Many others have succeeded too, and many have failed, the chief reason for the failures being, it appears, that the spectacle idea appealed to the director in capital letters while he forgot all about the personal element of the story. No spectacle, no matter how grand and glittering and gorgeous, no matter how heavily peopled with costumed supernumeraries, no matter how thickly smeared with money and elaborate “art” can succeed if the director forgets about his personal story in the bigness of his background. He must be able to step from the mountain to the molehill with agility and with such delicacy of touch that he doesn't smash the molehill by treading on it as if it were the mountain.
As an example of this appreciation of both the spectacular and personal elements of story, no better picture can be found than Mr. Griffith's “Hearts of the World,” his story of the European war. He brought before the eye all the horrible realities of the battle field, used them to dramatic purpose time and again. And yet in the midst of all this spectacular action he never for once lost sight of the personal element in the story, this element represented on the battle field by Robert Harron who played the part of the young soldier. How many people who saw “Hearts of the World” can forget the scene in the shell hole in which the center of attention were the young soldier and the dying negro? This was one of the most remarkable of the personal, intimate touches in the picture and yet the very next moment the spectator was plunged back into the mass horror of the tremendous conflict.
This was only an instance of many. In the last scenes which looked forward to the armistice parade in Paris (looked forward to it with an uncanny amount of judgment), soldiers and citizens were seen going mad with joy in the streets of the city. A thrilling sight in itself were these mass scenes, showing thousands of people nearly breaking their own and their friends' necks with unrestrained joy at peace come at last.
But even in the midst of all these scenes of thrilling revelry the four principal characters of the picture were introduced rejoicing too. And the glimpses shown of them brought the thrills of the big scenes to a tremendous emotional climax.