all the rooms in an orderly manner. The house is still the house of the British middle classes. But there is a change from Howards End. Hitherto Mr. Forster has been apt to pervade his books like a careful hostess who is anxious to introduce, to explain, to warn her guests of a step here, of a draft there. But here, perhaps in some disillusionment both with his guests and with his house, he seems to have relaxed these cares. We are allowed to ramble over this extraordinary continent almost alone. We notice things, about the country especially, spontaneously, accidentally almost, as if we were actually there; and now it was the sparrows flying about the pictures that caught our eyes, now the elephant with the painted forehead, now the enormous but badly designed ranges of hills. The people too, particularly the Indians, have something of the same casual, inevitable quality. They are not perhaps quite so important as the land, but they are alive; they are sensitive. No longer do we feel, as we used to feel in England, that they will be allowed to go only so far and no further lest they may upset some theory of the author's. Aziz is a free agent. He is the most imaginative character

that Mr. Forster has yet created, and recalls Gino the dentist in his first book, Where Angels Fear to Tread. We may guess indeed that it has helped Mr. Forster to have put the ocean between him and Sawston. It is a relief, for a time, to be beyond the influence of Cambridge. Though it is still a necessity for him to build a model world which he can submit to delicate and precise criticism, the model is on a larger scale. The English society, with all its pettiness and its vulgarity and its streak of heroism, is set against a bigger and a more sinister background. And though it is still true that there are ambiguities in important places, moments of imperfect symbolism, a greater accumulation of facts than the imagination is able to deal with, it seems as if the double vision which troubled us in the earlier books was in process of becoming single. The saturation is much more thorough. Mr. Forster has almost achieved the great feat of animating this dense, compact body of observation with a spiritual light. The book shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, What will he write next?

MOTION pictures are no longer a stunt, an optical juggling act to divert the crowd; they are an art the most difficult and nerve-racking of all the arts to practise, but one of the most complete and satisfactory modes of human expression yet found. King Vidor's "The Big Parade,' Murnau's "The Last Laugh,' Von Stroheim's 'Greed,' Victor Seastrom's 'The Scarlet Letter,' Edwin Carewe's 'Resurrection,' are all of them serious works of art, and some of them masterpieces.

One reason that the movies have been so long unrecognized as an art is that we cannot think of a work of art except as produced by the brain and heart of an artist. And who is the artist who makes a moving picture? A moving picture, like an opera, is a coöperative production, but the really responsible artist is the director. Richard Wagner was considered a superman because he wrote his dramas, composed the music for a hundred voices human and orchestral, drew all these elements together in the creation of tremendous human emotion, and finally conducted the stage presentation. Yet his work is almost child's play compared to that of a picture director.

For a long time men have toyed with the idea of creating life; R.U.R. and other recent plays and books deal again with this theme. We speak of characters created by an author or a

dramatist, but the moving picture, more than any other art, makes characters and emotions live and grow before our very eyes. It is not uncommon to see people in a picture theatre cry, start in terror, or shrink back in fear and loathing; and the creation of such emotion in the hard-headed modern crowd is effected by the director through such herculean labors as the layman would scarcely believe.

Most artists conceive an idea, visualize or oralize it, work it out, and reduce it to paper, canvas, notes, stone, or whatever they happen to work in. The picture director goes further. After his idea is visualized and reduced to paper, he proceeds to give it life in its actual materials of men, horses, deserts, oceans, and so forth, and finally reduces it a second time, to the medium of film. It is as if an artist were to paint a picture, after which all the characters came to life and began to argue with the painter. Saint Peter, not liking his rough beard, would trim it to a pointed Vandyke. There would be endless discussions as to costume; the back-row angels would try to work themselves into the front; and, after waiting three months for Saint Peter's beard to grow again, it would develop that the Christ Child had grown too big for the space allotted to him, and another child would have to be procured. Finally all the characters would group themselves more or less as before, and by some magic art,

as difficult in technique as the original painting, they would be eternally fixed, yet living, within their frame. What artist under such conditions would not go raving mad? And the director is no less temperamental, no less artistic or passionate in his creative urge, than the artist of the palette.

