stage may strongly force on the mind the prediction of something which
must follow, but inasmuch as the stage has to do with real physical
beings who must behave according to the laws of nature, it cannot avoid
offering us the actual events for which we were waiting. To be sure,
even on the stage the hero may talk, the revolver in his hand, until it
is fully suggested to us that the suicidal shot will end his life in the
next instant; and yet just then the curtain may fall, and only the
suggestion of his death may work in our mind. But this is evidently a
very exceptional case as a fall of the curtain means the ending of the
scene. In the act itself every series of events must come to its natural
ending. If two men begin to fight on the stage, nothing remains to be
suggested; we must simply witness the fight. And if two lovers embrace
each other, we have to see their caresses.

The photoplay can not only "cut back" in the service of memories, but
it can cut off in the service of suggestion. Even if the police did not
demand that actual crimes and suicides should never be shown on the
screen, for mere artistic reasons it would be wiser to leave the climax
to the suggestion to which the whole scene has led. There is no need of
bringing the series of pictures to its logical end, because they are
pictures only and not the real objects. At any instant the man may
disappear from the scene, and no automobile can race over the ground so
rapidly that it cannot be stopped just as it is to crash into the
rushing express train. The horseback rider jumps into the abyss; we see
him fall, and yet at the moment when he crashes to the ground we are
already in the midst of a far distant scene. Again and again with
doubtful taste the sensuality of the nickel audiences has been stirred
up by suggestive pictures of a girl undressing, and when in the intimate
chamber the last garment was touched, the spectators were suddenly in
the marketplace among crowds of people or in a sailing vessel on the