Transcriber’s Notes
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by
♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the
paragraph in which they appear.
Details and other notes may be found at the end of this eBook.
THE SOUL OF THE MOVING PICTURE
[Illustration: Scene from _The Nibelungs_.]
[_See p. 93_]
THE SOUL OF THE MOVING PICTURE
BY
WALTER S. BLOEM
_AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN_
BY
ALLEN W. PORTERFIELD
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1924
By E. P. Dutton & Company
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Introduction ix
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Tools of the Trade 1
II. Texts 19
III. Tricks 32
IV. The Scene 40
V. The Setting 72
VI. The Poet 95
VII. The Compass of Poetry 110
VIII. Film Adaptation 144
IX. The Path to Art 153
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SCENE FROM
The Nibelungs _Frontispiece_
FIGURE FACING PAGE
1 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 6
2 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 14
3 The Stone Rider 20
4 The Stone Rider 28
5 The Nibelungs 34
6 Destiny 42
7 The Children of Darkness 48
8 Algol 60
9 Dr. Mabuse: The Great Unknown 64
10 Golem 70
11 Golem 78
12 Destiny 84
13 Sumurun 100
14 Madame Dubarry 108
15 Anne Boleyn 114
16 Dr. Mabuse: The Great Unknown 122
17 A Doll’s House 130
18 Vögelöd Castle 138
19 Destiny 146
20 The Nibelungs 152
21 The Nibelungs 160
INTRODUCTION
The influence of the moving picture on the souls of the various peoples
of the earth has become so great that an attitude of indifference
toward this marvelous invention is no longer permissible. We see
ourselves forced to take a definite stand for it or against it; we are
obliged to line up as friend or foe of the film. It is, however, no
longer sufficient to oppose the moving picture in a spirit of indulgent
contempt or fanatic hostility. All the world knows that there are more
bad moving pictures than good ones, and that the moral and aesthetic
tendency of a great many films is of a quite negligible nature. But if
the moving picture were in reality the offspring of the Devil, as many
theologians and academic demi-gods the world over contend, thinking
people would be at once confronted with this insoluble problem: How
does it come that thousands upon thousands of human beings scattered
over the earth are laboring, with intense resignation and passionate
zeal, to the end that the film may be made more perfect artistically
and cleaner from a purely moral point of view? The striving after
money has naturally something to do with their efforts. To offer this,
however, as a final explanation of this unusual situation would be an
idle method of reasoning. You cannot explain the joy these men are
taking in their creative efforts in this way, for their souls are in
their work.
To many thinking people, the real nature of the moving picture is
wrapped in mystery; it is a brilliant and enigmatic riddle to them.
They recognize, though they fail to comprehend, the fact that the
moving picture, despised without restraint and condemned on general
principles only the other day, has won an incomparable victory over the
hearts of men—a victory, too, that will be all the greater and more
beautiful once the psychic and moral perfection of the moving picture
has been accomplished.
The cultured man has an instinctive hatred of forces the significance
of which lie beyond his grasp; he makes every conceivable effort to
defend himself against them, to ward them off. But the people, the
masses, throw themselves into the arms of such forces blindly and
without question. The number of cultured men, however, who are going
over to the camp of the moving picture—without thereby becoming
disloyal to the other arts—is growing daily. Even those sworn and
confirmed skeptics who still look down upon the film from the
heights of their intellectual superiority with superciliousness
and contempt are bound to admit that there is something between
the pictures which has a magic power to draw, which exercises an
ineluctable influence in the gaining of recruits.
* * * * *
The moving picture is an art based on feeling, and not on thought. It
has to do with the emotions rather than with the intellect. The man
who goes to the moving picture wants to experience certain incidents,
not by thinking about them, but by feeling them. Just as music arouses
the feelings through tones, just so does the moving picture attempt
to solve, not the riddle of the human brain, but of the human soul. A
moving picture is a _feeling expressed through gestures_.