II

For some unknown reason journalists have described directors as casual creatures, running round in 'plus fours' of impossible design, 'working' from ten to three, golfing, bathing, and drinking the rest of the time. But I will let you into the secret. The average director has to have and employ the faculties of an army general, a sewer digger, a tight-rope walker, a tropical and arctic explorer, a schoolmaster, a shyster lawyer, an East Side bargain hunter, an ambassador, a heartless Moloch, and an emotional woman. He probably gets up at seven and drives to the studio about eight.

Say he has to go on location that day. He is 'shooting' some scenes at an out-of-the-way house where the hero is hiding. The townspeople are approaching the house, threatening to lynch the hero, who has publicly stated some unpleasant truths about them.

The director sees his three or four hundred extras comfortably seated in buses, the props, cameras, box lunches, and drinks stowed away, the horses packed in trailers. His assistants, property boys, and camera men report to him that everything is O. K. and off they go. Arrived at the house, the director has to turn a mass of joking men and women into an angry, menacing crowd. He shouts at them through his megaphone, he insults them, exhorts them, cajoles them. He is by turns an army mule driver and

an evangelist. He gesticulates, prances, screams. He sends his assistants rushing hither and thither. Long ago he took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and threw his tie away. (The tie is rescued from the woodpile by a prop boy who will later be held ac countable for the article.) At last the crowd is inspired by the spirit of one man. It sways a little, begins to surge forward as one mass. The cameras are set on the porch of the house where the hero is hiding. The director looks all over carefully. The cameras wait. The assistants cower. The director has decided that the size and menace of the crowd are not shown well enough from such a low angle. The cameras must be moved to the roof of the house. There is no trapdoor to the roof. Well, where is a ladder? There is no ladder. What! That idiot of a prop boy did not bring a couple of ladders in his pocket! The prop boy hastily rigs up a rope and pulley and hauls camera men and director to the roof.

The poor prop boy, by the way, besides bringing with him everything that he is told to bring, is expected to anticipate all possible needs. Naturally he carries black thread, wire, iodine, police badges, false money, prop blood, handcuffs, guns, and rubber knives. Once, out at sea on a small steamer, the director suddenly turned to the prop boy and demanded, 'Where's that piano?' It was the first mention of a piano, but the prop boy never quailed. A packing case and a piece of black velvet photographed like the finest Steinway.

But to return to our director on the housetop. No sooner does he take a look through the lens than he decides they must move still higher, and he commands the prop boy to shift the outfit to the roof of the barn. This does not at all faze the prop boy, who has already foreseen such a move and

called up the local fire department. The brigade is quite pleased to send its hook and ladder for a consideration to help out the pictures. Finally, sitting astride the ridgepole, the cameras precariously balanced on the sloping shingles, the director, straining his voice to the limit, inspires a mob at long distance and the scene is begun. Once more the crowd grows menacing, surges forward, is about to break. At the critical moment a small boy sitting on a fence alongside sights a neighbor across the field and runs over to him, straight through the centre of the scene. Curses! Damnation! The crowd stumbles in its stride. The whole thing has to be done over again, and probably again, and again. Nerveracking grind and tension the whole day long.

Those recently popular pictures laid in or around a steel mill were particularly torturous to make. A steel mill cannot stop even for the movies. All day and all night it roars. The redhot metal is poured into moulds which are swung on huge derricks across the mill and plunged into tanks of water to cool. Clouds of steam hiss up from these tanks, obscuring the vision. Where to place a camera so as to take all these things and yet be out of the way of the derricks and workmen? A movable platform was constructed on the rafters under the roof, and this was shifted over whatever part of the mill was to be photographed. One of the men of the picture company fell from the platform and was so badly burned that he died in a few hours. There was no cessation of work. Only ten days were allotted to shoot the mill scenes and the company was already behind schedule. But the danger, the incessant noise, and the memory of their comrade's terrible death preyed on the minds of the other members of the company. It was the duty of the

director to keep up their morale, and how could he do this when they sometimes worked for twenty-four hours straight?

