But this traditional idea has become utterly untrue.

_The art of the photoplay has developed so many new features of its own, features which have not even any similarity to the technique of the stage that the question arises: is it not really a new art which long since left behind the mere film reproduction of the theater and which ought to be acknowledged in its own esthetic independence ?_ This right to independent recognition has so far been ignored.

Practically everybody who judged the photoplays from the esthetic point of view remained at the old comparison between the film and the graphophone.

The photoplay is still something which simply imitates the true art of the drama on the stage.

May it not be, on the contrary, that it does not imitate or replace anything, but is in itself an art as different from that of the theater as the painter's art is different from that of the sculptor?
And may it not be high time, in the interest of theory and of practice, to examine the esthetic conditions which would give independent rights to the new art?
If this is really the situation, it must be a truly fascinating problem, as it would give the chance to watch the art in its first unfolding.