THE SETTING
The director of the legitimate stage is supposed to create an art
form which rests essentially upon the spoken word, with its artistic
possibilities and potentialities. His entire setting, from curtain
decorations to background and supernumerary costumes, is supposed to
intimate and indicate in a symbolic way (though it must be conceded
that the Meininger Stage strives after ideals of its own in this
regard). The word rings out in front of the pictures and traverses a
jagged line of the background up to the mountain.
Mimic art calls for a sharp milieu, a pronounced environment. Since
the descriptive power of the gesture does not extend beyond the hidden
contents of the human soul, the figures of an unenvironed motion
picture would float about in empty space.
The world of the spoken drama is limited to the cubic feet of space
within the theater; the motion picture, on the contrary, has the world
for its field; it moves in perfect freedom. The camera follows the
actor wherever he may go. If he betake himself to the uttermost
parts of the earth, it is there too. So far, then, as decorative
setting in the motion picture is concerned, there is no such thing,
from an artistic point of view, as limitation or consideration.
The very freedom, however, which the motion picture enjoys in the way
of scenic alternation and variety necessitates constant indulgence in
this freedom: a mimic action dare not drag its weary course for hours
at a time over the same setting. There must be frequent change of
scene. Its psychic powers of expression are too soon exhausted for it
to tarry with impunity, or satisfaction, for any considerable length of
time on the same scene.
In Germany we have made some experiments with films in which there was
no decoration. One of these, the Rex film entitled _Scherben_, is said
to have met with success on the other side of the Atlantic. I feel, for
my own part, that the unvaried and undecorated scene of this paltry
milieu was pretty tiresome. A good film should show an abundance of
pictures; it should have three ♦or four milieus follow close after each
other, rebound against each other. We might as well make up our minds
to it that the need for entertainment on the part of the public is so
great that nothing short of gay, if not gaudy, variety will suffice.
♦ “of” replaced with “or”
For this reason, ♦decorations are made each one of which has a definite
stamp or character. Rooms in which human beings live and work must
show traces of human habitation. With the stage this may not be
necessary, for the illuminating, enlivening power of the poet’s words
lifts the mind above the external picture. The stage of Shakespeare
transformed the really immutable and altogether unpretentious setting
once in Macbeth’s banquet hall, another time in the gray field of the
witches—and it did this through the animating phantasy of Shakespeare’s
lines. The stage is style art. Indeed, the intellectual would have it
this entirely. But the realism of the last century, which brought into
being the so-called stage of illusion and fostered this creation until
it went to the very last conceivable length in the matter of imitation,
is a source of real danger to the essential nature of the spoken word,
and to the wings of such fancy as the word may have. The great mass
of spectators the world over demand from the stage, and also from the
film, that it hold up before them a picture of reality. But in contrast
to the film, the spoken stage cannot be regarded as the spiritual
property of these masses.
♦ “docorations” replaced with “decorations”
Regarding film setting, the first question that arises, and it is a
very fundamental one, is this: Which shall it be—Style or Reality?
Shall we prepare scenery that is related to the style of the
legitimate stage, or shall we copy life as it is?
The realism of the spoken stage is cumbersome and inadequate. You have
got to let the public sit and wait a full half hour to change a single
setting of elaborate decoration. And after all, do what we may, it is
only a defective and sometimes even miserable transcript of nature that
is conjured on to the stage, despite the ingenuity of the machinist
and many other near-colleagues. The Berlin performance of _Andalosia_
represented, a few years ago, the forest act as follows: the stage was
arranged in hills, covered with tin tubs in which there was a profusion
of real fir trees and genuine heather. Diagonally across the stage ran
a real brook. Behind an invisible wire cage squirrels hopped about and
frightened birds flew from corner to corner.
Such a pompous stage setting as this is absurdly complicated. The stage
that goes in exclusively for style will produce the same psychic effect
with the most simple and elementary means.
If style decoration is so made as to meet the exact needs of the stage,
if it suits the stage in every way, well and good; but this is not
in itself irrefutable proof that we should follow the same rules in
preparing decoration for the film. The ways and means of the two arts
are fundamentally different; and the public that each attracts, and
from whose patronage each must survive or perish, is in neither case
the same. Moreover, it is the duty of each art to do what it can. It is
only a fool who attempts the very thing for which he is not naturally
fitted.
