Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/220

 that in the future the lover of the films may not look in vain for weird stories in uncanny haunts, for fairy tales in whimsical nooks, for epic dramas in spacious domains, for comedies in funny places; and let us hope, too, that he will find the compositions so perfect that not a single setting would have any artistic value apart from its own story.

"But what of nature?" says some one. "Must the movie director have mastery over the works of the Creator, too?" Indeed he must! Because if he is an artist he is a creator; and if nature becomes a medium in his art, then he must have mastery over that medium insofar as it enters the art. Hills have been levelled, streams have been dried up, and valleys have been filled with water, all for the welfare or profit of man. Mastery of this kind costs money; but are not the movie magnates noted for their fearlessness in signing checks?

Wealthy men have been known to build landscapes for their own pleasure; there is no very valid reason why they should not build landscapes for their own business, especially when that business is an art. The movie director of to-day wears out automobiles searching the country for "locations" that will do as natural backgrounds for screen stories; and in this enthusiasm he is almost as amateurish as the kodak fiend who scours the country for good things to snap. The movie director of some to-morrow will not look for natural backgrounds; he will make them.

When an artist paints a picture of a natural subject he does not try to reproduce exactly the material things which he sees before him. He rises far above the craft of the copyist into the divinity of creation. His