We see at first the real big ship and can convince ourselves of its reality by seeing actual men climbing up the rigging.

But when it comes to the final shipwreck, the movement of the film is stopped and the camera brought near to a little tank where a miniature model of the ship takes up the role of the original and explodes and really sinks to its two-feet-deep watery grave.
While, through this power to make impossible actions possible, unheard of effects could be reached, all still remained in the outer framework of the stage.

The photoplay showed a performance, however rapid or unusual, as it would go on in the outer world.

An entirely new perspective was opened when the managers of the film play introduced the "close-up" and similar new methods.

As every friend of the film knows, the close-up is a scheme by which a particular part of the picture, perhaps only the face of the hero or his hand or only a ring on his finger, is greatly enlarged and replaces for an instant the whole stage.
Even the most wonderful creations, the great historical plays where thousands fill the battlefields or the most fantastic caprices where fairies fly over the stage, could perhaps be performed in a theater, but this close-up leaves all stagecraft behind.