This changing of background is so easy for the camera that at a very early date this new feature of the plays was introduced.

At first it served mostly humorous purposes.

The public of the crude early shows enjoyed the flashlike quickness with which it could follow the eloper over the roofs of the town, upstairs and down, into cellar and attic, and jump into the auto and race over the country roads until the culprit fell over a bridge into the water and was caught by the police.
This slapstick humor has by no means disappeared, but the rapid change of scenes has meanwhile been put into the service of much higher aims.
The development of an artistic plot has been brought to possibilities which the real drama does not know, by allowing the eye to follow the hero and heroine continuously from place to place.

Now he leaves his room, now we see him passing along the street, now he enters the house of his beloved, now he is led into the parlor, now she is hurrying to the library of her father, now they all go to the garden: ever new stage settings sliding into one another.

Technical difficulties do not stand in the way.