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Page 33
CHAPTER IX
THE MEANS OF THE PHOTOPLAY
We have now reached the point at which we can knot together all our
threads, the psychological and the esthetic ones. If we do so, we come
to the true thesis of this whole book. Our esthetic discussion showed us
that it is the aim of art to isolate a significant part of our
experience in such a way that it is separate from our practical life and
is in complete agreement within itself. Our esthetic satisfaction
results from this inner agreement and harmony, but in order that we may
feel such agreement of the parts we must enter with our own impulses
into the will of every element, into the meaning of every line and color
and form, every word and tone and note. Only if everything is full of
such inner movement can we really enjoy the harmonious co�peration of
the parts. The means of the various arts, we saw, are the forms and
methods by which this aim is fulfilled. They must be different for every
material. Moreover the same material may allow very different methods of
isolation and elimination of the insignificant and re�nforcement of that
which contributes to the harmony. If we ask now what are the
characteristic means by which the photoplay succeeds in overcoming
reality, in isolating a significant dramatic story and in presenting it
so that we enter into it and yet keep it away from our practical life
and enjoy the harmony of the parts, we must remember all the results to
which our psychological discussion in the first part of the book has led
us.
We recognized there that the photoplay, incomparable in this respect
with the drama, gave us a view of dramatic events which was completely
shaped by the inner movements of the mind. To be sure, the events in the
photoplay happen in the real space with its depth. But the spectator
feels that they are not presented in the three dimensions of the outer
world, that they are flat pictures which only the mind molds into
plastic things. Again the events are seen in continuous movement; and
yet the pictures break up the movement into a rapid succession of
instantaneous impressions. We do not see the objective reality, but a
product of our own mind which binds the pictures together. But much
stronger differences came to light when we turned to the processes of
attention, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, of division of
interest and of emotion. The attention turns to detailed points in the
outer world and ignores everything else: the photoplay is doing exactly
this when in the close-up a detail is enlarged and everything else
disappears. Memory breaks into present events by bringing up pictures of
the past: the photoplay is doing this by its frequent cut-backs, when
pictures of events long past flit between those of the present. The
imagination anticipates the future or overcomes reality by fancies and
dreams; the photoplay is doing all this more richly than any chance
imagination would succeed in doing. But chiefly, through our division of
interest our mind is drawn hither and thither. We think of events which
run parallel in different places. The photoplay can show in intertwined
scenes everything which our mind embraces. Events in three or four or
five regions of the world can be woven together into one complex action.
Finally, we saw that every shade of feeling and emotion which fills the
spectator's mind can mold the scenes in the photoplay until they appear
the embodiment of our feelings. In every one of these aspects the
photoplay succeeds in doing what the drama of the theater does not
attempt.
If this is the outcome of esthetic analysis on the one side, of
psychological research on the other, we need only combine the results of
both into a unified principle: _the photoplay tells us the human story
by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time, and
causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world,
namely, attention, memory, imagination, and emotion._
We shall gain our orientation most directly if once more, under this
point of view, we compare the photoplay with the performance on the
theater stage. We shall not enter into a discussion of the character of
the regular theater and its drama. We take this for granted. Everybody
knows that highest art form which the Greeks created and which from
Greece has spread over Asia, Europe, and America. In tragedy and in
comedy from ancient times to Ibsen, Rostand, Hauptmann, and Shaw we
recognize one common purpose and one common form for which no further
commentary is needed. How does the photoplay differ from a theater
performance? We insisted that every work of art must be somehow
separated from our sphere of practical interests. The theater is no
exception. The structure of the theater itself, the framelike form of
the stage, the difference of light between stage and house, the stage
setting and costuming, all inhibit in the audience the possibility of
taking the action on the stage to be real life. Stage managers have
sometimes tried the experiment of reducing those differences, for
instance, keeping the audience also in a fully lighted hall, and they
always had to discover how much the dramatic effect was reduced because
the feeling of distance from reality was weakened. The photoplay and the
theater in this respect are evidently alike. The screen too suggests
from the very start the complete unreality of the events.
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