The Two Faces of Drama

It is all wrong for cinema and to be rivals. Despite their mutual parenthood, the drama, and peripheral similarities, each is a unique art form. Remembering this will give us the chance to have better films and better plays. Film, from its beginning, has had an inferiority complex because of its unfavorable comparison with theatre. Over and over again, most countries of the world, film has tried to be better by leaning on people and imitating the plays of the theatre. This social-climbing is like an index to film history. It has taken film seventy years to forge the essentials of its nature, the forming devices of its artistry, and an aesthetic to give it its own feet to stand on. A few films, mostly non-American, have made themselves into an art form independent from theatre, but still most films in the money are canned theatre. Our speaking of legitimate theatre probably does not remind many of us of the theatres of England which had to have a license from the Lord Chamberlain order to operate; otherwise, they were declared illegitimate and were danger of being closed. Legitimate has come to mean live actors; by implication, film actors are nonliving. Legitimate theatres are those elite places close to Broadway that were there before the advent of film and are citadels of better taste and more intellect than the

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