Thinks We'll Do Our Reading on Screen (1923)

The second part of the February 12, 1923 article, "Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence," focuses on motion pictures.

Written by David Wark Griffith (D.W. Griffith) the piece provides some great insight into the hopes and dreams for this new medium. While he has some spot-on predictions, Griffith couldn't have been more wrong about "instantaneous transmission" (i.e. live television) never taking off.

The great publishing industry will be the publishing of motion pictures instead of print.

Motion picture libraries will be as common as private libraries - more so.

Theatres will have the same relation to these libraries as the spoken theatre today has to the printed copies of dramatic works.

By their very scope and area of appeal the films must vastly outrank the stage in importance. The artistic development should be parallel since one will always draw more or less from the other.

Talking pictures will have been perfected and perhaps have been forgotten again. For the world will have become picture trained so that words are not as important as they are now.

All pictures will be in natural [unreadable]. The theatres will have special audiences; that is, there will be specialty theatres.

I do not see the possibility of instantaneous transmission of living action to the screen within 100 years. There must be a medium upon which the dramatic coherence can be worked out, and the perfected result set firmly before the screen will be permitted to occupy the public's attention. In the instantaneous transmission there would be entirely too much waste of the public's time, and that is the important thing - time.

See also:
Movie Trends of the 21st Century (1982)
Thinking Men and Women Predict Problems of World Century Hence (1923)
Pictures Stately Edifices (1923)

Movie Trends of the 21st Century (1982)

The 1982 book The Omni Future Almanac describes the future of Hollywood.

*Cartoons, westerns, and love stories will still constitute the pre-dominant hits of the twenty-first century.

*Future audiences, unfamiliar with classic films like Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and The Godfather, will see these enduring tales remade with the stars of the future. This will continue a revivalist tradition that has long been in existence in Hollywood and on the Broadway stage.

*Instant classics will be created by increased Hollywood hype and intensive advertising. Aggressive marketing techniques will also be used in the promotion of pay television and home video media.

*Old-time movies - black and white films from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s - will be electronically colored by computer techniques for a generation unfamiliar with the medium of black and white photography.

*Trends at the theater concession stand may come and go, but popcorn will remain America's favorite movie-going snack.

*Movie studios will continue to become electronic entertainment conglomerates. With their vast financial resources, these will be the only organizations capable of funding the giant spectaculars of the future. The trend is already exemplified by Universal, Paramount, MGM and Warner. Smaller experimental movies, on the other hand, will flourish with the availability of video to independent producers.

*Though the techniques and technologies of movies are certain to change, movies will always be called movies.


Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and The Godfather may very well be the only movies in history that haven't been remade. I'd be pleased as punch if they kept it that way. (Oh, and if you could halt production on that remake of The Birds, that'd be awesome.)