There is still much about this youthful art that is altogether
misunderstood. Its real sources, the fountains of its life, are
suspected, foreboded by only a few; nor are they recognized, when
seen, by all. Nearly every visit to a motion picture theatre is a
disappointment; the must of the grape is still carrying-on in a really
absurd fashion.
The motion picture, however, is marching straight ahead in a course
of unmistakable and wonderful development toward the heights of
victory. And this development, this evolution, has to do not merely
with the perfecting of the art itself, but with the enjoyment that is
derivable and derived from the art. Our eyes are becoming keener in
the detection of gestures and mimicry; our imaginations are growing
sharper, even clairvoyant; they are rapidly becoming able to read
the language of pictures and movement. When the motion picture was
still in its infancy, its actors assumed and employed the shrill and
tinny pathos of the pantomime. At that time, and it was not long ago,
the lovely and mutely passionate world of gesture was unknown to us.
We saw it, to be sure, in the dance, but we were still incapable
of interpreting it. To-day we feel, detect, see some sort of inner
vibration behind the slightest movement.
In the other arts, in the old and tried arts, those that have already
been developed to a high stage of perfection, if not actually
over-developed, progress, if made at all, must be made with the
expenditure of tremendous effort; it must be wrung from the depths,
as it were. In the moving picture, on the other hand, a thousand
possibilities still lie quite on the surface, ready, indeed longing,
for fulfilment. The great creator can think, feel, and dream new and
novel features without falling into despair at the thought of
what has already been done. Becoming mindful of the past is not a
painful occupation for him. Indeed, the motion picture may be compared
to a starry heaven that stretches out before our upturned eyes,
awaiting the creative ken of the celestial investigator.
* * * * *
Every attempt, however, of the exuberant creator, filled with the urge
for deeds, to perform aesthetic experiments on the motion picture
avenges itself; such experiments cannot be carried out with impunity.
For the applause of a small circle of the elect is not going to
prevent bankruptcy on the part of the film company that supports these
experiments. Film art without economic success is quite unthinkable.
Germany, the land of theory, experienced a short while ago a veritable
flood of aesthetic experiments in the domain of the moving picture. Of
these, there was but one, _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_, which provided
its creators with the satisfaction that comes from a pronounced success
in foreign countries. And even in this case the success was due to
the peculiarity of certain means that had heretofore never been seen
on the screen. The American has too much appreciation of this world,
and too little sense for the world beyond, to grow enthusiastic
about phantoms or nebulous adventures. Nor is he weighed down with the
traditions that reach back through centuries of time and constitute
so much impedimenta on the part of European artists. And the Swede
is too intimately associated with the mother-earth of his home ever
to undertake a flight to the clouds through the medium of the motion
picture. But the Swede and the German reached the point where they
saw that you have got to speak a language, in the film, which can be
understood by men wherever they chance to live.
A work, let it be ever so artistic and valuable in itself, which
brings economic distress to the film company that produces it, harms
indirectly the entire film business as an art. That film artist attains
to the complete realization of his desires whose creations put money
into the purse of the company; the one who does not do this fails in
the end. The task of the film artist is always and ever: To effect a
happy union between art and business. Moreover, this union must be
brought about in such a way that both—art and business—flourish. The
man who cannot do this merely drives the film companies on to the
production of cheap and cheapening pictures which draw the masses and
pay a reasonable dividend, but nothing more. For the film companies
of this earth are and remain, first of all, business concerns
that must pay. Film art is expensive, and no gratuitous distributor
of private funds is going to give one penny which will not bear him
interest. If there be anyone so blind as not to be able to grasp this
simple principle, he is unable to grasp the underlying principle of
the motion picture as an art. To fail to recognize commercial success
as the basic condition on which film art rests is to call down upon
one’s head the irritation that ensues from ineffectual grumbling.
Consequently, the much lauded redeemer of the film will be he, and he
only, who can create what is at once of enduring artistic value and
financial potentiality.
