The moving pictures would indeed be a complete failure if that popular theory of art which we suggested were right.

But that theory is wrong from beginning to end, and it must not obstruct the way to a better insight which recognizes that the stage and the screen are as fundamentally different as sculpture and painting, or as lyrics and music.

_The drama and the photoplay are two cooerdinated arts, each perfectly valuable in itself._ The one cannot replace the other; and the shortcomings of the one as against the other reflect only the fact that the one has a history of fifteen years while the other has one of five thousand.

This is the thesis which we want to prove, and the first step to it must be to ask: what is the aim of art if not the imitation of reality?
But can the claim that art imitates nature or rather that imitation is the essence of art be upheld if we seriously look over the field of artistic creations?
Would it not involve the expectation that the artistic value would be the greater, the more the ideal of imitation is approached?
A perfect imitation which looks exactly like the original would give us the highest art.

Yet every page in the history of art tells us the opposite.