The lens of the moving picture camera sucks up the world about it with
unlimited greediness; but it rebels at the mere intimation of perverse
or distorted art forms. The materials with which the film deals, which
it handles, are far too simple, natural, and human to endure any sort
of studied or affected decoration. The spectators in the motion picture
want to see an interesting action on the part of human beings; they
demand beautiful and picturesque decorations; they wince at, if they do
not reject out and out, such pictures as owe their origin to, and would
please the art critics.
The urgent need for good and original settings is ubiquitous; every
film nation feels it. But strangely enough, it has been given the
consideration it calls for neither by the Americans nor by the Swedes.
Both peoples, if we may be permitted to say so, are perfectly contented
with pretty pictures. But real decoration is a vast deal more than a
mere frame enclosing, in rather indifferent fashion, the human heart.
Within the compass of the play, the psychic or psychological effect
and impressiveness have their quite real meaning; they are important.
This fact has been recognized, let us state it candidly, by the
Germans. The German film may be a very imperfect creation, but you have
got to admit that in the way of inventiveness, wealth of ingenuity, and
such atmosphere as can be created by decoration, it has accomplished a
great deal; indeed, in some instances, it has gone too far.
An instance of excess in the field of decoration was that clever and
ingenious film entitled _Dr. Caligari_. It may be referred to as the
masterpiece of doubtful decorative art. (Illustrations No. 1 and 2.)
This was the meaning of these decorations: they were intended to
surround or accompany the action as a sort of powerful tone; they were
so many notes. The action itself was hostile to life, misanthropic,
dour. It painted the gruesome phantasies of a mind diseased. It was
an unintended, but not on that account ineffective, bit of irony that
this picture of a deranged world was enveloped in hyper-impressionistic
decoration. The action was that of a madman; the scenery was as it
was. One saw oblique and twisted houses painted with all manner of mad
flourishes; rooms no wall of which was rectangular or perpendicular
or level; passageways of the same description and streets that
cannot be described; rhombic windows and doors; bent, warped, and
splintered trees which reminded of the monumental drawings that are
associated with Chinese painting.
In these pictures (the composition of them was an inimitable success)
there was a perfect reflection, in error and knowledge, of the
inevitable characteristics of decoration.
[Illustration: Fig. 11. Scene from _Golem_.
[_See p. 86_]
]
We had to do, first of all, with the oft-repeated objection to this
much-praised and much-calumniated film, that in that insanely distorted
milieu the actors moved about in their own human, unfractured, and
undeformed bodies. Werner Krauss alone, who played the title rôle,
was so unqualifiedly successful in making his being fit in and seem
at home with the spooky element of this heap of distortions that the
environment apparently enveloped this magician with a singularly
magical veil. The unnaturalness of his predicament was made to appear
natural. With the others it was altogether different. The magic circle
in which they moved left the impression that it was merely a ghostly
and ghastly mantle that flopped about their figures. It simply is
not possible to squeeze such inherently contradictory material and
motivation into a single frame. The decoration, always easily
changed and varied, must adapt itself to the form and figure of the
actor, which is unvariable and cannot be changed. This being the case,
the following basic law compels formulation and observance: Setting
dare not distort reality.
This law has a meaning of its own: it applies to the whole business of
art as this is exploited in the interests of caricatured and twisted
expressionism. That expressionism has about fought its last fight and
displayed its ultimate lunacy, is a safe and reasoned assumption. The
“deformation” of nature as an aid to the inadequate ability of the
artist is a hopelessly unsatisfactory emergency aid invoked on behalf
of a foul and decayed naturalism in its desperate attempt to conjure up
a new style—_un coin de la nature, vu à travers d’un tempérament_.
One saw an irrationally perverse and eccentric, painted and plotted
picture of a city (the surface in the background of illustration No.