And every film will have this artistic and commercial success which
glows with real passion because it has been wrung from powerful
feeling. The art, the very soul of the motion picture, cherishes no
desire for subtle, intellectual form or forms. It longs, indeed, for a
soul form of elementary force.
* * * * *
This is true, for the unique though inexhaustible domain of the motion
picture is the eternal _feelings_ of man, the initial and primeval
feelings that rise from out of the _senses_ and mount to the _soul_.
Love or hate, and the joy, sorrow, grief, hope, lamentation and good
fortune that emanate from these two—it is with these that the
film has to do. It has to do with nothing that comes rigidly from the
intellect—or exclusively from the soul itself. In the moving picture
everything becomes pale and colorless which is not born of the sensual
emotions. Every art seeks its way to the soul. Sensuality[1] _and_
soul, that is the moving picture. There is only one eternal, immutable,
and never-failing material for the film: it is the passion of the soul.
[1] There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book than
_sinnlich_, or the noun derived from it, _Sinnlichkeit_. Throughout,
the former is rendered by “sensual,” the latter by “sensuality.”
Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily
attached to it: “Sensual” means nothing more than relating to the
senses; and “Sensuality” is the noun form and means nothing more
than the composite result of our being “sensual.” We have, as a
matter of fact, five “senses.” The German for “sense” is _Sinn_.
Consequently, _sinnlich_ has reference to our capacity for sensations,
our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of
ways. I might have commandeered such terms as “sentient,” “sensory,”
“susceptible to sense experiences,” and so on. Such variety would have
been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me
cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal,
no man can ever persuade me to study. —Translator.
Thought and intellect are given an intelligent welcome by but very
few people. Were it not for the herd and hypocrisy, poetry would be
unread and the stage would be a temple of the lonely and isolated. Is
Shakespeare or Goethe really understood by the masses?
The senescent stage is the counterpart of the goal of our
civilization, which is the thought that can be felt, the idea that can
be filled with soul. It is for this reason that we have to-day, more
than ever, the _spiritual stage_.
Art based on emotions is art for the masses. The youthful motion
picture is the counterpart of the origin of our nature, which is the
sensuality that can be felt and filled with soul. It is for this reason
that we have to-day the sensual, the sensuous, moving picture.
There are limits to feelings. For we live in an age that demands
crystal clarity and coy niceness. The limp, flabby and effeminate
we dislike. No age was less naïve than ours, and yet none was less
sentimental.
The motion picture is art for the masses; it is mass art. Sectarianism,
chilly aestheticism, attempts at escape from inadequate culture—these
are not known to the motion picture. Art for the masses, art for the
money. That is the entire story. But does art for the masses mean
art such as the masses themselves would create? Rabble art? The film
in which the plebeian soul alone takes interest and from which it
derives pleasure is not a good film. Nor is that a good film which
is understood only by the aesthetic soul. To be good, satisfactory,
excellent, a film must carry along with it and enrapture all, those
whose hearts are simple and those whose hearts are intricate,
complex, full of intertwined sensations. To do this is hard. If and
when done, it is done through the medium of great art.
* * * * *
This book was written by a man who writes scenarios. It is not beyond
reason to believe that such a book could have been written only in
Germany, where one, in matters of art, not infrequently forgets the
action out of an all-absorbing interest in meditation. It arose from
an inner desire, from an inner exertion: I wished to become clear,
for the benefit of my own manuscripts and using them as a basis, as
to how a film should be constructed so that art and profit, which are
inseparable in this field, might get along with each other; might
endure mutual juxtaposition. And I wished to give other people the
benefit of my views.
I have devoted my attention mainly to those motion pictures that have
been most readily accessible to my fellow-countrymen and, to me. In
other words, I have discussed German films. The time at which my
wounded and bleeding country will again take its place among the happy
and prosperous nations of the earth is still remote. Moreover, it is
only in rare instances that the best films of foreign lands are shown
in our theaters. The taste, however, in the matter of the moving
picture is virtually the same among white people the world over, and we
are all striving, even competing, for the identical goal—to please.
