But surely the photoplay shares many conditions with the drama on the stage.

The presentation of conflicting action among men in dramatic scenes is the content, on the stage as on the screen.

Our chief claim, however, was that we falsify the meaning of the photoplay if we simply subordinate it to the esthetic conditions of the drama.

It is different from mere pictures and it is different from the drama, too, however much relation it has to both.

But we come nearer to the understanding of its true position in the esthetic world, if we think at the same time of that other art upon which we touched, the art of the musical tones.