took images like that of Mr. Charles Pooter, the haunting figure of a nobody. This shoddy-genteel image he invested with an envelope of fairy romance by means of adherence to the classic ballet postures. The new film form was perfectly adapted to this composite image, since film is itself a jerky mechanical ballet of flicks that yields a sheer dream world of romantic illusions. But the film form is not just a puppetlike dance of arrested still shots, for it manages to approximate and even to surpass real life by means of illusion. That is why Chaplin, in his silent pictures at least, was never tempted to abandon the Cyrano role of the puppet who could never really be a lover. In this stereotype Chaplin discovered the heart of the film illusion, and he manipulated that heart with easy mastery, as the key to the pathos of a mechanized civilization. A mechanized world is always in the process of getting ready to live, and to this end it brings to bear the most appalling pomp of skill and method and resourcefulness. The film pushed this mechanism to the utmost mechanical verge and beyond, into a surrealism of dreams that money can buy. Nothing is more congenial to the film form than this pathos of superabundance and power that is the dower of a puppet for whom they can never be real. This is the key to The Great Gatsby that reaches its moment of truth when Daisy breaks down in contemplating Gatsby's superb collection of shirts. Daisy and Gatsby live in a tinsel world that is both corrupted by power, yet innocently pastoral in its dreaming. The movie is not only a supreme expression of mechanism, but paradoxically it offers as product the most magical of consumer commodities, namely dreams. It is, therefore, not accidental that the movie has excelled as a medium that offers poor People roles of riches and power beyond the dreams of avarice. In the chapter on The Photograph, it was pointed out how the Press photo in particular had discouraged the really rich from the paths of conspicuous consumption. The life of display that