I am quite mindful of the fact that a purely theoretical discussion
has its limitations in value. Every personal opinion is one-sided, and
no sooner has the connoisseur found his way than he throws the views
of others overboard and proceeds on his course just as if he had never
heard of them. Nevertheless, the motion film of all lands, whether it
be American or European, makes its appeal to human beings every one of
whom has two eyes in his head and a heart in his breast. Nor is this
all. Every individual man, wherever he may chance to live or whatever
his origin may be, has one fundamental ambition, one basic goal: joy,
beauty, adventure. Perhaps I have succeeded in saying a few things
regarding the general nature of the motion picture which may be helpful
by way of showing how a successful picture is built up and produced. If
I may be permitted to do so, I should like to express the hope that I
have made a few suggestions of enduring value, even and also to those
across the Atlantic. Nor is it judicious to overlook the fact that
an idea is by no means worthless when it incites to contradiction or
refutal.
The smallest creation is more valuable than the most beautiful
book of discussion. It is always permissible, however, to form certain
ideas regarding one’s own creations, and to discuss these ideas in a
theoretical way. The one point to be kept in mind in this connection
is, that we must never regard such discussion as the formulation of
definitive and irrefutable opinions; a treatise of this kind dare not
lay down an inelastic law for the film of the future. Limitations dare
not be placed on the free creative ability of the mind and the soul. A
real creator can break the chains of theory easily and without notice.
For him there is but one rule that always holds: Do your work well, and
then you need not pay the slightest attention to the law as this is
handed down.
W. S. B.
Burg Rienick.
_In the Summer of_ 1923.
THE SOUL OF THE MOVING PICTURE
CHAPTER I
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
The special characteristic of a fool is that he always tries to do
the thing for which he is not qualified. Art likewise commits a
grievous folly when it attempts something for which it is not fitted;
when it fails to undertake what it alone can accomplish. For this
specific accomplishment on its part is, as a matter of necessity,
expected of it. Whether this expectation be entertained consciously or
instinctively is beside the point.—Walter Harlan.
The moving picture is scarcely twenty-five years old. Born of a
matchless technical invention, it demands to-day, with the unrelieved
arrogance of the proverbial upstart, complete recognition in the
society of the arts There, in the company of the established arts,
it finds illustrious companions each of whom looks back upon a proud
tradition of hundreds and hundreds of years. The old arts, however,
are reluctant about admitting the moving picture to their family. And,
truth to tell, the film is bound to admit that its nursery was not as
it should have been; for filthy hands taught it to walk.
No man of intelligence refused to pay due honor, indeed to express
his vigorous admiration for, the invention of the moving picture and
the talking machine. The moment, however, that these two creations of
technical science asked to be regarded as means to a new and real art,
this honor and this admiration were at once driven from the field by a
frigid rejection. The masses, to be sure, sicklied over in no way with
a pale cast of thought, conducted themselves differently: they forsook
Olympus then and there and rushed with jubilant hearts into the temples
of the new “art.”
The film had arrived. The scholar refused to recognize it; he
closed his doors against it. It was impossible, however, for him to
prevent its spread over the entire earth. Owing to the very fact,
that intellect could at first not be persuaded to take a sympathetic
interest in the film, the film went on its way and became, quite
naturally, the tool of ignorance if not of imbecility. To its initial
champions any such concept as cultured civilization was unknown. Their
sole objective was to transform the novel device into jingling guineas,
and to do it as quickly as possible.
It was not long, however, until the public that frequented the
music halls and variety shows grew tired of the “cinematographic”
disrobings and their ♦attendant indecencies. What was to be done?
Writers immediately set about creating backstairs tales of the worst
conceivable type. There was but one slogan: Money! And the money was
forthcoming. Technical science, which has really never, of relatively
recent years, been without a keen nose for good business, came to the
aid of the scenario “authors.” As a result of this, the presentation
of the pictures soon acquired a stage of perfection which the most
enthusiastic dreamer had never once anticipated. But of art, of
culture, of an exquisitely visualized civilization—not a trace not
even a premonition.
