more deftly handled, in places more expensive. The story goes at the
highest possible speed to be still credible. When it is a poor thing,
which is the case too often, the St. Vitus dance destroys the
pleasure-value. The rhythmic quality of the picture-motions is twitched
to death. In the bad photoplay even the picture of an express train more
than exaggerates itself. Yet when the photoplay chooses to behave it can
reproduce a race far more joyously than the stage. On that fact is based
the opportunity of this form. Many Action Pictures are indoors, but the
abstract theory of the Action Film is based on the out-of-door chase. You
remember the first one you saw where the policeman pursues the comical
tramp over hill and dale and across the town lots. You remember that
other where the cowboy follows the horse thief across the desert, spies
him at last and chases him faster, faster, faster, and faster, and
finally catches him. If the film was made in the days before the National
Board of Censorship, it ends with the cowboy cheerfully hanging the
villain; all details given to the last kick of the deceased.

One of the best Action Pictures is an old Griffith Biograph, recently
reissued, the story entitled "Man's Genesis." In the time when
cave-men-gorillas had no weapons, Weak-Hands (impersonated by Robert
Harron) invents the stone club. He vanquishes his gorilla-like rival,
Brute-Force (impersonated by Wilfred Lucas). Strange but credible manners
and customs of the cave-men are detailed. They live in picturesque caves.
Their half-monkey gestures are wonderful to see. But these things are
beheld on the fly. It is the chronicle of a race between the brain of
Weak-Hands and the body of the other, symbolized by the chasing of poor
Weak-Hands in and out among the rocks until the climax. Brain desperately
triumphs. Weak-Hands slays Brute-Force with the startling invention. He
wins back his stolen bride, Lily-White (impersonated by Mae Marsh). It is
a Griffith masterpiece, and every actor does sound work. The audience,