Dramatic Films

Even borrowed dignity can bring a new sense of self-respect, and the film adaptations of well-known literature which abounded during this period encouraged in the film industry a naive consciousness of its own artistic mission. The penetration of a new idiom by old ones may seem a strange, even an unfortunate, road to the realization of its possibilities, and the film's dependence on novels and stage plays was not, finally, a healthy one. It has been said again and again that the seeds of development lay rather in the simple Westerns of the U.S.A., the few great factual films or the more realistic dramas, than in theatrical and literary transcriptions like Les Miserables ¹ or Quo Vadis. ² Nevertheless both the stage and the book made valuable contributions to the development of film drama, and the eagerness with which their use was praised at the time was not entirely unfounded. In addition to their more legitimate contributions, moreover, even the exaggerated respect which they were accorded had its function. Their prestige awed and dazzled a still largely undiscerning public into granting the cinema an artistic status which it may not yet have deserved, but which nevertheless gave it an ideal whose open recognition influenced every branch of film making.