♦ “attendent” replaced with “attendant”
Then came the moving picture actor, that living embodiment in one
person of idealism and materialism, in whose acting people began to
have a sort of pre-conception of an entirely new method of giving
visible and tangible expression to human feelings. The belief that a
new art was in the making was still vague; one’s idea of it was still
dim; but it was there. The “scholarly” world, whose unique privilege
it always has been, is, and will be to denounce, decry, and damn the
new so long as it has not been perfected and despite such evidences of
unquestioned greatness as it may reveal, at once shrieked as from a
single throat: “Surrogate!” It was in Italy that a certain poet with a
world-wide reputation permitted his work to be placed on the screen.
At this some began to be skittish, skeptical. And from afar off, as it
were, came the first trumpet tones announcing a new _art_.
And thus the moving picture, attacked by the entire “cultured” world,
went on its way, unimpeded by the objections that were raised against
it, to the heights on which it at present rests. The scholar proved
that there is one thing at least which he is not: a prophet, a seer,
a herald of the new. To be a pioneer does not mean that one must cast
slurs on that which has not yet found itself; it means much rather the
ability to catch, by fair means and fanciful, the first distinct notes
of remote clarity.
No one will be able to have great faith in the motion picture who is
not at the same time able to seal his heart against the veritable flood
of artistic disappointments—and who is not ready to pay his homage to
the few great scattered events and episodes that have gone toward the
effecting of the clarity of which we have spoken? If you say to me,
“Nine-tenths of all moving pictures are bad,” I shall reply by saying
that “One-tenth of all moving pictures is good.” If this repartee on
our part is possible from the point of view of hard fact, then it
certainly must be possible to squeeze out all the faulty fruit from
this budding garden of the screen. It is, in truth, ridiculous
to try to prove the worthlessness of the moving picture as a whole
by selecting, with much conscientious care, the worst pictures and
holding them up as typical—and abominable—“illustrations.” These “worst
pictures” merely make us realize the not exactly crushing truth that
the moving picture, like any other artistic tool or instrument, may be
misused. If we wish to prove the enduring value of poetry, we do not
cite Kotzebue or Conan Doyle. We can appreciate the value of the motion
picture only by studying its _best_ works.
It is easy to criticise; to nag is a sport in which all may indulge.
But mistakes are necessary: they return without ceasing and lay in our
lap first the foreboding, and then the real knowledge of those inner
laws that go to make up the truth. And they do this however deeply
buried the laws may be.
Technique stands at the service of civilization; it is the product of
cold, calculating, judicial intellect. Art serves culture; it is the
product of the warm, seeking soul. The moving picture wants to serve
culture; it wants to speak to the soul, sprung though it itself is from
cold technique.
When, at the close of the preceding century, its inventors projected
the first “living” pictures on the canvas, they did not even faintly
suspect the measure of development that was in store for the child
of their mind. The film was not created for the benefit of culture. If
in the meantime the visualization of human feelings has come to occupy
the lion’s share of attention, it is merely a proof of the fact that
the human soul has taken possession of the film in order, through it,
to acquire new forms of expression for its feelings.
Who would have the audacity to contend that the number of arts was
definitely decided upon centuries ago, and that new ones cannot be
added to the already existing list? Who will deny that every art has
sprung from some technical invention or other? Even music, the most
beautiful flower of human culture, was impossible and unthinkable
until men had invented sounding boards, vibrating strings, and similar
devices. Whether the technical apparatus associated with a species of
art, and making that art possible, be elaborate or simple, concerns art
itself in no way. For it is entirely and altogether a question as to
how large the space is which it offers the soul.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Scene from _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_.
