Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/16

 I am to blame, because that is the phase of cinematic art which has hitherto received the least attention from critics

"Movie fans" in general are my audience, my hope being that they may find something new in this discussion, something, here and there, which they had not themselves thought of, but which will help them toward a conscious and keen enjoyment of beauty scarcely observed before, and to a more certain discrimination between genuine art on the screen and mere pretentious imitations of art.

In order not to confuse the issue, I have purposely omitted discussions of plot, dramatic situation, characterization, etc., except where these matters are so intimately connected with pictorial form that an omission would be impossible. In short, it is what the picture looks like, rather than what it tells, which here occupies our attention. This study is, therefore, supplementary to my book "The Art of Photoplay Making," which is published by The Macmillan Company.

Mr. James O. Spearing, who was for five years the distinguished motion picture critic on the ''New York Times'', and is now on the production staff of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, has been kind enough to criticize the manuscript of the present work, and I take pride in thanking him publicly for having thus served me with his extensive knowledge and cultivated taste.

V. O. F.

The National Arts Club, New York City, August 27th, 1923.