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Page 37
_The photoplay shows us a significant conflict of human actions in
moving pictures which, freed from the physical forms of space, time, and
causality, are adjusted to the free play of our mental experiences and
which reach complete isolation from the practical world through the
perfect unity of plot and pictorial appearance._
CHAPTER X
THE DEMANDS OF THE PHOTOPLAY
We have found the general formula for the new art of the photoplay. We
may turn our attention to some consequences which are involved in this
general principle and to some esthetic demands which result from it.
Naturally the greatest of all of them is the one for which no specific
prescription can be given, namely the imaginative talent of the scenario
writer and the producer. The new art is in that respect not different
from all the old arts. A Beethoven writes immortal symphonies; a
thousand conductors are writing symphonies after the same pattern and
after the same technical rules and yet not one survives the next day.
What the great painter or sculptor, composer or poet, novelist or
dramatist, gives from the depth of his artistic personality is
interesting and significant; and the unity of form and content is
natural and perfect. What untalented amateurs produce is trivial and
flat; the relation of form and content is forced; the unity of the whole
is incomplete. Between these two extremes any possible degree of
approach to the ideal is shown in the history of human arts. It cannot
be otherwise with the art of the film. Even the clearest recognition of
the specific demands of the photoplay cannot be sufficient to replace
original talent or genius. The most slavish obedience to esthetic
demands cannot make a tiresome plot interesting and a trivial action
significant.
If there is anything which introduces a characteristic element into the
creation of the photoplay as against all other arts, it may be found in
the undeniable fact that the photoplay always demands the co�peration of
two inventive personalities, the scenario writer and the producer. Some
collaboration exists in other arts too. The opera demands the poet and
the composer; and yet the text of the opera is a work of literature
independent and complete in itself, and the music of the opera has its
own life. Again, every musical work demands the performer. The
orchestra must play the symphonies, the pianist or the singer must make
the melodies living, the actors must play the drama. But the music is a
perfect work of art even before it is sung or played on an instrument,
just as a drama is complete as a work of literature even if it never
reaches the stage. Moreover it is evident that the realization by actors
is needed for the photoplay too. But we may disregard that. What we have
in mind is that the work which the scenario writer creates is in itself
still entirely imperfect and becomes a complete work of art only through
the action of the producer. He plays a r�le entirely different from that
of the mere stage manager in the drama. The stage manager carries out
what the writer of the drama prescribes, however much his own skill and
visual imagination and insight into the demands of the characters may
add to the embodiment of the dramatic action. But the producer of the
photoplay really must show himself a creative artist, inasmuch as he is
the one who actually transforms the plays into pictures. The emphasis in
the drama lies on the spoken word, to which the stage manager does not
add anything. It is all contained in the lines. In the photoplay the
whole emphasis lies on the picture and its composition is left entirely
to the producing artist.
But the scenario writer must not only have talent for dramatic invention
and construction; he must be wide awake to the uniqueness of his task,
that is, he must feel at every moment that he is writing for the screen
and not for the stage or for a book. And this brings us back to our
central argument. He must understand that the photoplay is not a
photographed drama, but that it is controlled by psychological
conditions of its own. As soon as it is grasped that the film play is
not simply a mechanical reproduction of another art but is an art of a
special kind, it follows that talents of a special kind must be devoted
to it and that nobody ought to feel it beneath his artistic dignity to
write scenarios in the service of this new art. No doubt the moving
picture performances today still stand on a low artistic level. Nine
tenths of the plays are cheap melodramas or vulgar farces. The question
is not how much larger a percentage of really valuable dramas can be
found in our theaters. Many of their plays are just as much an appeal
to the lowest instincts. But at least the theater is not forced to be
satisfied with such degrading comedies and pseudotragedies. The world
literature of the stage contains an abundance of works of eternal value.
It is a purely social and not an esthetic question, why the theaters
around the "White Way" yield to the vulgar taste instead of using the
truly beautiful drama for the raising of the public mind. The moving
picture theaters face an entirely different situation. Their managers
may have the best intentions to give better plays; and yet they are
unable to do so because the scenario literature has so far nothing which
can be compared with the master works of the drama; and nothing of this
higher type can be expected or hoped for until the creation of
photoplays is recognized as worthy of the highest ideal endeavor.
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