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Page 22
CHAPTER VI
EMOTIONS
To picture emotions must be the central aim of the photoplay. In the
drama words of wisdom may be spoken and we may listen to the
conversations with interest even if they have only intellectual and not
emotional character. But the actor whom we see on the screen can hold
our attention only by what he is doing and his actions gain meaning and
unity for us through the feelings and emotions which control them. More
than in the drama the persons in the photoplay are to us first of all
subjects of emotional experiences. Their joy and pain, their hope and
fear, their love and hate, their gratitude and envy, their sympathy and
malice, give meaning and value to the play. What are the chances of the
photoartist to bring these feelings to a convincing expression?
No doubt, an emotion which is deprived of its discharge by words has
lost a strong element, and yet gestures, actions, and facial play are so
interwoven with the psychical process of an intense emotion that every
shade can find its characteristic delivery. The face alone with its
tensions around the mouth, with its play of the eye, with its cast of
the forehead, and even with the motions of the nostrils and the setting
of the jaw, may bring numberless shades into the feeling tone. Here
again the close-up can strongly heighten the impression. It is at the
climax of emotion on the stage that the theatergoer likes to use his
opera glass in order not to overlook the subtle excitement of the lips
and the passion of the eyeballs and the ghastly pupil and the quivering
cheeks. The enlargement by the close-up on the screen brings this
emotional action of the face to sharpest relief. Or it may show us
enlarged a play of the hands in which anger and rage or tender love or
jealousy speak in unmistakable language. In humorous scenes even the
flirting of amorous feet may in the close-up tell the story of their
possessors' hearts. Nevertheless there are narrow limits. Many emotional
symptoms like blushing or growing pale would be lost in the mere
photographic rendering, and, above all, these and many other signs of
feeling are not under voluntary control. The photoactors may carefully
go through the movements and imitate the contractions and relaxations of
the muscles, and yet may be unable to produce those processes which are
most essential for the true life emotion, namely those in the glands,
blood vessels, and involuntary muscles.
Certainly the going through the motions will shade consciousness
sufficiently so that some of these involuntary and instinctive responses
may set in. The actor really experiences something of the inner
excitement which he imitates and with the excitement the automatic
reactions appear. Yet only a few can actually shed tears, however much
they move the muscles of the face into the semblance of crying. The
pupil of the eye is somewhat more obedient, as the involuntary muscles
of the iris respond to the cue which a strong imagination can give, and
the mimic presentation of terror or astonishment or hatred may actually
lead to the enlargement or contraction of the pupil, which the close-up
may show. Yet there remains too much which mere art cannot render and
which life alone produces, because the consciousness of the unreality of
the situation works as a psychological inhibition on the automatic
instinctive responses. The actor may artificially tremble, or breathe
heavily, but the strong pulsation of the carotid artery or the moistness
of the skin from perspiration will not come with an imitated emotion. Of
course, that is true of the actor on the stage, too. But the content of
the words and the modulation of the voice can help so much that the
shortcomings of the visual impression are forgotten.
To the actor of the moving pictures, on the other hand, the temptation
offers itself to overcome the deficiency by a heightening of the
gestures and of the facial play, with the result that the emotional
expression becomes exaggerated. No friend of the photoplay can deny that
much of the photoart suffers from this almost unavoidable tendency. The
quick marchlike rhythm of the drama of the reel favors this artificial
overdoing, too. The rapid alternation of the scenes often seems to
demand a jumping from one emotional climax to another, or rather the
appearance of such extreme expressions where the content of the play
hardly suggests such heights and depths of emotion. The soft lights are
lost and the mental eye becomes adjusted to glaring flashes. This
undeniable defect is felt with the American actors still more than with
the European, especially with the French and Italian ones with whom
excited gestures and highly accentuated expressions of the face are
natural. A New England temperament forced into Neapolitan expressions of
hatred or jealousy or adoration too easily appears a caricature. It is
not by chance that so many strong actors of the stage are such more or
less decided failures on the screen. They have been dragged into an art
which is foreign to them, and their achievement has not seldom remained
far below that of the specializing photoactor. The habitual reliance on
the magic of the voice deprives them of the natural means of expression
when they are to render emotions without words. They give too little or
too much; they are not expressive, or they become grotesque.
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