Traces the evolution of the motion picture art from the little filmstrips that indiscriminately recorded anything that moved to the richly complex films of today that both excite the emotions and stimulate the imagination. Studies the themes, the imaginations, the techniques, the visual qualities of those artists who might have become filmmakers instead. Includes a Index.

(Key Words: Gerald Mast, Movies, Film, Cinema, Erich von Stroheim, Francois Truffaut, Mack Sennett, Mary Pickford, George Melies, Fritz Lang, David Wark Griffith, Thomas Edison, Rene Clair, Charles Chaplin, Michelangelo Antoniioni, Vsevlod I. Pudovkin).