1). Two insane people stood before it, one of whom pointed at the
singular picture and said: “My native city!” Of the feeling of art
there was not a trace. The spectator, going at the thing in a purely
rational way, figured it out as follows: the lunatic was born in
a little hilly city. The magic of the words “native city” was not
even hinted at, to say nothing of being exhausted. In a mimic
and sensuous moving picture it does not suffice to portray a painted
surface as a picture. Such scenery will do on the legitimate stage,
but, in the motion picture, the symbolism of it fails to reach the
heart. The decoration of the film must be plastic.
Such a film can have only one meaning; it can be important in only one
way: it is an experiment, and experiments are rarely useless. They may
even be quite valuable; for to start out on a wrong road is not useless
in itself, since we thereby learn that it is the wrong road. We learn
that we are in a blind alley, that there is no use to try to go any
farther, that any attempt at a new creation is beaten at the beginning,
and can hope to end only in the most wretched of conditions—such
as those find themselves committed to who have arrived late. Any
achievement in the way of film scenery can have and be of enduring
value then and only then when it serves as a stimulus to colleagues in
other branches of the same art; it must leave some room for many minds.
A film such as that of _Dr. Caligari_, which begins with irony and ends
with resignation, can never be regarded as more than a curiosity. The
Decla Company made another expressionistic film entitled _Genuine, die
Geschichte einer Blutsäuferin_ (“The Tale of a Vampyre”). It revealed
the same artistic principles as those of _Dr. Caligari_, but with
this difference: they had now become petrified after the fashion of
a regular mask. I am of the opinion that for an achievement in this
field to be of real value, in technique as well as in art, it has got
to be taken from life and follow lifelike lines. For this reason, the
possibility of a fruitful development in this direction seems remote
indeed.
This gigantic spring-tide which surged forth with unqualified
suddenness from the chaos of film evolution has about ebbed away and
been absorbed by a few remarkable decorations. Its effects are still
noticeable here and there on the upper surface; this much must be
conceded. But the great storm that reached down to the depths and
brought about a complete revolution and reformation in the domain of
film scenery, has never taken place, though it was prophesied and
promised by its leading adherents at the time. Wherever we can still
recognize a faint echo of it, it has quieted down into a milder, calmer
form which first coquettes with nature and flirts with life, only to
become gradually but completely reconciled to them in the end.
The tendency to invention of phantastic settings was immensely aroused
by _Dr. Caligari_. Illustration No. 3. for example, shows what may be
done in the way of an art form that is supposed to follow nature,
though it is conceived in error, and though it is a specimen of such
nature as we get when it is constructed rather than allowed to grow,
and constructed with the inescapable contortions that characterize this
type of thing. The unreasoned and unbalanced twisting and the laborious
padding of these mountain lines are without a trace of either warmth or
truth; they lack inner genuineness. The sunflowers in the foreground at
the left are simply idiotic. Illustration No. 4 is a trifle better in
the calm flow of its lines. It is astonishingly true to life, though
the thought of a castle that has been chiseled from the solid rock does
not exactly remind one of home, or if so, it merely emphasizes the
saying that there is no place like home.
Illustration No. 5 is thoroughly saturated with the romantic clarity of
feeling for nature. The reconciliation of the inventive artist with the
forms of nature has been perfected; it is complete. There is, moreover,
a remarkable freedom of invention coupled with astonishing fidelity to
nature.
In all of these pictures we recognize an ever-increasing moderation,
an intimate and sympathetic pressing forward to the forms of reality
that are not slavishly copied; they are felt, and that in a vigorous
and natural way. Before we enter upon the open road of scenery that
is faithful to reality, however, we must follow for a season romantic
setting by way of familiarizing ourselves with a number of its amiable
ramifications.
The playing or sportive mind of the artist in pictures roams about and
remains resting, in time, toying like a butterfly, on the bizarre forms
of the phantastic world. Illustration No. 6, for example, shows us a
magic garden in Asia. There is an easy and refreshing humor about it;
it is charming as a picture. It has only one fault: it is inappropriate
as a bit of decoration for a film. For the film picture passes by in
a few seconds, and it is not the business of the decoration to draw
attention away from the action. Such complicated pictures, with all
their captivating by-products, can be studied in detail and with much
thought and consideration, but not in the film—there is no time for
them there.