[_See p. 79_]
]
Long before the moving picture was a reality, there was an art of
dumb, mute, moving bodies which achieved its ends through crude and,
viewed from the present point of view, distinctly laughable method
of procedure. I have reference to the _pantomime_. We see that such
forms as the Pantomime has thus far employed, such devices as it has
thus far called to its aid, have by no means exhausted its artistic
possibilities. The mimic action, or incident, was laid at such a great
distance from the spectator that the finer values of the enterprise
failed of their real significance; they could not, in truth, be
applied. The pantomimic actor—even much more so than is the case with
the actor on the stage of the spoken drama when he is obliged to depend
upon gestures for his effects—saw himself forced into an excess of
pathos with which it was quite impossible for his soul to keep pace. We
felt such acting was affected; we dubbed it “hollow, theatrical pathos.”
In order to make its mimic expression more refined, which means more
artistic, pantomime called music to its aid, and music is an art of
feeling. It thereby ceased to be real pantomime (that is, a _pan_
or an “all” affair), especially in connection with the accompanying
song, the _canticum_. In other words, the hitherto existing forms of
pantomime have proved to be inadequate and unsatisfactory as agents
of transmission between the contents of the art they are supposed
to represent and the spectators who are supposed to enjoy the
representation.
Then came the film. Anything that had previously been lost in the
distance, anything in the way of tender emotions and delicate feelings
that the spacious room of the theatre had swallowed up, is now caught
up by the lens of the film. A symphony of humanity can be made to
vibrate in the play of a nervous hand, a chaos of opposing forces can
be visualized with an equally small display of effort. What art had
ever before been able to do justice to the animated and “living” hand?
What other phase of art had been able to catch, hold, and delineate the
twitching corners of the mouth?
It was not until the film had been brought to its present state of
perfection that there came forth from the pantomime this new and
exalted art, the art of expressing feelings through gesticulation. The
inexpressible, the unspeakable, that regarding which even poetry itself
can do no more than merely touch or indicate, has been taken up by the
film and made a reality in the sphere of art. Even years ago, the great
German actor Bassermann played, in the moving picture, a scene in which
the transition from unmarred joy to unrelieved grief was expressed in
his well-nigh immovable face. Where was such an accomplishment possible
before the invention of the film? On the legitimate stage? In the
pantomime?
The exploitation of the much-abused _Grossaufnahme_ (enlarged
photograph or close-up) is, of course, perfectly justified when it is
a question of portraying intensified feelings, provided the exposure
be taken with becoming caution. But it has meaning—that is, it is to
be applied then and only then when feelings are to be expressed which,
in actual life, are revealed gently. The close-up is out of place in
caricatures and facial distortions; it is intended solely for the
more tender emotions; gruff or even indifferent feelings cannot be
reproduced with its aid.
It is a matter of congratulation that the tendency in recent years, not
merely in Europe but also in America, has been away from the old method
of breaking up each individual scene into a half dozen close-ups. There
is, moreover, a certain definite standard with regard to this kind of
pictures beyond which it is impossible to go with impunity. When, for
example, a single head or face is detached from its pictural connection
and made to fill the entire surface of the canvas, the effect is
disagreeable, the impression unsympathetic.
Thus we see that the pantomimic possibilities are fulfilled, through
the aid of the motion picture, up to that very point beyond which
these possibilities no longer exist. The significance of this
is manifest: it is only with the aid of the motion picture that the
very possibilities in the way of the animated, or moving, body can
be visualized and exhausted. This in turn proves that the film was
necessary—that as a novel and perfect form of expression of the human
soul it is to be reckoned as an art of the arts, and among the other
arts, without hesitation or mental reservation. The gramophone is also
a technical invention; but we shall never be able to list it among
the arts because it was not necessary as an aid to music. All that it
does is to carry what it receives farther along and in an unchanged
condition, just like the waves of the radio station. The gramophone
does not bestow a deeper possibility of expression on the sound it
reproduces. The motion picture is a qualitative gain for art; the
gramophone is merely a quantitative gain.
But, the people say, the film has its weak points: It is colorless; it
shows a flat surface and not a well-rounded fullness; it is mute. I
detect at once two disadvantages and one advantage.
