The melodrama may be cheap; yet it does not disturb the cultured mind as grossly as a similar tragic vulgarity would on the real stage, because it may have the snowfields of Alaska or the palm trees of Florida as radiant background.

An intellectual interest, too, finds its satisfaction.

We get an insight into spheres which were strange to us.

Where outlying regions of human interest are shown on the theater stage, we must usually be satisfied with some standardized suggestion.

Here in the moving pictures the play may really bring us to mills and factories, to farms and mines, to courtrooms and hospitals, to castles and palaces in any land on earth.
Yet a stronger power of the photoplay probably lies in its own dramatic qualities.