All decorative scenery has to be well arranged; it must be lucid,
clear, and easy of survey. Illustration No. 7 is confused and hard
to read. Moreover, this scenery has nothing to do with the action.
No one would ever suspect that this room was occupied by an American
millionairess. Let the decoration be as grand and glorious as the
human mind can make it, if it is not a frame, or a framework,
for the things that go on in the human heart, its effect is swollen,
disingenuous, and undesirable from every point of view.
The odd and fanciful device fails if it is not truly and inwardly
affiliated with human fate. This is proved by Illustration No. 8, the
cramped and even convulsive style of which, with its black and white
norm, does not convince. The plastic effect is altogether inadequate
and defective. This picture is shown here because it is a brilliant
refutal of the oft-repeated assertion that the film, as an art-form,
has to do with and rests upon the art of black and white. There is
neither artistic nor objective value in the picture; it is merely a
curio, a bit of nourishment for under-bred curiosity, and was born of a
deformed notion.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. Scene from _Destiny_.
[_See p. 87_]
]
The curiosity, however, of phantastic forms is not to be ruthlessly
denounced and rejected if back of it lies a graceful notion, a happy
idea. Illustration No. 9 shows such an original scene of vibrant
freshness. The dancing girl is pictured as an undisciplined, capricious
little creature, and one is bound to admit that a setting of this sort
throws a captivating and intriguing frame about the radiant soul of
man. This picture has nothing in the world to do with naturalism. It
is of merely momentary significance and, like Illustration No. 8, has
but little bearing on, and consequently but little significance
for, the real value of decoration. But in contrast to that pale black
and white drawing, this dance scenery gives evidence of a brilliant
artistic brain from which ingenuity radiates and in which confidence
may be placed when it is a question of brightening up a film. One sees
that it comes from a brain which creates pictures in an easy even if
extravagant mood, pictures which fire the imagination somewhat after
the fashion of a cool flask of seasoned and sparkling champagne.
We had a wonderful fulfillment of the phantastic decoration in
Wegener’s _Golem_, that fairy tale which told of the breathing of life
into a figure of clay through the magic power of a Jewish Rabbi, who
made the monster his servant—until it, having reached the point where
it had real feelings, turned against its lord and master. Poelzig
had created the milieu for the romantic action, Illustration No. 10.
A fairy play of spooky streets and ghost-like alleys, the old, old
house of which bent and crouched under the vault of heaven. There was
the doomed and damned world of the Ghetto, isolated from all things
agreeably human and threatened by gigantic walls.
The sober fact of the business is that when genius takes a hand in the
matter of scenery, and visualizes its ingenuity, doubts disappear and
faith rules supreme. We give in; we resign. Was this world a copy
of reality? Was it the sole product of the artist’s wish? The whole
thing was a play, a marvelous mask, the expression of an animated and
enlivened will.
There was much more style to the interior of the rooms. And for this
very reason they were less natural; they were more alien to free and
easy conception. But the room of the Rabbi, with its low, crooked,
burdened walls, the stairway of which the least that can be said was
that it was heavily constructed (Illustration No. 11) was entirely in
keeping with the city sighing as it was under its mighty load.
But _Golem_ lay apart; it was a unique picture. The swirling,
over-decorated flourishes of this world which had become so
introspective, which had retired unto itself, and which retires unto
itself again and again and at every opportunity, did not somehow make
the right replies to the questions of our soul. The final echo, the
longed-for repercussion of those wishes that creep into the hearts of
the children of men, are always and invariably lacking in phantastic
art. Such art may cause curiosity to grow; on such curiosity may
batten; but it is never the creation that at once constitutes the
longing and stills the longing that has been aroused.
The film is not the art in which a visionary fancy may rage until
its rage is over. On the contrary, the film represents the most perfect
union of active and modern life with the symphony of feelings. And it
is not until we reach the point where the film dips down into hard
reality—whether it be the reality of the present or of bygone ages is
of but little consequence—that its art of decoration is confronted with
those problems and tasks at the sight of which the human eye begins to
glisten with ardent enthusiasm—is confronted with those works of the
film in which every picture, every feeling, and every gesture preaches
its _Tua res agitur_.