I am aware of the weakness that arises from the fact that the film
reproduces flat surfaces. Life itself is rich and round, bodies move
about in pliable fullness, there are such things as propinquity and
remoteness; some things are near, others afar off. The film brings out
all of this only in an imperfect way; indeed to a certain degree
these concepts and realities are distorted by the film. There was a
desire to transform this defect into an advantage, and the shadow
picture, as well as the etched and colored film, was the result. Each
was rather attractive, neat, even winsome; but in the framework of our
art they were altogether without real significance. For the strongest
impression of the motion picture is and remains the play of real human
beings; and we cannot expand or contract our moving picture people just
before they begin to play, and just so that they may have the right
“size.” Let us rather be content with longing for the inventor who will
present us with the plastic film.
I appreciate the weakness that arises from the colorlessness of the
film. Life itself is rich and variegated; it shines forth in colors of
a thousand hues. The flowers are beautiful; the blush on the cheek of
a lovely young woman is filled with magic charm. We can indeed at this
stage only seriously regret that this diverting play of colors has thus
far not been a gift out after which the film may reach. The film as we
know it is without color.
But Heaven forbid that we should become unmindful of the austere fact
that all arts have their weak points alongside of their strong ones.
How we should like to hear the angels on the Altar of Ghent sing!
How we should like to see the aurora of Michael Angelo broaden out the
glorious body! The truth is, however, that the motion picture, even in
its present imperfect state, gives us an abundance, indeed enough, of
pleasurable sensations. For does it not depict the play of beautiful
bodies, the wonders of the storm-tossed sea, of the wind-swept plain?
Does it not show us the flying clouds and foaming waves? It does; and
we can consequently endure, for the time being, its colorlessness and
its imperfections with regard to space, especially since there is
well-founded reason to believe that sooner or later the inventor will
come forth and eliminate both of these defects.
I am aware of one advantage. The film is mute where life itself is rich
and resounding. One would fancy then at first blush that this were a
disgraceful weakness on the part of the film, one that must be removed
at once if the film is to survive. We, however, detect a distinct
advantage in the muteness of the film. Every art must have a basic
and fundamental soil, so to speak, in which its particular species
of flowers flourish. Poetry has the spoken word, painting has color,
music has sounds, the plastic arts the rigid body. It is in these that
each seeks and enjoys its originality—and originality is the sole
ground on which art of any sort justifies its continued existence.
Therefore, grant to the motion picture its mute play of moving bodies,
for if you are unwilling to do this, you will doom the film to become
merely a hackneyed, parrot-like imitation of the regular stage. But
man is so constituted that he makes those inventions which he can make
and not others, regardless always as to whether these inventions are
beneficial to human kind or not; regardless as to whether they are of a
beneficent or a malevolent nature. This proposition must be accepted,
or it is impossible to account for the invention of the cannon. And
so, in all probability quite soon, the speaking and resounding film
will challenge the mute film to the arena. The outcome of the ensuing
struggle is hard to predict. It is altogether probable that the film
public will suddenly be brought to realize that the silent, speechless
motion picture gives it more stimulation and more pleasure than the
speaking film, for the latter will have nothing original about it. And
it remains a solemn fact that the public always wants to see something
original; it wants to be conducted straight to the visionary land of a
colorful fancy where such adventures as men have never seen literally
grow on the trees before them.
Let us wait then and see how the world receives the speaking film.
If it accepts it, one of the most beautiful, and one of the most
recent, messengers of peace known to the human family will have been
lost. For the film speaks to-day the silent language of the emotions,
that language which is understood by all peoples and races wherever
they may live; it speaks the reconciliatory language of the human
heart. We have all seen and felt Americans, Germans, Frenchmen, Jews,
Chinese, and even Negroes play in the motion picture. They all spoke
with the voice of brotherhood, and no one hated them.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Scene from _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_.
