lists must be referred to by all those who desire to study these
experiments in their beginnings. So I let them remain, as still vivid in
the memory of all true lovers of the photoplay who have watched its
growth, fascinated from the first. But I would add to the list of Action
Films of chapter two the recent popular example, Douglas Fairbanks in The
Three Musketeers. That is perhaps the most literal "Chase-Picture" that
was ever really successful in the commercial world. The story is cut to
one episode. The whole task of the four famous swordsmen of Dumas is to
get the Queen's token that is in the hands of Buckingham in England, and
return with it to Paris in time for the great ball. It is one long race
with the Cardinal's guards who are at last left behind. It is the same
plot as Reynard the Fox, John Masefield's poem--Reynard successfully
eluding the huntsmen and the dogs. If that poem is ever put on in an Art
Museum film, it will have to be staged like one of Æsop's Fables, with a
_man_ acting the Fox, for the children's delight. And I earnestly urge
all who would understand the deeper significance of the "chase-picture"
or the "Action Picture" to give more thought to Masefield's poem than to
Fairbanks' marvellous acting in the school of the younger Salvini. The
Mood of the _intimate photoplay_, chapter three, still remains indicated
in the current films by the acting of Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford,
when they are not roused up by their directors to turn handsprings to
keep the people staring. Mary Pickford in particular has been stimulated
to be over-athletic, and in all her career she has been given just one
chance to be her more delicate self, and that was in the almost forgotten
film:--A Romance of the Redwoods. This is one of the serious commercial
attempts that should be revived and studied, in spite of its crudities of
plot, by our Art Museums. There is something of the grandeur of the
redwoods in it, in contrast to the sustained Botticelli grace of "Our
Mary."