Settings befitting reality do not necessarily have to be smooth,
unconditional, and unconditioned copies of reality. The chief
desideratum is to have life and atmosphere in them; they must be filled
with tender emotion, gentle animation. The following pictures belong
to this category. Illustration No. 12 reveals in a kindly, loving way
the milieu of a South German village. It is full of fancy, yet it is
faithful to reality. The sole point in connection with this picture
lies in this question: A German film company made this picture; very
few people took part in it. Would it then not have been better and, in
the end, less expensive, if the company had actually gone to one of
the countless South German villages and taken the photographs on the
spot?
Illustration No. 13 is a trick setting from Lubitsch’s _Sumurun_. It is
only a few yards in height, and the effect produced is so natural that
one fancies one is really surrounded by colossal buildings that stand
out all alone.
Illustrations No. 14 and 15 offer an interesting study in comparisons.
In No. 14, the grandiose scene from _Madame Dubarry_ (smaller
minds have all too often been influenced by this scene, to their
own detriment), we have a chaotic fullness from the masses, and an
architectural ensemble in the buildings included that is rather hard
to study in the right perspective. It seems on the whole somewhat
disconnected. But in this very lack of composition the picture reveals
a fabulous fidelity to life; this is just such a scene as real life
throws on the canvas. In contrast to this we have the bold composition
of the pictures from _Anne Boleyn_. It is in beautiful style, in the
manner of the Meininger Stage. There is fullness and there is order; it
shows genuineness instead of truth.
A continuation in the development of this imitation, which in this
case is ramified and multiplied down to the last and minutest bit of
gim-crack on the houses, is no longer possible. Such additions as may
be made will have to consist, not in making the decoration more
intensive, but in making it more extensive; it must have to do with
surface and not with depth (as in the buildings of the _Indisches
Grabmal_), for the limit in intensity and depth has been reached. This
being the case, the only thing that can be expected in the future is
a sort of wild goose-chase after every conceivable species of scenic
extravaganza. One architect tries to outdo the other in building high
buildings and big buildings and complex buildings, with the result that
the firm that has the greatest resources, or the best credit, will, in
the end, carry off the prize. The man who really tries to further art
will be forced into the background; the material, the mass makes itself
felt.
Scenic views have, in truth, already been constructed every detail of
which, and there are many, rather militates against real effect so far
as the film is concerned. This is proof that the way of film setting
is unique unto itself; there are such things as faithful imitations of
indispensable film style, but to follow them is to be led out on to
distant paths that are alien to the essential objective; for lavishness
is never a sign of control.
The prime prerequisite of a good film picture is that one glance
is sufficient to take it in; from this truth there is no escape.
And despite this, the film picture dare not lack atmosphere. The
imitation of reality is all right in itself and quite beautiful.
But so soon as the reality that is imitated becomes excessive in detail
so that easy survey of it is impossible, we have to depart from it with
an indulgent farewell, otherwise it will become distorted, caricatured,
and naturally annoying where it is meant to be illuminating.
Film decoration calls for an elaborate and calm flow of lines, lines
which surround the action like a mighty and manifold frame, but which
do not wean our attention away from the film itself; on it our eye at
least must be kept riveted. Those details, which are as expensive as
they are useless, are to be avoided, while emphasis is to be placed on
the essentials in the scenery.
Illustration No. 16 is on the border line between a faithful copy
and a clever diversity or manifolding. The scene is extravagant only
in composition; the details have been worked out with just enough
completeness to give the impression of absolute reality.
The settings of the following pictures are of a remarkably impressive
and artistic power. They give visual evidence of an elaborate style,
the chief concern of which is suitability. It is a style which, thanks
to the sketchy means of the wings, reproduces the decisive line
without becoming lost in ornamental set-off and too much ramification.
Illustration No. 17, a quite unostentatious setting, shows, with
unreserved fidelity to life, a house wing of plain compactness, and of
an unusually modest atmosphere, which encompasses the action and aids
in its effective visualization.
