ABSTRACT

Seriality and the extremely long fi lm were linked in America as in Europe, but they were used and viewed differently on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Peter Milne discusses in a chapter called ‘Overshooting’—and the serial from his 1922 book on directing the diffi culties of fi tting a story into the allotted two-reel serial form:

Of course, the ideal state of affairs would be to permit the picture to run its natural length. Then there would be no trouble at all about directors overshooting. However, this would lead to pictures being unnecessarily long as there would always be directors who abuse such a privilege.1