|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 36
_While the moving pictures are lifted above the world of space and time
and causality and are freed from its bounds, they are certainly not
without law._ We said before that the freedom with which the pictures
replace one another is to a large degree comparable to the sparkling
and streaming of the musical tones. The yielding to the play of the
mental energies, to the attention and emotion, which is felt in the film
pictures, is still more complete in the musical melodies and harmonies
in which the tones themselves are merely the expressions of the ideas
and feelings and will impulses of the mind. Their harmonies and
disharmonies, their fusing and blending, is not controlled by any outer
necessity, but by the inner agreement and disagreement of our free
impulses. And yet in this world of musical freedom, everything is
completely controlled by esthetic necessities. No sphere of practical
life stands under such rigid rules as the realm of the composer. However
bold the musical genius may be he cannot emancipate himself from the
iron rule that his work must show complete unity in itself. All the
separate prescriptions which the musical student has to learn are
ultimately only the consequences of this central demand which music, the
freest of the arts, shares with all the others. In the case of the film,
too, the freedom from the physical forms of space, time, and causality
does not mean any liberation from this esthetic bondage either. On the
contrary, just as music is surrounded by more technical rules than
literature, the photoplay must be held together by the esthetic demands
still more firmly than is the drama. The arts which are subordinated to
the conditions of space, time, and causality find a certain firmness of
structure in these material forms which contain an element of outer
connectedness. But where these forms are given up and where the freedom
of mental play replaces their outer necessity, everything would fall
asunder if the esthetic unity were disregarded.
This unity is, first of all, the unity of action. The demand for it is
the same which we know from the drama. The temptation to neglect it is
nowhere greater than in the photoplay where outside matter can so easily
be introduced or independent interests developed. It is certainly true
for the photoplay, as for every work of art, that nothing has the right
to existence in its midst which is not internally needed for the
unfolding of the unified action. Wherever two plots are given to us, we
receive less by far than if we had only one plot. We leave the sphere of
valuable art entirely when a unified action is ruined by mixing it with
declamation, and propaganda which is not organically interwoven with the
action itself. It may be still fresh in memory what an esthetically
intolerable helter-skelter performance was offered to the public in "The
Battlecry of Peace." Nothing can be more injurious to the esthetic
cultivation of the people than such performances which hold the
attention of the spectators by ambitious detail and yet destroy their
esthetic sensibility by a complete disregard of the fundamental
principle of art, the demand for unity. But we recognized also that this
unity involves complete isolation. We annihilate beauty when we link the
artistic creation with practical interests and transform the spectator
into a selfishly interested bystander. The scenic background of the play
is not presented in order that we decide whether we want to spend our
next vacation there. The interior decoration of the rooms is not
exhibited as a display for a department store. The men and women who
carry out the action of the plot must not be people whom we may meet
tomorrow on the street. All the threads of the play must be knotted
together in the play itself and none should be connected with our
outside interests. A good photoplay must be isolated and complete in
itself like a beautiful melody. It is not an advertisement for the
newest fashions.
This unity of action involves unity of characters. It has too often been
maintained by those who theorize on the photoplay that the development
of character is the special task of the drama, while the photoplay,
which lacks words, must be satisfied with types. Probably this is only a
reflection of the crude state which most photoplays of today have not
outgrown. Internally, there is no reason why the means of the photoplay
should not allow a rather subtle depicting of complex character. But the
chief demand is that the characters remain consistent, that the action
be developed according to inner necessity and that the characters
themselves be in harmony with the central idea of the plot. However, as
soon as we insist on unity we have no right to think only of the action
which gives the content of the play. We cannot make light of the form.
As in music the melody and rhythms belong together, as in painting not
every color combination suits every subject, and as in poetry not every
stanza would agree with every idea, so the photoplay must bring action
and pictorial expression into perfect harmony. But this demand repeats
itself in every single picture. We take it for granted that the painter
balances perfectly the forms in his painting, groups them so that an
internal symmetry can be felt and that the lines and curves and colors
blend into a unity. Every single picture of the sixteen thousand which
are shown to us in one reel ought to be treated with this respect of the
pictorial artist for the unity of the forms.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|