The scenery in Illustration No. 18—the picture is from _Vögelöd_—is
inimitable. The loneliness and desertion of the two people is seemingly
in the act of beginning to strike up a deep note, just as if one were
to draw the bow across the bass string of a violin.
This is the kind of reserved and unobtrusive clarity of lines that
has got to be practiced if we are to solve the problem of film
decoration in a successful way. Such practice absorbs and assimilates
the fundamental elements of all styles and tones them down into one
grandiose picture—such as Illustration No. 19. It leads one out
beyond the narrow confines of the atelier and on to piles of human
occupancy in the open air, creations of the architect’s mind which
make no attempt at a microcosmic delineation of details; it has the
whole, the entity, rather tower up before us, in microcosmic fashion,
and uses to this end, not the pebbles of excessive embellishment, but
the huge square stones of all great buildings. Instances of such are
Illustrations Nos. 20 and 21.
It must be conceded that settings, if strenuously composed, as
we have indicated, call for a certain simplicity in the matter of
photography, a simplicity the strict observance of which necessitates
the taking of the photographs at a considerable distance and from
obvious points of vantage. For it is clear that it is impossible to
get a picture of such objects at any or every angle. Such strong
compositions are practicable only in the films that have to do
with heroic subjects. We may lay it down as a general rule that a
heavy composition, because of its heavy arches, can easily become
disadvantageous to the lines. The quiet, peaceful day of rest in
Illustration No. 21 is beautiful.
But it is not merely setting that must be made with due regard for the
effectiveness of the film for which it is intended; the costume that
the actor wears must also be given discriminating attention. We want a
replica of reality; this goes without saying. But wherever the reality
is unattractive, or characterized, to be specific, by a bewildering
fullness of lines, then it is that we need probability—or better still,
verisimilitude. To play some great episode in the same costume in
which it originally took place is in itself a noble idea. But it means
nothing to the film to place the costumes of that time, glittering
with color and bedizened with all manner of spangles and buckles,
before the, after all, color-blind eye of the camera. The big,
balloon-like costumes of the Renaissance, the Italian as well as the
German, make a rather poor picture of unknown colors and indifferent
lines. To take a picture of this kind and do it effectively requires
an artist who is cautious in his exploitation of all things stylistic,
modest in his desire to display his inventive power, and trained in
the art school of experience. We may say, in general, that there is no
single costume of any age or all ages that is entirely effective on the
screen. It is a serious fact that cannot be lost sight of that, in this
domain of the moving picture, the effects we so ardently strive after
depend not so much on genuineness as on the appearance of genuineness.
Take the frontispiece. What a splendid clarity and lucidity of line!
But the costumes of those times were like the ones that constitute the
glory of this picture only in general proportions and outlines.
And thus it comes about—just as in the most exalted works of art of all
ages—that each individual part serves the whole, and there is none of
that greediness for isolated triumph that results, if unleashed, in a
dazzling and distracting display of the arts of the virtuoso.
Our film world is a business affair, but every sane man is willing and
eager to let the grand ideas of real art have the fullest possible
play—provided these ideas are effective and imbued with sufficient life
to work in harmony with our business interests.
The motion picture is art for the masses; there is not a shred of use
to try to deny this, or to evade the conditions that this unpliable
fact necessitates. Such decoration as it calls to its aid must,
consequently, be of such simple, even primitive, impressiveness
that its place in the motion picture becomes at once clear even to
the untrained and obtuse eye. It is injudicious to launch out on
any artistic enterprise which cannot be felt and appreciated by the
masses. Such æsthetic hardiness as characterized _Dr. Caligari_, with
its voguish art forms, can never be regarded as more than an unusual
attempt which took the masses by surprise. Let that kind of moving
picture become the rule rather than the exception, and the people who
have hitherto flocked to the motion picture will fail to re-enter it
and, bent on entertainment of some kind, they will betake themselves
to the kino—to those narrow, moldy pits in which the canvases that are
displayed consist of a spiced and peppery potpourri that is especially
concocted to seduce the eye—canvases that are born of low but intense
avidity, and which are given to such children of men as are most easily
moved by the same impulse.