Your climax may be a thrilling situation--should be, in
fact--but it must also be a definite way-station on the journey to the
point of discovery.
While there is still a great deal of absolute nonsense--viewed from
any standpoint of common sense and logic--in most photoplay serials,
and while the long-drawn-out mystery is often made possible only by
the introduction of weird and unnatural happenings not even possible
in real life, there is now a tendency toward serials more true to life
and more dependent for their success upon plots that will stand the
acid test of logical reasoning. The very fact that each separate
episode, with its various situations in the working out of the
mystery, had to be depended upon to draw the crowds back again to see
the next episode, was taken as sufficient excuse for the introduction
of situations that would make the wildest exploits of "Diamond Dick"
or "Old King Brady" read like the Sunday-school stories of a
generation ago.
The Wharton serial, "The Eagle's Eye," already referred to, was the
first in which historical facts were reproduced in their logical
order, held together and made more interesting by a veneer of fiction.
The fictional head of the Criminology Club and the daring woman Secret
Service operative seemed almost to be secondary characters compared to
the much-talked-about agents of the Imperial German Government whose
nefarious acts made so much trouble for the American detectives and
Secret Service agents headed by ex-Chief Flynn, under whose
supervision the serial was made.
Pages:
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222