[_See p. 77_]
]
The speechless silence of the film, however, is not altogether
tolerable. The most taciturn of men speak a word at times, and the film
dare not create the impression of total unnaturalness. The film is not
pure pantomime. Misguided and obsessed theorists try every now and then
to project a pantomime film on the screen, and every now and then these
creations enjoy a measure of approbation on the part of the critical
public. The characters of these scenarios are doomed men and women
whose lips have been sealed. Their playing is often ungraceful and
tortured, for there are not a few instances in human fate, as this is
delineated on the screen, in which something must be said which cannot
be said through the exclusive means of gestures. The subject matter of
these pantomimic films has, without exception, been exceedingly
primitive thus far. A marked case of such a film was the German picture
entitled _Scherben_ which, nota-bene, has also been shown in America.
There is nothing left for the spectator to do other than to long in
vain for at least a scrap of text which may serve to transform the
unnaturalness of it all into a true picture.
It has been felt, indeed, everywhere that the film dare not be wholly
speechless. Words there must be. There dare not, at the same time, be
anything even approaching a perfect lack of consideration for the art
that is being indulged in: we dare not forget that the prime feature of
the film is its silence. We are willing to put up with colorlessness
and an altogether inadequate depiction of space and perspective,
but we become indignant when living and life-sized human beings
converse with each other for a long while and in absolute silence.
Again and again, and even in the best of motion pictures, we see the
“soundless conversation.” It is a mad conception that was unknown
until the moving picture was invented. People speak with each other,
often in regular word duels, and we have only the vaguest idea as to
what they are saying. To be a spectator at such a performance is to
receive instruction that leads on to the hazy suspension of reason
and to the merciless softening of the mind. With art, or with the
“participation of the creative fancy of the spectator” it has nothing
whatever to do. No text, and be it endless, can remove the impression
that such a procedure is an anomaly.
It is still more dangerous to have people sing in the film. To see such
a sweet flower of the human family as Mary Pickford, dressed in white
and sitting at a concert piano, is to be sure a rare pleasure; at the
sight of her, the eye gladly forgets the impatience of the ear. But
there are films in which a tenor sings a wordy song that, in itself, is
“linked sweetness long drawn out.” His breast heaves, his mouth opens
like a barn door, all in the silence of the tomb! In such instances
many a tried and valiant actor has played an involuntary Chapliniad.
Strangely enough, instrumental music often has a quite pleasing effect
in the motion picture. The reason for this is not far to seek: the
accompanying music and the picture are blended into a unity; between
them there is perfect harmony. That this harmony exists, however, is a
matter of pure accident. Fearful, on the other hand, is the result when
a living singer takes his place in the orchestra and accompanies the
picture with a song. When the hero up in the film opens his mouth, the
artist down among the musicians opens his too, and song comes forth.
All of these are trifles which a skilful producer can easily avoid.
Between silence and loquaciousness lies a spacious domain which offers
the capable film artist abundant room for an easy and agreeable
portrayal of his subject matter. This having been accomplished, no one
feels that there is anything anomalous about the picture, or the art
that makes its production possible. No one will feel a desire for a
speaking film, for the silence that is in the main obligatory has been
interrupted and toned down by the interjection of occasional lines of
text. All in all, the film as it has been developed thus far, is a new
revelation of the artistic world-soul: it delineates feelings through
gestures; emotions are set forth with the aid of gesticulation. For
this reason alone, the film in its present form is a new art.
Is the photograph which makes the film possible also an art? No, it is
not; and will not be an art. But the operator is an artist. His tool
is the lifeless material, just as marble is the tool of the sculptor.
And he animates his picture, he gives it life, by means of the most
delicate lights and shades, through the introduction and application of
the tenderest of moods.
Let us rejoice that the human mind has been enabled, thanks to
the motion picture, to hew out a way for itself into lands that have
hitherto been unknown—a way that leads us off the beaten track on which
the glare and hardness of everyday life become at times unendurable, a
way that leads us into the dreamy twilight of poetry, into the realm
of romance. How necessary the film, as an art, has become if we are to
escape with judicious frequency the drab dullness of the workaday world
is known to everyone who is sufficiently familiar with it to feel that
its loss would be lamentable.