New-York tribune., 1918-12-15
By Virginia Tracey

By Virginia Tracey
Our old friend the Movie Fan came
to US the other day with a grievance
Walter Prichard Eaton! Did he
say that the reason some people
thought there must be a masterpiece
in the movies was because none had
ever come out?"
We replied in the affirmative
"Well, you're always finding movie
masterpeces-why don't you tell him
about them? Take picture that's as
high class as any play, take Marguerite
Clark in 'Prunella' -
NO." we cried, catching fire, "let
US not take anything unique! 'Prunel-
la was pure poetry, so ethereal that
doubt whether (whisper among our
selvesD it can have really succeeded
with the movie public. Besides, as
1t was adapted from a stage play the
enemy might tell us it didn't come
out of the movies at all. Let US take
real representative movie successes,
common, popular blood and -thunders-
the commoner the better when they're
all made over into passion, into beauty
why, Mary Pickford did three of
them in one year,
y 4
our Movie Fan.
The Little American of course,
and "A Romance Of the Redwoods' and
Stella Maris.' There's the sort of
picture to nail the movie flag to and
say: Here is what we stand or fall
by!' Not because their type is supe-
rior, but because it isn't; because they
are of popular prejudices, popular
dreams, terror and enthusiasms all
compact. If you ask me- we de-
claimed, while the polite Movie Fan
helplessly smiled, the first essential
of good melodrama is that it shall
cherish and gather up the general emo
tlon and personify it, projcc! a uni
iersal ideal or tesr or belief lnrc rs
crystallized form-as it's projected,
tor instance, in any legend. Tha. was
the happy basis of these three pict-
ures; they were all popular legends
ne innocent girl who reforms the
iighwayman IN "A Romance of the
RedwoOds'; in Stella Maris' the beg.
gar maid who Stays the tyrant and
dies for her prince; then the American
girl, desolate but undaunted in war.
time France-Heaven knows they're
familiar enough, as they ought to be
but valid as if reborn into originality
by the passionate sincerity with which
their producers had conceived them
the high excitement which had mould
ed them from end to end. Remember
now, if every inch of them wasn't
wasn't"----
Handmade" asserted the Movie Fan
Handmade, exactly. Nothing me
chanically turned in any Of them
nothing specifically felt nor scantily
seen. That's why, thrillers that they
truly were, they didn't jog from one
bone-breaking thrill to another. but
thrilled like one rising breath from
end to end with strength and feeling.
And. of course, hits why so much
beauty could be got into them, soaked
into them, so that we remember them
as If that were what thew were made
of-beauty Of the redwoods, naturally
and of gardens and girlhood, Mary
Plckford in the happiest girlhood
beauty of shipwreck and of ravaged
France, where the dramatic signif.
canoe of every old hearth and fin.
staircase had been felt to the core
but, most of all, always and all the
time, beauty of emotion, of the ex.
preston of human faces and human
bodies, Of What are you grinninp
at?"
II love to hear you," said the Movie
Fan. "Was some photography al
right"
mo medium" we took up the cue q,
impressively as possible, mot ever
verse, hts popular legend so we'll q,