Picture people are mostly of the soft-white-collar, city-bred type. Their struggles have been almost entirely with poverty, and they have lived usually by their wits. They are suddenly called upon to face in person the dangers of the pioneers, of the sea, every kind of physical hardship, demanding strength and courage. One sweet young actress who recently carried off a beauty prize and a fat contract was at one time making a jungle picture. Jungle pictures are made in arenas surrounded by high fences hidden with bamboos, palms, and tropical vegetation. The scenes with the animals are usually taken first, with only the trainers in the arena, and later the actors come in and do their bits. For those scenes in which it is essential that actors and animals appear together, naturally every kind of precaution is taken. But certain of the animals are fairly tame and are allowed to wander in the arena even while the actors are present. The actors are instructed how to treat the animals — above all not to run away. This particular young actress entered the arena late-she had been having a little flirtation with her leading man and was unaware that Patsy, a tame young lioness, was wandering at large. The actress seated herself by a clump of bamboo and proceeded to have her palm read by her (for the moment) devoted admirer, when Patsy sprang out of the bushes and landed inor rather on her lap, purring and wagging her tail and expecting to have her head nicely scratched. Fortunately the actress was too terrified to move, and Patsy immediately went to her trainer when she was called. But it is a distinct shock to any civilized

young lady suddenly to find a lion in her lap. It is one of those situations we are not taught how to meet, which make unlimited demands on nervous control and courage.

In the same picture Mary, the chimpanzee, a really dangerous animal always held safely by a wire leash, took a strange fancy to the production manager. After a scene she would run up to him and poke her skinny black hand in his face. 'Kiss it!' the trainer shouted. 'Kiss it, and, whatever you do, don't move!' The manager had to kiss the ape's hand half a dozen times before she was satisfied and consented to return to her work.

It is not only danger and physical difficulty which try the director's nerves. There is the tedious, agonizing grind of getting a close-up just right. Recently a director was taking a famous star as she picked up a cup of tea, laughed slyly over the edge as she drank it, and set it down again. He shot this scene steadily for four days. The cup must be picked up gracefully

held at a particular angle so that the curve of the cup and the curve of the cheek would make an harmonious picture. The smile must be just perfect - not too much of it showing and not too little. For four days star and director labored. Then the company went out on location for a week to shoot some outdoor scenes. On their return to the studio they proceeded with the same cup and smile. I did not happen to be in at the finish and cannot say how long their efforts continued.

Bearing in mind that a good director must of necessity have something of the 'artistic temperament,' it is easy for one to see that the extreme difficulty of handling his medium of expression is apt to drive him to excesses even more than is the case with other artists. And there is certainly no denying that Hollywood indulges in

excesses. Still these excesses are not so terrible or so unusual as the world makes out. After you practise, for hours daily, kissing at your most becoming angle, a kiss really does not mean much to you; and a girl gets so used to having a man's arms around her that they mean little more to her than the arms of a chair. It is not so much the life you live as what it means to you that affects your character, and most of the picture people are generous, natural, kind-hearted folk. If their social eccentricities seem greater than other people's, it is because they do not try to hide them or hush them up — publicity is good business for them.

But to return to the director and his struggle to produce a work of art out of the most stubborn of all materials: men, women, and the world at large. In a majority of pictures there is some tremendous outdoor elemental scene a flood, fire, shipwreck, earthquake, or volcanic eruptionthat is used as a dramatic background to heighten and repeat the human emotion, exactly as it is used in other arts. But here the director has actually to handle the elements. He cannot merely mention that a storm is raging outside. He must show it. Apart from all the clever and ingenious ways of faking elemental drama, in very many cases the director is absolutely at the mercy of the elements as much as any fisherman or farmer.

Take the simplest kind of scene. The girl perhaps walks down to the seashore in the evening. She stands for a second on a rock and looks into the water, thinking. This involves a number of different shots. First the girl is seen walking toward the beach. Then she climbs the rock. Perhaps a close-up of the slippery weed as she mounts. She is outlined against the sky. She looks down. A shot of the water she is looking at. She looks