence. It has been out of print for many years. The revised edition of 1922, reprinted here, is scarcer than the original of 1915. Lindsay's biographers pay it scant attention. Edgar Lee Masters, who published a biography of Lindsay in 1935, disparages The Art of the Moving Picture. Eleanor Ruggles, who published a biography in 1959, does not deal with it in any significant way. Yet, out of the mass of Lindsay's poetry and prose, this may be the work most worthy of survival. And in the field of film aesthetics, it is the first important American work, still important.

Excerpted from The Art of the Moving Picture by Vachel Lindsay
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