ART OF THE MOVING PICTURE, THE

'The Art of the Moving Picture' is astonishing, as a work of analysis and vision. Over fifty years ago Lindsay saw the hunger that still obsesses the film enthusiast. Sculpture-in-motion, painting-in-motion, architecture-in-motion are nuggets out of which he refines subtle perceptions. Lindsay sees, in 1915, the revolution in human perception involved in the very existence of film. There is a clear prediction of McLuhan in "Edison is the new Gutenberg. He has invented the new printing." Lindsay sees, in 1915, the quintessence of the auteur theory of film criticism, formulated some forty years later: "An artistic photoplay . . . is not a factory-made staple article, but the product of the creative force of one soul, the flowering of a spirit that has the habit of perpetually renewing itself.