"Are the Movies a Menace to the Drama?"
Essay
By: Brander Matthews
Date: 1917
Source: Matthews, Brander. "Are the Movies a Menace to the Drama?" North American Review, March 1917, 447–451, 453–454.
About the Author: Brander Matthews (1852–1929) was a prolific essayist, as well as a literary and drama critic.
Introduction
Before 1915, the silent motion picture had posed little threat to the popularity of the theater. Grand drama (even the lowly farce) had hardly anything to fear from carnival nickelodeons or from dimly lit, poorly ventilated movie houses in seedy neighborhoods. Besides, silent films had an exceedingly unsavory reputation, exacerbated by the fact that pornography flourished early on alongside legitimate films. "Proper" middle-class Americans left moviegoing to sleazy sailors and poor immigrants.
However, the breakthrough silent film, D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a...
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